Facing allegations that its branding mantras like “Be Human. Be Well. Be Planet” may indeed be false, athleisure giant Lululemon has enlisted the services of Edelman, a public relations firm known for its roster of high-profile fossil fuel clients.
The Vancouver-based fashion brand may be facing a potential greenwashing investigation by the federal Competition Bureau. In February, campaigners at Stand.earth complained [pdf] to the agency in February that Lululemon “pursued a marketing campaign that makes public statements and presents images on its website and elsewhere that build upon and perpetuate the message that the company’s actions and products contribute to improving the environment and the restoration of a healthy planet.”
“In the opinion of the Applicants [Stand.earth], this message is false and misleading,” the advocacy group wrote in their filing.
“Be Human. Be Well. Be Planet” is one of Lululemon’s taglines. And the company agenda on its website states: “We take a holistic approach to driving positive impact, and draw inspiration from the interconnectedness of our people, product, planet, and the communities we serve.”
But now, the company is under pressure to show what actions it’s taking that justify the statements. Eighteen months ago, Stand.earth and its Australia-based peer Actions Speak Louder launched a letter campaign, urging the company to “publicly commit to phase out coal and switch to 100% renewable energy for its supply chain by 2030.”
Such an achievement would be “no small feat given that many of its suppliers are in countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia, where coal is still widely used to power factories,” writes Bloomberg.
The ongoing global letter campaign has drawn sign-ons to date from 7,000 yoga enthusiasts—many of whom would fall within Lululemon’s wide consumer base. More than 100 elite athletes from around the world had also signed as of last August.
Magnitude of Scope 3 Emissions
Launched in October, 2020, Lululemon’s prominent “Be Planet” campaign includes pledges to achieve at least 75% sustainable materials for products by 2025, source 100% renewable electricity to power operations by 2021, and reduce carbon emissions across its global supply chain by 60% per unit of value added, meeting its science-based targets by 2030.
The company’s 2022 Impact Report says it has achieved its goal of powering its owned and operated facilities with 100% renewable power, but admits it is falling short in prioritizing a decarbonized supply chain and sustainable fabric. It managed to exceed its pledge to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions, cutting them from around 12,900 to 3,900 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) between 2020 and 2022. But its Scope 3 emissions nearly doubled during that same period, from 471,100 to 847,400 tonnes.
The report’s fine print reveals that those numbers are only a “subset of total Scope 3 emissions.” The fully counted totals stood at 748,273 tonnes in 2020 and around 1.2 million tonnes in 2022.
“Lululemon’s 2022 emissions are the equivalent of the burning of over 720 million litres of gasoline, over 3.8 million barrels of oil, or the fueling of over 518,000 passenger vehicles for a year,” Stand.earth wrote in its complaint to the Competition Bureau.
This emissions explosion coincided with a near-doubling of net revenue, from US$4.4 billion in 2020, to $8.1 billion in 2022. As of January, Lululemon’s $60-billion market cap was larger than any other North American apparel maker barring Nike, notes Bloomberg. And the growth and pollution are linked, said Maxine Bedat, director of the fashion-focused think tank New Standard Institute.
“It’s very basic,” she said. “If product creation is going up, emissions will grow.”
Pushing Partial Truths
Lululemon’s public pledge to shift all its “owned and operated facilities” to 100% renewables fails to mention a detail from the impact report—that those facilities generate only 0.3% of its total carbon footprint. Similarly, its pledge to reduce global supply chain emissions by 60% by 2030 makes no distinction between Scope 1 and 2 emissions and Scope 3.
As for “sustainable materials,” the report reveals that as of 2022, 67% of the fabric used to produce Lululemon products was made of either polyester or nylon, with procurement of both fabrics increasing between 2020 and 2022. Polyester procurement nearly doubled between 2020 and 2022, from 6.5 to 12.1 million kilograms.
“Lululemon’s challenge is that producing its trendy clothes is inherently carbon intensive because so much of its items are made from polyester, which is derived from petroleum,” explains Bloomberg. “And like other apparel companies, many of Lululemon’s overseas suppliers rely on coal-powered energy to finish and dye their fabrics, and getting them to transition to greener power isn’t easy.”
The company launched its first plant-based nylon products last year and is trying to incorporate more recycled materials into its line, Bloomberg says.
While “there’s a lot of greenwash out there,” Lululemon is “most egregious” on that score, Stand.earth Executive Director Todd Paglia told CBC News.
“We think in this case, Lululemon is telling its customers a bunch of things about the products, that they are environmentally friendly, climate friendly, restorative to the Earth—and that none of those things are true,” he said. Yet Lululemon’s omnipresence in its field, coupled with its professed commitment to well-being, means that it could “actually be part of the solution to the climate crisis” if it wanted to.
If the company is called before the Competition Bureau, it won’t be its first visit, writes CBC News, citing a 2007 decision that forced Lululemon to “remove unsubstantiated claims that a clothing line infused with seaweed had health benefits.”
Slow Response to Greenwashing
Stand.earth’s Competition Bureau complaint comes as climate activists and business leaders fret about Canada’s inadequate efforts to deal with greenwashing.
Even if the government succeeds in its efforts to strengthen the Competition Act and boost the Bureau’s powers on greenwashing complaints, the country will still be “lagging” in the field, especially compared to its peers in the European Union, Ecojustice lawyer Matt Hulse told CBC News.
Even with stronger legislation, enforcement will remain a problem, in part because of a lack of capacity at the Bureau, Hulse added.
The current state of play amounts to “slow process, few fines,” CBC writes, noting that the bureau’s eight new greenwashing cases over the past two years include one against the Pathways Alliance, whose six members account for 95% of Canada’s oilsands production. That matter has not been settled, and nor has a greenwashing complaint against the Royal Bank of Canada.
In the absence of laws with “real teeth” that acknowledge greenwashing as a “systemic problem,” reining in companies with deceptive marketing practices will continue to be a matter of “Whac-A-Mole,” Hulse says.
Wren Montgomery, a corporate sustainability specialist at the Ivey Business School at Western University, said executives with a sincere commitment to climate action also fear missteps will lead to greenwashing accusations against their brands.
“We want to do more and we want to talk about what we’re doing, but we’re really scared that we’re going to be called out for greenwashing,” is something Montgomery said she’s heard in the classroom.
Edelman On the Job
Lululemon’s impact report expresses a commitment to transparency, which raises questions about the company’s reliance on the global PR giant Edelman to address the greenwashing allegations. The two companies have worked together since at least 2020, when Lululemon partnered with Edelman to survey [pdf] people about their well-being, reports The Narwhal.
“For years, Edelman has battled criticism for working with some of the most powerful and influential entities in the fossil fuel industry, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and the Charles Koch Foundation,” The Narwhal writes, noting that the company “ran into controversy in Canada a decade ago” when a document leak revealed its direct involvement in a negative PR campaign targeting opposition to the proposed Energy East pipeline, before it was cancelled in 2017.
When The Narwhal reached out to Lululemon a few weeks ago, following up on an earlier request for comment on the greenwashing allegations, it received a reply from Edelman Senior VP Jordan Fisher, with a reply with the request that the news outlet “attribute the Edelman-crafted statement to a Lululemon spokesperson in the story, rather than to the public relations firm.”
