Can You Buy Sustainable Fast Fashion?

[door slams] [sniffing] One of the minute work the other day told me I must have a lovely tailor, which I don't know whether we were living in the 1950s, but um, we let. Did you let tip your hat to him? That's what I was like, thank you. Good sir. Um, it's quite cute. There are some really fabulous dresses, by the way. Do you think that sexy lingerie is sometimes extremely uncomfortable? Oh my god, yes. I have some lonely lingerie that I purchased a while back. I feel very sad about it now, Drew, she's the weird anti-blic lives matter. Did you just feel a bit dirty wearing them now? Yeah, not in a good way. [laughter] Kia ora. Welcome to another lockdown edition of Consume This with John and Sophie. In each episode we take on one big issue and today we're taking on clothes. More specifically, is it possible to buy sustainable, fast fashion or other big brands lying to us? Fashion is a huge business here in Altera. In 2020 we collectively spent $7.8 billion on clothes and shoes. That's over $1,300 each. I realised that people weren't understanding the value of things. They were just wanting to buy more and more new clothes. Going back a little further in 2019 an estimated 63 million tons of clothing was produced globally. That's more than the weight of 19 million Toyota Corrollers. 40 million hippos or 400 years worth of Italian Parmesan cheese production. Basically, it's an enormous amount. The fashion industry has a huge effect on our planet. These things aren't on our dual state. We don't see the rivers that are pollution-people because of the dye, color, that's in them with social-todd rummage. A report from the World Economic Forum found that fashion production accounts for 5% of our CO2 emissions. And that might not sound like a lot, but it's almost three times as much as the aviation industry. And it doesn't stop there. Clothing production also accounts for 20% of the world's waste water. Enough to fill up 37 million Olympic swimming pools. Fast fashion gets a particularly bad name when it comes to sustainability. With a dizzying number of brands like H&M, Zara, and ASOS releasing sustainable and conscious clothing lines, it can be a minefield to decipher what any of this actually means. And that's a real concern. At H&M, we work hard to create the cotton feels good, but it can do good as well. We've seen quality as an environmental issue. It's cool to wear the same clothes and it is cool to be sustainable. So we are working on a brand that cares for planet. A study by the Changing Markets Foundation found that greenwashing is rife. At both high street and luxury brands. Their results said that 60% of claims by UK and European fashion companies, including Zara and H&M, are unsubstantiated and actually misleading. It's not particularly surprising then that researchers found that only one in five of us trust sustainability claims. Let's get back to Sophie and Executive Producer Gemma. They're going through their wardrobes on Zoom, and anticipation of when we'll be able to get back outside again. Do you have that conscious consideration when you buy clothes? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a mixed bag, right? I just bought myself a new pair of sneakers that I also feel terrible about now, but because my partner made me feel goody about them, because they cost me five dollars. And I was so proud of myself because I was like, a five dollar pair of sneakers, what a bloody bargain. And then he was like, oh, yeah, that's probably because there was child labour involved. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's not ideal. Is it? Do you reckon you've got some guilty pieces of clothing in your wardrobe? A few years ago, I feel like it didn't into my mindset that much. More recently, I've been thinking about it, and I do try and check the labels, but I get really confused. The other thing is, sometimes I just, I just feel like, oh my goodness, it's so nice, and I get weak and I buy things. I get tempted. It's pretty. It's pretty. Try not to think of it. And the influences have got us those bloody influences. But are Jema and Sophie the only ones who think like this? According to fashion industry research, 53% of us believe it's important to buy from ethical and sustainable brands, but only 23% of us actually do the research and follow through. And as we discovered earlier in the episode, researchers consistently found that companies are actively trying to mislead us with their marketing around sustainability. What even is sustainability? Yeah, well, here's the thing. It's not really clear what sustainability actually means with respect to clothes. To answer that question, let's welcome in sustainable fashion consultant and program director at Mindful Fashion NZ, Jacinta Fitzgerald. Kia ora, Jacinta. Welcome to the show. To start off, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Okay. So I basically, from right from when I was little, I wanted to be a fashion designer and so I did all my school subjects based on that. I went to the university in Auckland and did a fashion design course up there and then worked in the industry for about 15 plus years as a designer and pedermaker product developer. And then also had my own business, had my own clothing label for about four years. And so at that time, sort of, I realised that people weren't understanding the value of things. They were just wanting to buy more and more new clothes, cheaper and cheaper. And so I actually sort of stepped away from the industry because I became really disillusioned and went back to university and did a one year research thesis on sustainable issue in the fashion industry and that was about 2012. And since then, I've been working with a sustainable issue lens, so integrating more sustainable practices into their businesses and looking at how they can sort of shift to more lower and patch more responsible business models. Did you have a moment