"Visual commitments" on their environmental practices.

Here is what Zero Waste France blames Adidas and New Balance for.

The environmental defense organization announced on Wednesday that it had filed a complaint with the courts of Strasbourg and Paris against the two sports equipment manufacturers for "misleading commercial practices".

She criticizes the equipment manufacturers for communicating “shamelessly and excessively on environmental commitments”, when in practice they “change almost nothing in their production model”.

👟 As the #summer sales start, @ZeroWasteFR is attacking @adidasFR @NewBalanceFR for their misleading communication.

"100% recycled", "privileging the environment", "solution against plastic waste" or #greenwashing?

#OnLaissePasPasserhttps://t.co/deExKmKqYT

— Zero Waste Paris (@ZeroWasteParis) June 22, 2022


Access to this content has been blocked to respect your choice of consent

By clicking on "

I ACCEPT

", you accept the deposit of cookies by external services and will thus have access to the content of our partners

I ACCEPT

And to better remunerate 20 Minutes, do not hesitate to accept all cookies, even for one day only, via our "I accept for today" button in the banner below.

More information on the Cookie Management Policy page.


The scourge of “greenwashing”

She attacks in particular the slogans "Made to be remade" (made to be reused) or "end plastic waste" (let's put an end to plastic waste) of Adidas associated with certain products of the brand, "without saying a word the environmental impact of recycled polyester nor the technical impossibility of its infinite recycling".

As for New Balance, it is its “Green leaf standard” (green leaf) that Zero Waste France is targeting in particular, highlighting “a great vagueness covering a multitude of realities (…) and without information on the end of life of the product” .

"It is time for justice to take up the scourge of 'greenwashing' and for 'fast-fashion' brands to understand that they are illegal when they claim that selling sneakers made from recycled materials helps to fight against plastic pollution, ”said Alice Elfassi, legal manager of the NGO, quoted in the press release.

Contacted by AFP, Adidas said on Wednesday that it had "not yet received the complaint".

"As soon as we receive it, we will review its contents and defend ourselves against these allegations," a spokesperson said.

Fashion, the 3rd most water-consuming sector

This complaint is part of the campaign launched by Zero Waste France aiming to alert on the environmental impact of ephemeral fashion, or “fast fashion”, which would be responsible each year for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse, or as much as international air transport and maritime traffic combined, according to the Agency for Ecological Transition (Ademe).

Fashion is also the third most water-consuming sector, behind the cultivation of wheat and rice, with a use of 4% of available drinking water, recalls Ademe.

At the beginning of March, the NGOs Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France and Notre Affaire à Tous had taken TotalEnergies to court for "misleading commercial practices", questioning its stated ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050 and the presentation gas as the "cleanest" fossil fuel.

Economy

Greenwashing: Should we tolerate ads using (falsely) ecological arguments?

Planet

Advertising: A decree to regulate claims of "carbon neutrality"

  • Environment

  • Adidas

  • Planet

  • ecology

  • Advertising