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After years of greenwashing, fashion is moving in the opposite direction — but the industry is divided on whether it’s a welcome development, or one that will hinder progress as companies shy away from sharing their learnings.
The term greenhushing — which describes when companies choose to stay silent about their sustainability efforts to avoid criticism or backlash — was first coined by brand strategist Jerry Stifelman and writer Sami Grover in a 2008 blog post for sustainability site Treehugger.com. Now, as international policymakers and consumer authorities crack down on greenwashing, more brands are rolling back their public communications about sustainability.
The United Nations has published new guidance for sustainable fashion communication, calling on the media, image makers and marketers to rally behind climate targets.
For some, greenhushing is a natural evolution from greenwashing, and a necessary step towards progress. “A year ago, the industry was awash with green claims,” says George Harding-Rolls, campaign manager at non-profit Changing Markets Foundation. “Now, we’re seeing so-called ‘conscious collections’ downscaled, sustainability tags removed and fewer misleading sustainability claims made.”
Others are more concerned. At the Global Fashion Summit in June, Global Fashion Agenda CEO Federica Marchionni surprised industry attendees with a warning about the potential perils of greenhushing. “The UN Sustainable Development Goals emphasise the need for companies to be transparent in their sustainability initiatives, as they play a vital role in influencing market changes,” she said. “But, there has been an emergence of greenhushing, because businesses fear being called out for greenwashing, or named and shamed if they fall short. Many companies may be implementing legitimate targets and action, but not disclosing them publicly, to avoid scrutiny.”
Brands are facing increasing uncertainty, Marchionni continued, navigating macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence alongside a heightened potential for reputational risk, as consumers become more vocal and regulators clamp down on wrongdoing. Greenhushing has the potential to thwart progress. “We need to support those making changes, to prevent the escalation of greenhushing, and emphasise the value of sustainability by highlighting those that are doing good,” she added.
Sustainability consultancy South Pole has published an annual report assessing companies’ progress towards net-zero since 2020. The 2022 edition found that 75 per cent of the 1,200 large companies surveyed had increased their budgets to meet net-zero targets in the past 12 months, and were expanding their sustainability teams. However, 25 per cent had set science-based emission reduction targets yet decided not to publicise them. Generally, consumer goods companies — including fashion brands — were more likely to be found greenhushing than the global average.
“Compared to many other industries, fashion brands have a gargantuan task in shifting highly complex value chains, which often lack traceability, towards more sustainable, circular ways of operating,” explains South Pole’s deputy director for agricultural value chains Lea Fränkl. “Despite best efforts, a likely driver for fashion brands who are greenhushing is the overwhelming challenge in addressing the emissions within their supply chains that they do not have control of, and where they struggle to have a granular overview of the entire chain.”
What does greenhushing mean for progress?
Greenhushing and greenwashing are not the only terms used to describe companies’ approaches to green claims. Earlier this year, non-profit financial think tank Planet Tracker published The Greenwashing Hydra, reporting that greenwashing is becoming more sophisticated, and categorises it into six “shades of green”. Under the greenwashing umbrella, it outlined greencrowding, greenlighting, greenshifting, greenlabelling, greenrinsing, and greenhushing. Another term making its way into the mainstream is greenwishing, coined by investor and sustainability expert Duncan Austin in 2019 to name “the earnest hope that well-intended efforts to make the world more sustainable are much closer to achieving the necessary change than they really are”. Solitaire Townsend, chief solutionist and co-founder and change agency Futerra, is keen to add one more: greensplaining, which she defines as companies bombarding people with climate science rather than showing and enabling action.
Greenwashing and greenhushing are often seen as opposites: the former sees brands exaggerating their green credentials, while the latter sees them downplaying claims. However, a common issue underpins both, says climate activist and storyteller Aditi Mayer. “Many brands don’t understand how to engage in education and transparency. That means going beyond using sustainability to push products, and genuinely supporting a more ubiquitous understanding of the issues of our time, and how fashion is implicated.”
The emergence of greenhushing could be interpreted as the private sector rescinding its claim to setting the sustainability agenda, says Harding-Rolls, of Changing Markets Foundation. “Greenwashing has meant that consumers and policymakers have been looking to the private sector for actions and solutions, but greenhushing helps us to see that the voluntary, free-market approach to sustainability alone was not able to deliver on its promises. In the era of greenhushing, it’s time to reassess where solutions need to come from, which I believe is more legislative action.”
Brands engaging in greenhushing could simply be waiting for regulators to issue clearer guidance on greenwashing. The US Federal Trade Commission is debating proposed updates to its Green Guides for the Use of Environmental Claims, and the EU Green Claims Directive is expected to come into play before the current European Commission’s mandate ends in October 2024. For the latter, implementation will be down to local authorities, meaning there is still some room for interpretation, and a lack of clarity over exact penalties.
Outside of policy, other guidance is emerging. The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Fashion Charter for Climate Change (UNFCCC) in June seeks to engage fashion communicators in sustainability, and lead brands towards more robust green claims and narratives.
With regulation incoming, it’s only a matter of time before greenhushing gives way, Harding-Rolls continues. “Brands can’t just bury their heads in the sand and greenhush forever. These disclosures will soon be regulatory requirements.”
Whether or not regulation curbs greenwashing and greenhushing depends on the severity of penalties for non-compliance, says John Willis, director of research at Planet Tracker. “Brands will make a commercial assessment based on reputational risks and the scale of financial penalties. If it’s a slap on the wrist, they might continue as before. If it’s a percentage of revenue, they might take more notice. With reputational risk, you never know when that might hit — plenty of companies break the rules all the time but not all of them get called out, and that can be hard to predict.”
For companies that are genuinely leading sustainability progress, there is a risk that greenhushing could stop them from accessing conscious consumers or even capital, says Willis. “If you don’t make green claims when they are justified, people won’t recognise the work you’re doing.”
Greenhushing doesn’t just limit revenues for more sustainable brands, it also hinders industry-wide progress, adds Nadia Kähkönen, one of the lead authors on South Pole’s report. “We’re running out of time — the science is clear on this,” she says. “We can’t afford to greenhush because we can’t afford to not learn from each other’s efforts. Peer pressure and competition is a very powerful driver of progress. If leaders don’t lead, how can we expect beginners to begin?”
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