of realisation? What was it that turned your career into this new focus? Well, there was definitely situations in my job that I had where I was travelling to factories over in China and Southeast Asia. We are just the scale of production and textile waste became really apparent to me, like straight in front of my eyes. We're so sheltered in New Zealand. We don't really get to see a lot of that. And going into some of these really big garment factories and just seeing orders for $10,000 or $20,000 or $100,000 t-shirts going through and just piles of textile waste outside factories, you know, of things, faulty garments or scraps of fabric getting thrown away, just really hit home to me. It was just the actual scale of the industry. These things aren't on our doorstep. We don't see garment workers jumping into lorries and getting driven to factories every morning. We don't see the rivers that are pollution, you know, and that are purple because of the dye colour that's in them. We don't see the, I mean, just the landscape in China driving through the industrial cities in China. The air is brownie grey. There's no colour. You don't see the green trees. You don't see the blue sky. We don't see the level of industrialisation here. We're so sheltered from it. Yeah. Just listening to what you've just said, you've talked about environmental impacts, you've talked about people so you know how the labour force has been treated all under one term. Do you think there's there's a settled definition of sustainability? I know. There's not. That's part of the problem that we currently have, I think, in the world of consumers trying to make good choices. There isn't really a definition. The one that I go by is that I sort of say it's about enough for all forever. So it's about how can we make sure that as a business that we are able to survive as a business, that we are able to survive now, but that our business is also able to survive in the future. So that, you know, the people that work for us, our communities that we draw from in the environment are all able to thrive now and not just survive now, but actually thrive. So that's everybody having good lives. And then we also know that that is going to happen in the future, that we're not depleting the environment now and it won't be able to provide for us in the future. So that's getting quite technical, quite quickly. But ultimately it's about making sure that we have enough for everybody to live life on this planet. If I think of kind of the legal position, you'd look at the Fair Trading Act and the Fair Trading Act kind of says what would a reasonable consumer think the term means. Do you think we've got to a point where it's so this term is so ubiquitous that it's lost its meaning to the extent that it's just kind of come this gray term? Yeah. That is such a minefield for consumers to try and navigate, which is what I find quite frustrating. So sustainability, regenerative, insurcular are all actually now really highly used and not necessarily used in a way that is meaningful. So like you asked me earlier, what is sustainability actually meant? Regenerative is another term that's following that path and so is circular, insurcular is actually a really important way for the industry to be moving. But what we're seeing, what I'm seeing now is a lot of businesses talking about how they're circular, but only one tiny part of what they're doing is circular. So I think my one piece of advice would be like always think about the bigger picture when you're reading marketing from businesses because it really is only telling you that a little piece that they want you to see. Yeah. For the novices amongst us, what do I do? I head off to buy a t-shirt. How do you get through the marketing spin and find out what's real and what's not? I think that's a real challenge. I actually really do think that it's not easy for consumers to try and delve through that. I would say if there's anything that's unclear, I would email the brand and ask them. Most or message them on social media often you get a much quicker response in that way and actually just ask them to what they are doing about the areas that are important to you as a consumer if that's around the workers and their wages or the country of manufacture. Maybe it's around chemical use, maybe it's around transportation. Like ask the brand what they're doing, get their answer and ask them how they can provide you with any assurance that what they're saying is actually what they're doing. I think brands are learning to be challenged by consumers and the more that we do that, the more that we're showing that it's important to us. So I would say that if you can't immediately see what you're looking for on a website just reach out and put your own respect on the business to tell you what it's doing. There's another option there if you don't immediately see the answer you're looking for just not to buy, just to skip that brand and move on. That possibly is another answer. I think also the every time you buy something you're voting for that company so if it's not meeting your expectations, move on. Do you think that is it actually about us buying less? Make less and buy less, yeah. I think that ultimately that is what needs to happen and we need to, from a business perspective, find other ways to move away from this volume of consumption that we promote in because I also don't think that it entirely comes down to consumers being the ones that are responsible for that. Yes, consumers need to buy less but that's a really difficult ask when there's a huge marketing machine behind a lot of these clothing companies and that's a massive part of the problem and there's no watchdog on the industry. The industry has no watchdog so actually it's able to get away with terrible environmental degradation and exploitation and social exploitation and it has been able to for 50 years and nobody's been pulling the reins on that so there