Do you want to give yourself a headache? Try reading a fashion company’s sustainability report and then read the exact same company’s investor report. The former presents images of pristine nature, solar panels on corporate headquarters and environmental targets that almost assuage my climate anxiety. But then the latter does away with much of that talk and emphasizes growth - store growth, sales growth - growth, growth, growth.

Let’s take a look at H&M as just one case study, not because they are the worst, but because they actually tend to share the most detail about their environmental and climate goals. 

Let’s start with their vision:

“to lead the change towards circular and climate positive fashion while being a fair and equal company.”

This includes the headline goal: A climate positive value chain by 2040

And more immediately, 

“We’re working to halve our emissions every ten years, and have a good plan to reach the 2030 goal.”

All sounds pretty amazing, right. Now let’s head over to their Annual Report.

The group’s sales for the year increased by 11 percent in SEK and by 6 percent in local currencies. The sales growth was driven by both in-store and online sales, with a strong increase in online sales of 24 percent in SEK and 18 percent in local currencies.

In 2020 we plan to open around 200 new stores, while around 175 stores will close. Most of the store openings will be in South America, Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia (excluding China), while the closures will take place mainly in Europe, the US and China.

At the end of the exercise I’m left with knots in my stomach. Do we have any idea whether there is even a world in which a fashion company can keep growing AND exist within the natural bounds of the planet? H&M itself is convinced it can do it, but so far between 2016 and 2020 they have achieved only 3% reductions of their carbon emissions, though their goal of achieving climate positivity by 2040 requires that they reduce those emissions 50% every 10 years. This does not inspire much confidence.

Have independent feasibility studies been done? We can’t find them. What we do find instead is research that many of the methods in which H&M and others are relying on to achieve their goals may very well be overstated. This comprehensive literature review from the Journal of Cleaner Production (yes, that’s a real journal) finds recycling technologies sometimes actually lead to greater resource use, instead of less. And the offset market, which the industry is relying on to achieve climate positivity, is also notoriously off. The stakes of course could not be higher. If these targets are not met, by 2050 major global cities like Bangkok, Shanghai and Mumbai will be underwater during high tide creating by some estimates a billion climate refugees.

That’s an enormous price to pay if these companies don’t meet these targets. So we have to ask ourselves, is this growth worth it?

Let’s return back to H&M’s own words. What do they say is the purpose behind their growth targets?

The very business model of H&M, the main brand of H&M Group, is to push trends. When the leadership of H&M goes to sleep at night can they honestly tell themselves that pushing trends is a means to allow people to express their own personal style? We could not.

The former CEO of H&M has come up with a different and, in our mind, much more initially persuasive argument for continued growth. Jobs.

In an advertorial in the Guardian, Karl-Johan Persson, H&M CEO at the time, was quoted as saying: "If we were to decrease 10 percent to 20 percent of everything we don’t need, the result on the social and economic side would be catastrophic..." He further argued that cutting back would increase worldwide unemployment and poverty, he argued.

On the face of it, this seems true. But is it? Leaving aside the absolute dismal pay of garment jobs, if we stopped consuming so much would jobs disappear? If we assume that the economic system is flat then yes, but that is not the case. Industries develop in reaction to demand. If, let’s say, fashion companies one day woke up and were led by executives that prioritized climate reductions and this meant cutting back on growth, then local governments would turn to developing other industries. Bangladesh for example could focus on education and develop service sector positions.

(It should be noted that no one publicly argues for the most obvious reason for growth, it makes the rich, well, richer. Karl-Johan as well as his brother, sister, father and aunt are all billionaires thanks to H&M.)

And beyond jobs, if fashion companies decided that they just could not realistically reach sustainability targets and growth, what about their stock values? While we’re losing less sleep over the top 1% percent that hold between 70-80% of the stock market, what of the pension funds funding the retirement of everyday people? We didn’t say let’s keep growing the cigarette industry because we can’t afford to lose the jobs of tobacco growers. That industry was regulated, demand has declined and the economy has persevered. But it is something we need to think about. And the answer is not obvious. What sectors should governments in the global South pursue?

These are really hard questions to answer. But this is where the mainstream discussion needs to be. We can’t just have one side with Pollyannaish projections based on undisclosed data and the other side screaming that glaciers are melting and we need to just shut it down. We need to wade into the mucky middle. We urge researchers and business leaders to explore growth of other industries that are less resource dependent and a much more concrete vision of what a global economy would look like in which people can have their resource needs met - food, housing, healthcare, education and all of this happens within the bounds of the planet.

And within the fashion world, we need more honest assessment of what is possible based on current realities and not pin hopes on technologies and systems that may or may not work.

Getting it right is a matter
of life and death. 
Time is of the essence.