Are Europe's fashion brands as green as they say?

Twenty years ago, sustainability was barely a footnote in the public communications of most fashion companies. With increased attention on climate change, pollution and labour practices, things have changed. Now, companies boast of their efforts to source more sustainable cotton and reduce the amount of water used and greenhouse gases emitted in producing their fashion lines.

DW and the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) evaluated 468 sustainability commitments from more than 200 reports by 17 of the biggest European fashion companies. The results show that some companies have taken sufficient action to meet their stated commitments, while others are far from meeting theirs. More work is needed to make sustainable fashion the norm.

Price of fashion: Pollution, deforestation, fossil fuels

The fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for 2% to 7% of global emissions, according to studies collated by the World Resources Institute in 2021. These rough estimates are still the best available, since emissions data for all the complex parts of today's fashion supply chains is, at best, incomplete. For comparison, emissions from aviation account for about 2.5% of the global total.

Most of the fashion industry's emissions come from the production of clothes: Growing or extracting the materials needed to make fibres, spinning them into yarn, creating and dyeing fabrics all use a lot of energy. Then there are the sustainability issues posed by the vast amounts of water and the harsh chemicals used. A 2017 study estimated that synthetic textile fibres make up 35% of all microplastics in the world's oceans.

In recent years, awareness of these issues has grown. "Especially in the past decade, there have been reports exposing environmental and human rights abuses in the value chains of fashion brands," said Urska Trunk, senior campaign manager at the Brussels-based Changing Markets Foundation, which advocates for more comprehensive sustainability legislation.

"With the collapse of Rana Plaza, for instance, came a lot of investigations about how clothes are produced, about the chemicals, the toxicity, the deforestation and so forth," Trunk said, referring to the 2013 disaster that killed more than 1,100 people working in a structurally unsound garment factory for brands such as Zara, Primark and Benetton in Bangladesh. "As this evidence was piling up, consumers started demanding to know whether their clothes are made in a responsible way, both socially and environmentally."

Some companies, including H&M and the German brands Adidas and Puma, began sustainability reporting in the early 2000s, while others did not start until 2015 or later. Online retailer Zalando, founded in 2008, published its first sustainability strategy only in 2015, and some luxury brands began even later.

Together with partner newsrooms, DW has contacted these brands regarding their sustainability commitments. As of publication, no information had been provided.

Fashion companies achieve about half of self-imposed sustainability goals

When it comes to following up on commitments, companies perform very differently. Across all reports analysed, DW and the EDJNet identified 468 commitments, about half of which have target dates through the end of 2025 or later. These included targets on emissions reductions, more sustainable materials, energy usage and waste management.

Overall, companies met about half of the total stated commitments with target dates that have expired. One in three commitments failed, with the rest unclear.

Zalando failed its commitments most often among the companies included in our analysis, with 10 of its 17 reviewed targets not met. According to the company's own reports, it fell short, for instance, of the 2019 self-imposed target to "generate 25% of our Gross Merchandise Volume with more sustainable products by 2023," achieving only 10.5%. When questioned by DW about Zalando's failure to meet the targets, the company said it was committed to transparency in its "sustainability journey," including where it has "fallen short" and what it has learned.

A company spokesperson said: "We admittedly have not met some of our sustainability targets," specifically that of generating 25% of GMV with sustainable products. The company spokesperson added that this is because the company had adopted "more rigid sustainability product standards." Based on insights gained from previous experience, the company said it had launched an updated sustainability approach in March 2024, with revised science-based targets to replace its earlier climate targets.

Other companies leave pledges more unclear: The Spanish brand Mango, UK-based Primark and Italian OVS, for instance, leave a large share of their targets unclear, dropping or changing parameters. Mango, for instance, did not meet its 2012 target to "eliminate hazardous substances throughout the supply chain" by 2020. Upon request, Mango did not provide clarification on this target.

OVS confirmed on request that the company had failed its 2017 target to "produce 3 million garments using fibres from fabrics collected from consumers" by 2020, but did not mention this in public reporting.

The eight luxury brands included in the analysis account for only about a third of the 235 total stated targets with deadlines that have passed. H&M led the brands, with 49 stated commitments; Adidas was second, with 28.

Luxury brands remain silent on sustainability

Before publication, all analysed companies were contacted to discuss their sustainability strategies and their commitments. Seven of the brands contacted did not respond at all, including most of the luxury brands. An umbrella organisation to which several of the luxury brands belong did not respond to DW's request for comment by the set publication deadline.

"Luxury companies, traditionally, are very quiet," said Rachel Kitchin, senior climate campaigner for US-based advocacy organisation Stand.earth, which publishes the Fossil-Free Fashion Scorecard every two years to rate companies' commitments and actions toward decarbonising fashion supply chains.

