In a recent, viral TikTok post, fashion content creator Andrea Cheong gives her honest assessment of fast fashion brand H&M's "Conscious Choice" clothing line. The verdict? Blatant greenwashing.
@andreacheong_ The worst bc it looks like it's functional and it's NOT. #hmfashion #handm #mindfulmondaymethod #fashioneducation #howtoshopsustainably #wardrobeessential #wardrobeclassics #capsulewardrobe ♬ original sound - Andrea
"I cannot wait for the day that they remove all of these silly 'conscious' tags because these point to absolutely nothing," Cheong tells her viewers. "It's only 16% wool. It's majority polyester. This doesn't keep you warm, and it's the perfect example of something that really didn't need to be made."
H&M tries to appear to be on the side of the environmentally conscious consumer with this clothing line. On its website, the company advertises its Conscious Choice products as being "created with a little extra consideration for the planet," with the key phrase being "a little."
"Probably just made so that they could sell more junk so that they could reach their sales projections," Cheong speculates.
The products are still, as Cheong points out, made mainly out of distinctly non-environmentally friendly polyester.
Polyester is a synthetic fabric made out of fossil fuels and beloved by fast fashion brands because it is cheap to produce and incredibly durable. However, it is not easily recyclable. There are tens of billions of pounds of textiles sitting in American landfills right now.
Not only that, but synthetic materials like polyester shed microfibers every time they are washed and dried. Those microfibers are too small to be caught in water purification filters, and they travel from wastewater into the ocean, where they harm marine life and ocean ecosystems.
"We see here again," Cheong says, pointing to another tag that includes the word "polyester" twice, "it's recycled polyester when it did not need to be. I feel like pieces like this are totally taking advantage of the consumer. Misleading with the [environmentally conscious] tags."
The commenters on her post agreed. "Seriously appreciate the shopper education," one user writes. "You are doing more for the environment than H&M."
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