is shared responsibility I think with all parties to make that change happen. Thanks to Jacinta for taking the time to talk with us. It seems to me that issue here is that without a central definition of what sustainable is, fashion brands and in fact any company at all can use it to market anything they like. Does that sound right to you, John? No, it doesn't and I don't like the fact that this falls into a bit of a great area under the Fair Trading Act where there's no subtle definition of what sustainable means so companies can just use the term to create a warm fuzzy glow around their brand without actually walking the walk. I think we need to put some of these high street brands under the microscope and to do that we welcome in Gordon Renoff from Good On You who rate fashion brands across their impacts on planet people and animals. Kia ora Gordon and welcome to the Consumeless podcast and thank you so much for joining us. To get things started if you could tell us a little bit about where you're coming to us from today. Hi everybody, thanks for having me on. I'm sitting in a sunroom in Sydney under lockdown, a little bit of traffic outside the window. Yeah, we're the same here in Wellington at the moment so we're all stuck inside recording from home. So apologies if there's some background noise for many of us. And so what does Gotta knew actually do? So we publish a rating for as many brands as possible so that you as a consumer knows which brands are better and which works on the things that you care about. And so those ratings are based on the most material issues that impact on workers on the planet and on animals. And so we rate brands from one which we call We Avoid up to five which is great. So do you do your own independent research or do you just have to rely on what the brands tell you on their website? So how do you get your information? So the key element of good on you is that we stand in the shoes of the consumer. And so we're trying to make it as easy as possible for the consumer. The consumer doesn't want to be limited to just a small number of brands that might be sustainable but don't actually meet their practical and fashion needs. So if you're looking for a red dress to go to a party it's no use me telling you about this fair trade organic teacher because that's not what you're looking for. Sometimes you will be you know you will not be able to find the most sustainable production practices in the product that you need because they just don't exist. And so this is a roundabout way of saying it's important that we are able to provide a rating for any brand regardless of whether the brand wants to be rated. So we believe along with most other people that brands should be transparent. So we do not accept any private information from brands because they're not accountable for it. They can't be held in breach of misleading contact laws. They can't be challenged by the competitors or their you know environmental groups stakeholders if they're not telling the full story. That's really really interesting. I mean working in the consumer protection field here in New Zealand I can see how what you are doing could potentially you know really piss some brands off. Do you come into conflict with brands? Do you have them questioning the methodology? Yeah. Yeah so two aspects that's one of course our methodology needs to be robust and we ensure that it is by consulting widely with academic experts and with civil society organizations. We do get approached by brands that are not happy with their rating. And obviously it's not great for a brand if it's rated low on good on you and potential customers become aware of that. It is quite common for brands to approach the impact on day eight of good on you when we hit about 10,000 users of our first app. One of the largest Australian brands rang us up and said oh but why were you at us so badly? And we said well that's based on the information that is publicly available about you and they said oh but we do these couple of things and we're thinking about doing these other things and this is a kind of typical of the conversations that happen. And so we say back to them well your customers have a right to know that you do those things so you should tell them and promises are easy to make. It's when you actually do something that accounts. So if we take a look at a few of the clothing brands that are popular here in New Zealand and across the ditch as well and compare some of their sustainability claims to your own rankings we might start with H&M because they've done quite a few eco claims that we'd like to dig in to with you if that's okay, Gordon. Yes, sure. At H&M we work hard to create a sustainable future. 65% of H&M's materials are now from recycled or more sustainable sources. Conscious materials inspire our designers to find new innovative ways to create fashionable clothes. All conscious garments are made from materials that have minimal impact on the environment. These power shoes created using cacti, banana-based fabric and non-woven pineapple textile. Leather-like material made from grapes? No I'm not making this up. What H&M are doing is really jolly good for our planet and for everyone, though perhaps you already know that. Did you already know that Gordon? Who was that last person? I don't know but it was totally good. Actually, marketing. That's like Doctor Who from the 60s. So I mean I'd like some grape shoes. Does that sound legit or like bullshit to you? I think there's three things to say about H&M. One is the good, one is the bad and one is about new materials. So the good is that for a fast fashion brand, H&M are doing a lot compared to their competitors. Compared to a sheen, a fashion nova, a boo who are misguided. They're doing pretty well and which is why we give them a square of five rating. On the other hand, 2.1, they still have a fast fashion business model where they work hard to persuade consumers to buy cheap