'Adidas and New Balance targeted by a complaint for “greenwashing”', 22 Jun 2022

The environmental defense association Zero Waste France announced on Wednesday June 22 that it had filed a complaint with the courts of Strasbourg and Paris against the sports equipment manufacturers Adidas and New Balance for “deceptive marketing practices”. She accuses the two groups of only taking “facade commitments” on their environmental practices.

The association accuses the equipment manufacturers of communicating “shamelessly and disproportionately on commitments” environmental while in practice they “change almost nothing to their production model”...[Some slogans] are associated with certain products of the brand “without saying a word about the environmental impact of recycled polyester or the technical impossibility of its infinite recycling”...

“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 fight plastic pollution”explains Alice Elfassi, legal manager of the NGO...

The 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...