Because luxury companies do not have the same price constraints that might prevent mass-market retailers from investing heavily in overhauling supply chains, Kitchin said, high-end brands should arguably be sustainable by default. "But, if they're doing anything, they're not telling anyone," she said. "We suspect that that's because they share a lot of suppliers with non-luxury brands, and they do not want people to know that."

Responsible reporting on fashion's climate pledges

Among the 468 claims included in DW's analysis, half are phrased quite specifically, including clear definitions of what is to be achieved and by when – e.g., "Ensure that at least half of all plastic packaging is made from 100% recycled material by 2030."

Primark and Hermès have the highest share of vague or potentially ambiguous pledges. In 2021, for instance, Hermès promised to "recycle 100% of the Group's scraps from French textile manufacturers by 2025." While the target includes a deadline and some concrete language, it may be hard for consumers to understand what Hermès means by "scraps" and how the "recycling" of such scraps might be defined and evaluated.

Hermès promised in 2024 to "conduct at least two studies per year with academic partners on biodiversity issues until the end of 2026," leaving much room for interpretation as to whom the company considers "academic partners" and what constitutes a "biodiversity issue."

Stand.earth has found such ambiguous promises to be common, Kitchin said: "Most companies have taken that first step of setting a target but really stopped there. If there is a target, but no information on how they will meet that target, then we consider that to be a flag for greenwashing."

Commitments to sustainable cotton

The sheer variety of pledges made and definitions used makes it difficult to compare companies directly. One issue that most companies have had to address is sustainable cotton. Cotton is a thirsty crop, and, in addition to the large amount of water used, conventional farming has a long track record of heavy pesticide and fertiliser use and exploitative labour practices.

H&M, whose range uses cotton more than any other material, took its first tentative steps toward using "organic cotton" over two decades ago. The company's initial commitment was 20 metric tons across its whole range by 2005. In 2010, it had already surpassed its target of 15,000 tons by 2013. By 2020, H&M had reached its goal of phasing out conventional cotton entirely.

Adidas and H&M were among the first major European fashion companies to successfully commit to sourcing all their cotton from more sustainable sources and to join programmes aimed at developing standards for what "more sustainable" means in practice, such as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

Though advocates argue that certifications such as the BCI's should be more stringent, many brands fail to meet even this minimal standard. Online fashion retailer Zalando, for instance, has not yet set a target for 100% sustainable cotton, and several luxury brands have not yet committed to a 100% target, according to the data available at the time of publication.

Fashion can't shake its fossil fuel reliance

Few brands have committed to phasing out their primary production material: plastics. Synthetic fibres accounted for 69% of global fibre production across all applications in 2024. Though many companies promise to use "more sustainable materials," these can include questionable fabrics such as recycled polyester.

"Almost all recycled polyester today is made from plastic bottles and not old clothes," Trunk said. "That's not a sustainable solution, because we already have a system in place where bottles can be continuously recycled back to bottles. But, once you make a shirt or a skirt out of the bottle, it can never be recycled again."

In the absence of market-ready technology that makes it possible to recycle old clothes into new clothes, she said, these kinds of promises are little more than a fig leaf for companies to cover up their reliance on materials made from fossil fuels.

Can fashion companies self-regulate for sustainability?

A major issue, Trunk said, is the lack of oversight in the past. "It's been a kind of Wild West," Trunk said. "Brands could say what they want to say. They didn't have to back it up by evidence."

With increased consumer awareness and technological progress, various organisations have begun working directly with companies to implement sustainability standards and oversee their voluntary commitments.

"Voluntary business action is absolutely essential," said Jules Lennon, strategy lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. "But our work has shown that it only gets you so far. It needs to be bolstered by ambitious binding policy measures."

EU debates sustainability-reporting requirements

The European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which initially took effect in 2024, requires companies above a certain size to disclose information about their resource use, climate impacts and sustainability actions in a standardised format.

Though Adidas, LVMH, Hermès and other companies have already prepared their 2024 reports in accordance with the directive, the European Commission decided in early 2025 to postpone implementation of the CSRD and change its scope to exempt many smaller companies from the requirements.

The Green Claims Directive, another piece of EU legislation aimed at tackling greenwashing, currently hangs in the balance after pushback from the conservative European People's Party.

Though legislation may still be delayed or amended, discussions have shifted from whether the fashion industry should be regulated at all to how it should be done. Changing Markets' Urska Trunk said the progress was clear.

"Brands have quietly dropped their most misleading claims," she said. "Consumers are more aware and are asking for accurate information – and companies are aware that they might face consequences if they don't back up their claims with evidence."

Kira Schacht is a Data journalist at DW using data analysis and visualisation to cover topics from environment to social equality or culture.

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on DW, and is published by special syndication arrangement.