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.

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