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Welcome to this week’s edition of the BoF Sustainability briefing. I’m back from a two-week break in Italy, where I ate far too much pasta (though really can you ever eat too much pasta?) and tried not to melt in the 35 degree heat (that’s 95 Fahrenheit for those who don’t do Celsius). If the headlines about wildfires from Spain to France weren’t enough, it was a stark reminder that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. I promise not to complain about how grey London is for at least the next week.
Heading into the hectic fall season, we’re trying something a bit different with this newsletter’s format. We know how busy you all are and wanted to make things more digestible. We’ll still cover what’s what on topics like climate, labour, regulation and DEI, but with more curation and insider insight that goes beyond what you might find in our long-form stories.
This week, I’m looking at what the UN’s failed efforts to reach a treaty on plastic pollution means for fashion, Swatch’s howler of a marketing misstep and offering up a few reading recommendations.
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Plastic, Plastic Everywhere
August is a sleepy time for the fashion industry, but it’s been a month of high drama for international negotiators focused on hammering out the world’s first legally binding treaty on plastic pollution.
The talks that took place in Geneva in the first half of the month were meant to cap off a three-year effort to curb runaway plastics production and associated threats to human health, wildlife and ecosystems — a deal that would have been as significant as the 2015 Paris Agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead, the meeting ended late last week in tears, literally, with emotional and sleep-deprived delegates failing to bridge a divide between the majority of countries, who favoured a treaty that would set limits on plastic production and the use of certain toxic chemicals, and a smaller group led by oil producers like Saudi Arabia and Russia, who wanted to focus on waste collection and improving recycling rates.
Talks are expected to resume, but it’s not clear when.
Ok, but tell me why this matters for fashion?
Well, increasingly, the fashion industry is the plastics industry.
Go back a quarter century and cotton was still the world’s most dominant textile. Today it’s polyester, a form of plastic. And even products that appear to be made of natural fibres are liable to contain some amount of fossil-fuel-based synthetics woven through the fabric to enhance their stretch or coated on textiles to improve water resistance and durability.
That means the plastics crisis is a fashion crisis and it’s drawing more regulatory scrutiny to the sector. The industry’s growing use of cheap polyester is boosting its carbon footprint and making it a target for concerns about microplastic pollution and plastic waste dumping. A growing body of scientific research has linked toxic chemicals in plastic to a slew of negative health impacts, from obesity to cancer and fertility issues. Some health-conscious consumers are seeking out “clean fashion” brands that offer plastic-free products altogether.
The bottom line: Plastic fashion isn’t going away, but neither are the questions around its environmental and health impacts.
Swatch Out
It’s not been a good year for Swiss watchmaker Swatch. The company was already grappling with sliding demand for watches, foreign exchange headwinds and the fact Switzerland has become one of the biggest losers in President Trump’s trade war.
But this week it managed to deliver a painfully problematic own goal, courtesy of an ad that showed an Asian model pulling his eyes back into slits. The pose called to mind racist “slanted eye” tropes and prompted widespread condemnation in China, Swatch’s single most important market.
The brand has followed the prescribed playbook for dealing with such PR disasters, issuing a public apology and disappearing the offending ad. Its share price, which tanked 4 percent at its lowest point on Monday, has since recovered.
To be sure, controversial marketing campaigns are a dime a dozen these days and can even boost sales (Sydney Sweeney for American Eagle anyone?), but this seems like a truly tasteless blunder that has succeeded only in alienating an important market segment.
Swatch Group is hardly the first company to encounter this kind of misstep, and there is no evidence of intent. But how could the campaign have cleared internal review? After several high-profile errors elsewhere in the luxury sector, one would expect strong, high-level screening and approval controls.
— Jean-Philippe Bertschy, managing director at investment bank Vontobel
Chinese consumers can be a particularly unforgiving bunch, especially when national identity is perceived to be under attack. Just ask brands like Nike, H&M and Adidas, who faced sales-denting boycotts after expressing concerns about allegations of forced labour in China’s cotton-producing region of Xinjiang.
The bottom line: In an era where conversation can equal conversion, big brands have shown they’re willing to risk controversy — whether intentionally or not. But they do so at their own peril. Manufactured outrage is hard enough to control, when you blunder into an online firestorm, you risk losing customers forever.
Go deeper with BoF’s full story by Simone Stern Carbone.
Beach Reads for Nerds
Ok, I know summer is generally considered a time to indulge in light and fun reading material, but I always bring along a couple of wonkier books on vacation. Yes, I’m a nerd, but I also find it easier and more enjoyable to get stuck in when I’ve not spent the day mired in emails and interviews.
This month, I took activist and beauty executive Lindsay Dahl’s new book, “Cleaning House,” away with me. Her account of decades lobbying for tougher regulations to prevent toxic chemicals showing up in consumer products — first at a nonprofit and then from within the beauty industry — left me increasingly uncomfortable about the synthetic bathing suit I was wearing for my poolside reading and with a much better understanding of why change is so hard to bring about.
Earlier in the summer I blitzed through “Consumed,” by Saabira Chaudhuri, a former colleague from my Wall Street Journal days. The book explores a similar subject from a different angle, chronicling how consumer goods companies, from Unliever to Procter & Gamble, got us hooked on plastic.
If all this sounds dry, it’s not in Chaudhuri and Dahl’s tellings. Both are adept at distilling complex and technical issues into plain language and using storytelling to give their topics an easy-to-read momentum, without dumbing things down.
Not the kind of thing you’d want to take to the beach? Fair enough. But summer’s nearly over and I highly recommend both as “back-to-school” reading too.
Got your own recommendations? Send them my way.
What Else You Need to Know This Week:
- Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot: Last week, the American Meteorological Society published its annual “State of the Climate” report, among the most comprehensive looks at the effects of global warming. The data was sobering, showing an array of climate metrics hit fresh records in 2024. [Axios]
- COP Out: The collapse of last week’s plastic treaty negotiations is not the first major failure of climate diplomacy in recent months. Efforts to forge a deal to halt biodiversity loss were equally fraught and few have high hopes for the UN’s annual COP climate summit in November. Instead, the pressure is on to rethink how climate policy can be effectively forged, even as the impact of inaction becomes increasingly clear. [The Financial Times]
- Thin Is In: Once upon a time, not so long ago, the fashion industry appeared to be embracing a more inclusive form of body positivity. But with the rise of Ozempic, the skinny look is back with a vengeance and regulators are concerned. In the UK, ads from brands like Zara and Next have been banned for “irresponsible” marketing featuring unhealthily thin-looking models. [The Business of Fashion]
- Making Shein Chinese Again: The ultra-fast-fashion giant is reportedly considering relocating its headquarters from Singapore to China in a bid to sway Beijing authorities to sign off on its plans to list in Hong Kong. The move is the latest twist in a years-long push to go public that has been stymied by politics and ethical concerns in New York and London markets. [The Business of Fashion]