In 2011, Greenpeace launched their revolutionary campaign “Detox My Fashion”, which gained commitments from 76 fashion retailers and suppliers to detoxify their products. The companies plan to completely detox their merchandise by the year 2020, which accounts for 15% of all textile products in the world. This year, Greenpeace’s catwalk has reevaluated 16 fashion stores and athletic wear companies who are on track to completing their 2020 goal.
Greenpeace has overlooked at companies who aren’t following through with the “Detox My Fashion” criteria. Companies have to agree to not only create active plans to ensure their Detox 2020 goal, to eliminate all dangerous substances, and transparency of the materials. The criteria is specific in substituting polyfluorinated chemicals and other hazardous chemicals in the manufacturing process and products altogether. These companies and their suppliers must also provide Greenpeace the amount of pollution they dispose toward the environment.
Companies with the highest progress are: H&M, Inditex (Zara, Pull &Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Bershka) and lastly Benetton. The Companies with the lowest scores are: Nike, Esprit, Li-Ning, and Limited Brands (a part of Victoria Secret and LaSenza). Kirsten Brodde, Head of “Detox My Fashion” Greenpeace campaign in Germany, claims that “16 out of 19 brands are stumbling over their transparency issues” and to remove all their toxic chemicals from their products. They only have a little bit more than three years to accomplish their 2020 goals, which means they need to hurry.
While companies like Zara, H&M, and Benetton have proved that it is possible for the fashion industry, big or small companies, to clean up their toxic merchandise, but Nike was the only company to fail on all three detox categories. The only thing Nike has done is eliminated 90% of all its C8 polyfluorinated chemicals but does not have plans to eliminate all its toxic chemicals. Greenpeace believes that the company doesn’t have any true plans to completely eliminate all toxins from their products and that they need to take their promise to detoxify seriously.
The majority of companies that pledged to join the 2016 campaign are in the “Evolution Mode”, meaning that they are achieving two of the three criteria’s. Some of the companies in this evolution phase is: Armani, GAP, Diesel, Hermes, Bestseller, Versace, LVMH Group/Christian Dior Couture, etc. Greenpeace also plans to address the issue of water management and also released another campaign to eliminate transparency in the fashion industry. Companies Transparency is not just the ability for companies to list their suppliers, but this information tells Greenpeace if companies are abiding by labor laws and not involved in other dangerous activities.