clothes that don't necessarily last very long and that's bad. And the second thing is to be careful about anybody who has a conscious range within a bigger settlement. And so the problem here is that if you're doing something that applies to one or five or even 10% of your production and you market around that a lot, you're giving yourself an aura of sustainability which may not be fully deserved when you consider that the other 99, 95 or 90% of your range does not share those characteristics. And so now H&M, there are people out there who work up yesterday and they said, "Okay, we better have a conscious range" and we'll make a very small percentage of things. They actually have got to be further than that. And so that's good thing. But the basic point is that people are increasingly brands rather are increasingly adopting a conscious product or a conscious partnership with a more sustainable brand or a sustainability icon, a surfer or something. But is that the first step towards transforming their whole product range? Or is that a first step which is not going to be followed by a second step? This in fact the core of a marketing cap. It's just a cynical claim. Yeah. And it's always struck me as them caching in what they should be caching in at the end point of that transformation of their supply chain very early on because you're quite right. It does give an aura that the whole business at least transitioning to sustainability. And it feels a bit like they're cheating. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to start somewhere, don't you? You can't say we're going to do nothing because people are going to criticize us if we do a small amount. So I can see that the lemma of brand is in. So that's why I'm probably slightly less cynical than you. I would say that you have to start somewhere. What I don't like is when people start and have no intentional fail to follow through. So I think H&M notoriously made a commitment to paying and living weight through this supply chain a number of years ago when their target date passed and they weren't doing it, they just had to sit sheep as you say else. We couldn't, we couldn't manage to make that happen. That's why we put very little weight on setting targets. Yeah. Um, Hey, let's, why don't we put another brand under the microscope and play the next clip? Yeah. Making a positive impact is what drives us. This is our journey of doing good for the people, the planet and the things that matter. We believe in leaving our mark in a planet positive way. At every step, we're being more conscious, building it into the core of what we do and creating better choices for you. Some of our targets are 100% renewable energy by 2030. 100% of plastics and synthetic materials will be made from certified, recycled alternatives by 2025. 100% of our denim will be washed using water reduction processes by 2023. 100% of our products will be made with sustainable attributes by 2030. So Gordon, that was cotton on. What on earth are sustainable attributes? I was going to pick up on that. Again, here, here, you hear that and I go, so they're targets and particularly the 2030 one, it's a long way away and so I would put zero weight on that altogether. I would pay attention to what they've done, not what they say they're doing. I mean, is this highlighting a bigger problem? I don't have much of a problem with the word attributes. It's really the use of sustainable. I mean, that could mean anything. Could it? Yeah, you could pretty much drive a bus through that definition. The problem is also that having an attribute of sustainable is not really helping. What we're looking for is that the product as a whole is addressing all of the things that they need to address and they're addressing the most material things first. So, anybody, I'm not picking on cotton on, would need to be, if they wanted to make claims about how the good they are on climate, then I don't want to see them doing carbon offsets. I want to see them using renewable energy in their supply chain. I want them to be addressing the most material impacts. Just tinkering around the sides rather than addressing the main issue. It's even distracting your attention. Look over here, look over here, we're doing this great thing. But there's a monster standing behind me that I'm trying to stop you seeing. So, do you think those sorts of claims are just them green washing? Should we be more cynical about those sorts of claims? I can't say when the cotton on is actually doing stuff now, which is good, and they've also got a target in 10 years. But I am suspicious and cynical about people who put the emphasis on the target in a longer time frame. So, I'm interested to know what cotton on's rated on good on you. Our current rating for cotton on is what we call not good enough, which is two stars out of five and they've got that uniformly two out of five for people, planet and animals. We didn't see any evidence and then doing matching relation to greenhouse gas emissions at this time, nor head chemicals, nor minimising waste. One of the other brands that we wanted to talk about was K-Mart. We all know that cotton feels good, but it can do good as well. That's why 100% of the cotton for our own brand clothing, talz and bedding is now sustainably sourced. How good is that? Our support helps cotton farmers use water more efficiently. Care for soil health and biodiversity reduce the use of some harmful chemicals and respect workers' rights and wellbeing. So. Well, I mean, it's certainly a step in the right direction. It does have some positive impacts. It's also got some problems. It was shown to be, if I remember rightly, shown to be not doing as much as it could to avoid forced labour in Xinjiang province in China. And I think it's adopted some changes to address that issue, which is good. So, look, I mean, it's definitely a step in the right direction, but it's not like going halfway. It's like going 15-20% of the