Greenwashing

The Nordic Council has unanimously adopted a recommendation urging governments to combat greenwashing and improve consumer information in the fashion industry. Nordic consumers buy more clothing per capita than the global average, with less than one per cent of discarded garments recycled circularly. The Nordic Swan Ecolabel is identified as a credible certification tool with strong consumer trust across the region.

When a fashion retailer surveys its own customers about circularity and finds the results flattering, the question is whether the method was built to inquire or to reassure. Shein's 2025 Global Circularity Study, spanning 21 markets and 15,461 voluntary respondents, arrives at conclusions so convenient they warrant examination on structural, not just factual, grounds.

Recycled cotton has become one of fashion's most prominent sustainability credentials—and one of its least verifiable. No independent method has existed to confirm how much mechanically recycled cotton a garment actually contains, or whether it derives from post-consumer waste. Researchers are now proposing a laboratory-based toolbox that could, for the first time, provide that confirmation from the fibres themselves.

Across Europe, fashion’s sustainability narratives are under growing scrutiny. Amid rising consumer confusion and corporate opacity, one Danish researcher and consultant has been pushing national institutions to act. At the forefront is Tanja Gotthardsen, who has taken on major platforms such as Zalando and Copenhagen Fashion Week, pressing for systemic accountability in how sustainability is defined, communicated, and enforced.

The controversy surrounding Copenhagen Fashion Week’s greenwashing complaint marked a defining moment for global fashion. Beyond Denmark’s borders, it exposed deep fissures between image and integrity in sustainability narratives. As Europe tightens laws and activists demand accountability, the episode signalled that credibility—not creativity—will define the industry’s next chapter in sustainability storytelling.

For years, Copenhagen Fashion Week was lauded as a model of ethical transformation, blending Scandinavian aesthetics with moral purpose. But in 2025, the same event found itself in the dock, accused of greenwashing and exaggerating its eco-claims. The controversy exposed deep cracks in how fashion markets virtue, regulation, and credibility on the global stage.

Being “animal-free” isn’t the final nail in the coffin for the leather industry. It is a façade for brands to avoid misinformed brand erosion while profiting from cheaper materials across their supply chain. The industry must rewrite, reteach, and remarket actual facts as the leather narrative has been dramatically swayed by fake leather and oil companies.

UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has promised a crackdown on greenwashing by fashion brands and even warned 17 of them to review their green claims. In doing so, it will help to make sure shoppers looking to buy ‘green’ can trust the claims they see.

The recent launches of so-called anti-elastane product lines by big brands do not mean much while they continue to gorge on fossil fuel derivatives. None of the new ranges replace existing product lines. texfash.com probes.

Greenwashing cannot just be wished away and when audits and certifications cause fatigue or come under a cloud, an industry has cause to worry. How can the TIC Council that promotes best practices in safety, quality, health, ethics and sustainability across industries check all of this? texfash.com talks to Director-General Hanane Taidi to understand the role the Council is expected to play as Europe chalks up a slew of legislations to help battle the global climate crises.