Shades of Green

The fashion industry faces significant challenges, including human rights and environmental concerns, prompting a shift toward sustainability. This shift reflects heightened awareness among stakeholders. However, alongside these positive developments, a trend has emerged: greenwashing. Defined as misleading consumers about a company’s environmental practices, greenwashing complicates the industry’s efforts to adopt sustainable practices and can perpetuate harmful behaviors. Despite extensive research highlighting the negative impacts of greenwashing, it continues to rise, indicating a gap in understanding the processes behind it. Various factors contribute to greenwashing within fashion businesses, yet these dynamics remain poorly understood. While market forces promoting greenwashing are recognized, the specific activities and organizational structures driving these decisions need further exploration. This research investigates the inner workings of fashion organizations, aiming to identify the structures and processes that lead to greenwashing. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with industry experts, it was found that greenwashing often occurs unintentionally due to misaligned goals, lack of knowledge sharing, greenhushing, and a need for shared definitions of sustainability claims. The findings underscore the need to adjust business structures and processes to mitigate greenwashing practices in the fashion industry and emphasize the importance of developing universal definitions and standards to enhance sustainability efforts.