The Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a review of environmental claims in the fashion retail sector, following the publication in September 2021 of its guidance on making environmental claims on goods and services.

UK consumers spend an estimated £54 billion annually on clothing and footwear and this is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. According to some estimates, fashion is responsible for between 2 and 8% of global carbon emissions.

Announcing the review, the CMA said that more and more people are trying to choose more environmentally sustainable options when buying clothes, while more and more fashion businesses are making environmental claims.

This includes claims that individual items of clothing are sustainable or better for the environment, claims about use of recycled materials in new clothing and entire ranges of clothing within stores being branded as ‘sustainable’.

The CMA’s review will examine environmental claims across the fashion retail sector in the UK to determine whether or not businesses are complying with consumer protection law. The competition regulator commented:

“Where we identify businesses which we think are ‘greenwashing’ we will take appropriate action”

The CMA plans to look at other sectors in due course. However, where there is evidence of breaches of consumer law outside of the fashion retail sector, the CMA said it may choose to take appropriate action before the review of fashion retail has completed.

MPs on Environmental Audit Committee examine environmental and social impact of fashion industry 

In October 2021 the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee launched a follow-up inquiry into its own 2018 inquiry Fixing fashion: clothing consumption and sustainability due to ongoing environmental concerns. 

MPs who sit on the Committee warned that the fashion industry is depleting the world’s water resources, polluting rivers and other surface waters with chemicals and adding to ocean microplastic pollution.

Commenting on fashion’s environmental price tag, the report said:

“We are unwittingly wearing the fresh water supply of central Asia and destroying fragile ecosystems.”

The Government rejected most of the Committee’s recommendations in June 2019, which ranged from a producer responsibility charge to pay for better clothing collection and recycling to requiring due diligence checks across fashion supply chains to root out forced or child labour.

In September 2020 a report by global environmental analysts CDP warned that the global fashion and textiles sector is “largely blind” to risks of water pollution.