way to where you should be, I think. It's a claim, say it's sustainable cotton, is probably a bit of a push. They do also talk to me there about workers' rights. Again, I think there's a fair way to go. Yeah, it's not good, but there's a lot of worse brands, and that would apply to cotton on as well. All right. Should we push on to another brand? Our sustainability framework has been built around the pledge made with care. Made with care puts a voice to our responsibility to bring affordable fashion to our customers both ethically and sustainably. Our creative vision and daily decision-making are centered around our three pillars - people, planet, and product. We don't want to shy away from the complex challenges facing our industry. We believe it's our responsibility to minimise our environmental impact and support our people while ensuring quality, sustainable products are accessible and affordable to our customers. So that is glassines, climbs, and that's also in their mission statement. It sounds pretty good, like, you know, that they're putting people, planet, and product together. What do you think? I think it's interesting about all these brands going to the trouble of putting this information together is that they wouldn't have been doing that 10 and possibly even five years ago. And so they have all recognised that there is. It's money to be made off eco-claims. Wow, so fee-a-sturch-a-sturch. Actually, that's the fourth P. People plan at product and product. There is a large and growing number of shoppers who take sustainably into account when they're purchasing. People for the most part don't go out there to buy a sustainable piece of clothing. They go out there to buy clothing that meets their needs and they would like it to be sustainable. So it's not the number one driver in their purchase, but it certainly can affect their decision making. Yeah, I mean, our producer Tom just text me to say that when he read the glassines website, he thought they sounded so amazing. He wanted to go and buy stuff from them. So I think there is an element of slightly misleading in there when your claims are ahead of what you're actually doing, right? We actually get a reasonable number of our users who write to us saying, "Oh, I saw this great stuff that Brian X was doing and I'm so surprised that you only rate them two out of five." And so it's exactly the same reaction that Tom had. We talked a lot about the high-street brands, but I think that it's also worth mentioning that there are a lot of brands out there, smaller brands that are doing well and least a dozen of those are in New Zealand and there's a lot more in Australia than chips in New Zealand. So that's a really good point. I've just looked up shoe brand Allbirds, which is a key we company. So Allbirds would probably be the biggest New Zealand's original company that would hit the good rating, but you've got other sustainable fashion style with like thunder pants. Oh, I love thunder pants. They make it best underway. You actually have an option in New Zealand. There's more than one. Thanks to Gordon Renoff from Good On You for joining us on Consumeless. What do you take home? Do you feel better equipped to make sustainable decisions when you're out shopping for clothes? Yeah, well my main takeaway is that I've bought the right underwear, yay thunder pants, A+ to me, but also I think it actually is super helpful having a system where it rates different brands from across the globe on their different choices, including ones that are sort of the high street brands. Because I think that's kind of the assumption I came in here with was that sustainability was only for the rich. And I think that part of what we talked about with Gordon was actually brands that are from the high street are also taking steps towards doing it a bit better as well, although they've got a long way to go. Yeah, I hear we coming from and look, you're fine, you're wearing your thunder pants and that's good but what I've really taken out of this is I need to go out and weave my own underpants out of how to kick it and be satisfied with that discomfort because it's the only sustainable way to go. Or just by a really industrial pair of underpants that you never throw away. Actually that's true, yeah, I think my uncle Gary's decision to turn his underwear inside out and wear them twice to get twice the amount of use wasn't actually all that bad. I mean terrible for his partner but you know from a sustainability perspective, you know. Actually speaking of his partner, could you tell your uncle Gary to stop texting me because it's getting weird? I'll let him know. So our question at the start of the show was is it possible to buy fast fashion that is sustainable? Do you think we've answered that question? Yeah, like can you buy a sustainable fashion? Yes, can you buy fast fashion sustainably? No. Yeah. Can you buy fast fashion that is making steps towards sustainability? Kind of. That's it for this week. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back in your favourite podcast at two weeks time. Make sure you follow or subscribe to keep up to date. You've been listening to consume this with me Sophie and me John. Our producer was Tom Ress Smith and it was executive produced by Gemma Ressmason. For further information check out consumer.org.nz Fordslash podcast. Hello, I am Abby Darmann and I work in the campaigns team at Consumer New Zealand. I want to tell you about some of the exciting work we're doing here at Consumer New Zealand. Right now, literally, as we speak, we're working really hard to keep big businesses in our law makers in check. So we're currently engaged in taking on unfair retirement village contracts, misleading supermarket pricing and dodgy green claims. To keep up this good work, we need to raise $50,000 before the 24th of September. So please, if you can, help us to help others by heading to consumer.org.nz Fordslash donate. Thanks so much.