Stand.Earth Protests Lululemon For Dirty Sneakers As It Escalates Fight For Clean Fashion

Protestors descended on Lululemon’s Vancouver Kitsilano store this past Saturday to steal some of the thunder away from the company’s launch of its first footwear collection.

Claiming that Lululemon’s shoes are “full of coal,” the small group of activists exercised in front of the store and packed one of Lululemon’s new Blissfeel women’s running shoes with fake coal to make the point.

The protest was organized by Stand.earth, the environmental activist non-profit formerly known as ForestEthics, and it was spearheaded by Erdene Batzorig, Stand.earth’s digital campaigner for its Fossil Free Fashion initiative.

Taking aim at Lululemon’s use of coal-powered factories in China to produce the new line of women’s shoes, Batzorig said in a statement:

“Lululemon’s new line of women’s running shoes might be dubbed the ‘Blissfeel’ for how they feel on your feet, but the coal-powered manufacturing of these shoes is anything but blissful for people and the climate. This is especially the case for women, who often bear the brunt of Lululemon’s climate and air pollution — especially in countries like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh — where its products are made.”

This isn’t the first time that Lululemon has come under pressure for contributing to climate change. Last year it took the company to task when it became the official Team Canada Olympics clothing supplier for the 2022 Beijing Games and the next three Olympic games.

Lululemon will be releasing its fiscal 2021 results this week, but through third quarter, its revenues increased by more than 50% over previous year, reaching $4.2 billion and it provided guidance year-end revenues will reach between $6.25 billion to $6.29 billion.

Perhaps because of its fast growth and sharing headquarters in Vancouver, Lululemon has become Stand.earth’s most recent cause cé·lè·bre.

Back in 2005, Victoria’s Secret came under fire when the group, then named ForestEthics, mounted a grassroots campaign against the negative environmental impacts of the catalog industry. The group claimed victory at the end of 2006 when Victoria’s Secret agreed to greatly increase its use of recycled paper.

Dirty fashion

With the fashion industry again in its sights, Stand.earth has plenty of targets besides Lululemon. In advance of the United Nations’ COP26 climate change conference last year, it released a report identifying nine fashion retailers with revenues over $4 billion that are failing to live up to their commitments to reduce fossil fuels in the supply chain.

In addition to Lululemon, it called out American Eagle Outfitters, Fast Retailing (Uniqlo), Gap, H&M, Inditex (Zara), Kering (Gucci), Levi’s and Nike as big polluters.

Finding that eight of the nine companies studied increased emissions in 2019, after all had committed to reducing them under the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change, Stand.earth projected that all will fail to reach decarbonization goals by 2030.

“Fashion companies have for too long focused on cutting energy use in their own stores, implementing greenwashing practices like recycling polyester from single-use plastics, and making misleading ‘net zero’ promises,” said Muhannad Malas, Stand.earth’s senior climate campaigner.

“But the consistent increase in climate emissions by these brands makes clear that these solutions are far from enough to tackle the pollution they generate,” he added.

Pass/Fail

Overall, Stand.earth has identified 19 fashion brands out of 47 studied that get a failing grade in its Fossil Free Fashion scorecard, including Under Armour, Prada, Georgio Armani, LVMH, Everlane and Hugo Boss.

Lululemon isn’t even among them, squeaking past with a D- grade, along with Burberry, Chanel, Gant and Guess. Mammut, the Swiss premium outdoor fashion company scored the highest, but only a B- grade, and Nike is next with a C+.

Threatening “significant reputational and investor risk” for fashion brands that don’t live up to their commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in line with the Paris Accord, Stand.earth challenges all 47 fashion brands to deploy renewable energy in their supply chain, provide transparency in supply chain emissions, reduce the use of fossil-fuel fabrics and phase out coal-fired boilers in their plants.

Particularly pointed criticism comes at brands for statements around carbon neutral and climate positive goals that are not backed up by “strong emissions reduction or renewables targets.”

The report states, “In many cases, these increasingly popular buzzwords provide a false impression about companies’ decarbonization efforts,” as it calls out Gap and Ralph Lauren for greenwashing with “carbon credits” and not making needed change.

“For climate neutrality or positivity goals to be meaningful, brands must also commit to halving their emissions throughout the value chain and move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy to power manufacturing,” the report states.

Achievable goals or lofty ambitions

Lululemon did not respond to request for comment before posting, but its official statements indicate it is on the right side of the environmental movement.

Lululemon is a member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition and requires its suppliers to use the HIGG INDEX 2.0 to measure environmental impacts related to energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, wastewater/effluent, air emissions, waste, and chemicals management.

And it signed the UN’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action which called for the industry to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 on the road to net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

But given the current state of the global economy and supply chain thrown into turmoil by the pandemic and compounded by the danger of escalating military action due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one wonders if any fashion brand can achieve the ambitious environmental goals the industry has established for 2030.

Signing petitions and pledges are one thing, but reaching those goals is another. We can hope, but then hope isn’t a strategy.