Climate rebels from Extinction Rebellion campaigned on Sunday at the branch of clothing giant H&M on the Rokin in Amsterdam. The building was plastered with green paint and inside, stripped-down activists glued themselves to the shop windows. The protest was against greenwashing, the image campaigns that large companies are running to pretend they are committed to fighting the climate disaster.
In a statement, the climate action group states:
H&M claims to be committed to sustainable Fashion with the Conscious Collection. However, Conscious products are only a very small part of H & M’s offering and their sustainability is under discussion. (…) While H&M profiles itself as a sustainable brand with the Conscious Collection, the company simultaneously produces more ‘fast fashion’ every 24 hours than it could recycle in twelve years. The Conscious Collection is a drop in an ocean. The sustainability of the products is questionable, for example a maximum of 20% sustainable cotton is used, and the information about it is largely insufficient. The collection exists to greenwash H & M’s image. It does nothing to minimize H & M’s climate impact, it maximizes its green image.
–
“Pants and a T-shirt together cost about 20,000 liters of water to produce, dyes and other chemicals pollute water sources and the discarded garments end up in a waste mountain in Africa, which our mess is allowed to clean up,” says activist Robin Habbé. . The police stopped the action by pouring cola over the glued hands and loosening them. Some activists were arrested.
No video? click here.
–
–
