COS

How sustainable is COS?

This screening has been done by Fairify on March 22^nd 2020

COS is a popu­lar, mini­ma­lis­tic fast fashion brand foun­ded in Lon­don by H&M Group, the famous Swe­dish fast fashion clothing com­pany. The mother com­pany publishes a sin­gle sus­tai­na­bi­lity report for all nine of its brands.

H&M is imple­men­ting prac­ti­ses to impro­ve the sus­tai­na­bi­lity of its com­pany. It’s increa­sing was­te­wa­ter and energy effi­ciency, a big per­cen­ta­ge of energy used in sto­res is rene­wa­ble, pac­ka­ging is impro­ving, and the group has com­mit­ted to cli­ma­te tar­gets. Sus­tai­na­ble cot­ton is increa­singly used and H&M has laun­ched a sepa­ra­te brand to give unsold pro­ducts a new life.

That being said, H&M is one of the most pollu­ting fashion com­pa­nies in the world. With over 5,000 sto­res over the enti­re world and a reve­nue of over 25 billion USD, the com­pany gene­ra­ted 17,662,000 metric tons of CO2 emis­sions in 2019 alo­ne. Cli­ma­te action is neces­sary, and now inclu­des a long term tar­get to be cli­ma­te posi­ti­ve by 2040, but this is not scien­ce based.

Whi­le mea­su­res are being taken to achie­ve a sma­ller car­bon foot­print in H&M’s ope­ra­tions, it’s the fun­da­ment of its busi­ness model, fast fashion, that can never be sus­tai­na­ble. The company’s clothing is pro­du­ced as a dis­po­sa­ble pro­duct, which not only results in huge land­fills of clothing and envi­ron­men­tal harm, but also cau­ses bad wor­king con­di­tions for wor­kers in its supply chain.

Becau­se the collec­tions and sty­les chan­ge so fre­quently, H&M clothing needs to be pro­du­ced very rapidly for very low pri­ces. This crea­tes harm­ful wor­king con­di­tions in coun­tries whe­re peo­ple are for­ced to work for less than a living wage, main­tai­ning the cycle of poverty. Whi­le this is defi­ni­tely a broa­der pro­blem, in H&M’s case the­re is no third-party audi­ting firm accre­di­ted to moni­tor its fac­to­ries. This means that the repor­ting about wor­ker con­di­tions and the imple­men­ta­tion of their Code of Con­duct is con­duc­ted by H&M itself.

This lack of trans­pa­rency also trans­la­tes into other ele­ments of the busi­ness. The com­pany doesn’t pro­vi­de suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion about mate­rial ori­gins and ani­mal wel­fa­re.

All in all, H&M is an enor­mous com­pany. Although it’s defi­ni­tely step­ping up its game and chan­ging for the bet­ter, it also stays true to fast fashion trends for almost all of its brands. This is simply not sus­tai­na­ble and poses risks for the envi­ron­ment, peo­ple and animals.