How to verify the real sustainability of a brand.

In Blog don't Lie we have always been careful to propose brands that choose attention and passion for sustainability and environmental impact.

The relentless greenwashing practices are making it increasingly difficult for a less fussy consumer to understand the actual sustainability of a brand.
Very often, in fact, behind so much dust in the eyes, there is very little that is sustainable and it is called greenwashing.

Let us remember, for example, the recent social media campaign launched by the international Remake movement where it is highlighted that if a product is made with organic cotton, this does not automatically mean that the garment is ethical.

Uniqlo and Muji have created garments with organic cotton, defining them as sustainable garments, when cotton was produced in the fields in China where the Uighur ethnic minority is exploited.

To avoid making mistakes, we would like to point out two very interesting tools that can help the consumer understand the true sustainability of a brand. The Fashion Checker project launched by the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), a world leader in the fight against the exploitation of workers in textile factories and the Good on you app.
Fashion Checker is an online application that shows how much brands actually pay their workers who make their clothes.
CCC explains to us that the main reason human rights violations in the apparel supply chains have managed to perpetrate over the years is the complete lack of transparency.

As CCC points out, no major clothing brand can prove that workers who produce their garments in Asia, Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe are paid enough to escape poverty.

“Workers deserve better. Consumers deserve better. It's time to use the available data to highlight the problem and achieve concrete, meaningful and measurable wage increases."

Fashion Checker works in a very simple way, just enter the name of the brand of interest and wait for the response. A clear and understandable report appears immediately. The brand is rated and explained why.

Good on You is the app that accompanies the consumer towards a sustainable and responsible purchase. its motto is "wear the change you want to see" and it offers a rating of over 2,000 brands in terms of social and environmental impact: a very useful tool for verifying the true sustainability of brands.
In fact, brands are evaluated considering three fundamental aspects: the environment, people and animals.

Environmental impact of production
For each brand, the environmental impact of production is considered: the use of raw materials, the management of waste and the disposal of excess production, policies to reduce energy consumption, CO2 emissions, consumption and the impact on water resources and pollution due to the use of chemicals.

Impact on People
The evaluation continues considering the impact on the people involved along the entire supply chain.

Specifically, as for Fashion Checker, policies regarding child labour, forced labour, compliance with minimum survival wages, freedom of association and collective bargaining, occupational safety and the publication of complete lists of suppliers and subcontractors.

Impact on Animals
The score also takes into consideration practices aimed at the protection and welfare of animals by examining the use of furs and skins, of exotic and non-exotic animals, of goose down for padding and evaluating the adoption of invasive and cruel to animals such as “mulesing“.

Good on You declares that the data supporting the rating system is derived from:

Reporting of the brand and/or group to which it belongs
Third party reports and indexes
Certifications, recognitions and other standards-based systems
The extremely intuitive app allows you to search by specific brand or by product category.

The evaluations, from 1 (We Avoid) to 5 (Great), derive from an average of the brand scores for each key area (environment, people, animals) of which a detailed explanation is provided directly in the app.

Some examples?

Missguided is classified as “We avoid”
Zara as “Not good enough”
Nike as "It's a start"
Patagonia as “Good”
People Tree as “Great”

These are just two of the tools that can support us in our sustainable choices and help create an increasingly sustainable future in fashion.

Both in-store and online, we are committed to making the most careful and accurate 'environmental' selection.