Dive Brief:
- Advocacy organization Stand.earth is asking the Competition Bureau Canada to investigate the conduct of Lululemon, alleging the athletic wear company made false and misleading statements about its environmental impact, according to documents filed last week.
- The complaint centers on Lululemon’s “Be Planet” marketing campaign, which launched in 2020 and states that its “products and actions avoid environmental harm and contribute to restoring a healthy planet.”
- Stand.earth says that since the campaign’s launch, Lululemon’s greenhouse gas emissions doubled, citing the company’s 2022 Impact Report, and further says the company uses materials that cannot be effectively recycled, don’t biodegrade, and release microplastics in the oceans and waterways, per a Stand.earth news release. Though the company did not directly address accusations of its marketing campaign, a Lululemon spokesperson said in an email the company recognizes that the majority of impact comes from emissions from the broader supply chain.
Dive Insight:
The complaint was brought under Canada’s Competition Act, and Stand.earth says the seriousness of Vancouver-based Lululemon’s claims are “amplified by its position as one of Canada’s largest companies and a market leader of apparel sales in Canada.”
If the commissioner of the Competition Bureau of Canada finds the marketing to be “false and misleading,” Stand.earth asks for Lululemon to remove the campaign from its website and all other forms of communication and issue a formal apology to customers in Canada. In addition, Stand.earth asks that Lululemon pay a fine of up to 3% of its annual worldwide revenue, to be credited to the Environmental Damages Fund, and to be paid to an organization “for the purposes of climate mitigation and adaptation in Canada.”
In the filing, Stand.earth said the complaint was centered specifically on the marketing campaign, rather than on steps Lululemon may be taking to “reduce the harm its business and products have on the environment.”
“[Lululemon] benefit[s] from a carefully constructed image of environmental sustainability and wellness, and claim to make products that contribute to a healthy environment, but their exponential growth has been built on fossil fuels, from clothing literally made from fracked gas to polluting manufacturing that threatens the health of communities in the Global South,” Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth said in a news release. “Lululemon’s mantra is supposedly ‘Be Planet,’ when in reality it’s ‘Be Profit.’”
A spokesperson for Lululemon said in an email to Fashion Dive, ESG Dive’s sister publication, that the company is “focused on helping to create a garment industry that is more sustainable and addresses the serious impact of climate change.” The company’s decarbonization plan involves making investments to meet its 2030 climate goals and reach net-zero by 2050, per the spokesperson.
“Tackling the climate crisis and scaling solutions in a meaningful way requires supply chain collaboration, investment, and transparency,” the spokesperson said. “We remain committed to working directly with our suppliers, industry partners, civil society, and policy makers, including the UN Fashion Charter for Climate Action and contributing $10M to the Fashion Climate Fund led by the Apparel Impact Institute, to accelerate collective climate action.”
In 2023, Lululemon entered partnerships with tech firms in an effort to debut more sustainable clothing and scale a circular approach to textile-to-textile recycling.
The company recently increased its financial outlook for Q4. It now expects revenue of $3.17 billion to $3.19 billion, a 14% to 15% increase from the same period last year.
