The sustainability expert Jasmien Wynants and lawyer Judith Bussé have come together to combat Greenwashing. Her tool for this is “Josie”, a chat bot that filters vague or misleading information from Instagram posts. According to the European Commission, half of the online statements of companies on the subject of sustainability are not correct.
“Ready for my baby party?” – That sounds like a post about the freshly baked niece or the nephew, but is actually a professional invitation that Wynants and Bussé have spread about LinkedIn. On April 24, the Fashion Revolution Day, Josie was baptized, a AI agent for questions about greenwashing, based on chatt.
A project in which Wynants and Bussé have a lot of love. “Judith and I have known each other for a long time, we both worked for Flanders DC,” explains Wynants. “When I have a legal question about greenwashing, I know that I can contact your Pivot Law law firm.”
With another former colleague of Flanders DC, the technology expert Ann Claes, Wynants founded the Masjien fashion agency. Among other things, the entrepreneurs offer advice and workshops for companies, also on the subject of greenwashing. “I explain which words you should avoid in sustainability communication and emphasize that you always have to be able to prove the divided information,” said Wynants.
Words such as “sustainable”, “ecologically” or “responsible” are therefore taboo. They would imply that fashion companies “have no negative effects on the environment and climate, which is impossible”. At least that’s the public federal economy (FÖD economy), which in Belgium checks the correctness of sustainability statements.
According to the European Commission, half of the sustainability claims on websites are immortal, vague, unclear or misleading. “Heavily environmentally polluting industries such as the fashion industry must ensure that your environmental claims are relatively correct,” wrote an official from the business inspection last year to a well -known online shop for children’s clothing and other baby items. It is proposed to speak of “environmentally friendly” instead of “environmentally friendly”.
127 companies checked for Greenwashing
Wynants also received this advice during her work as an independent sustainability consultant at the Xandres fashion brand. In April 2022 the company was examined for misleading sustainability communication; At the end of 2022 it received a warning.
Xandres is not alone. Between May 2023 and April 2024, the newspaper de Morgen and the Apache news website were able to speak to twelve fashion companies, seven of which were controlled. Five of them also received a warning.
The public federal service does not indicate which companies have been controlled and warned. Since 2021, 127 controls have been carried out that go beyond the fashion sector. 66 companies received a warning. In one case, a protocol was created and a comparison was closed, according to the spokeswoman Lien Meurisse.
“As a consumer: In the think, Greenwashing always happens intentionally, but that is not true,” says Patrick Desrumaux, then the CEO of Xandres, in de Morg. “It’s about small formulations that we didn’t think about before.”
If you want to communicate via certain materials, Wynants gave an example in the business magazine trends, you have to “always explain what the substance is exactly, what certificate you have and why it is better than another fabric”.
At that time, Wyns was already thinking about how much information can be announced: to process the inside in a message. “If you had to do this under every Instagram post, nobody would read it anymore.”
AI fed with Belgian and Dutch legislation
In order to support companies, Wynants would like to go beyond the advice they offer individual companies. “Since I was increasingly received questions about greenwashing, I developed a workshop based on the legal framework. Now we have tried to make this information about the AI chat bot even more accessible. So I do not have to come to your company, but you can work with knowledge at any time.”
Wynants and Bussé almost had the idea of starting AI on this topic. Wynants still thinks “crazy”. “We exchanged the topic on the phone, and it turned out that we played with the same idea. Everything came together on a beautiful summer day in the south of France.”
At that time, Bussé had already created a first draft for a chat bot. “It is an AI agent who works on the basis of chatt, but in a closed cycle,” explains Bussé.
Together with Wynants, she wrote a prompt who makes Josie know what to answer questions about greenwashing. For this purpose, it was fed with its own specialist knowledge, European and national laws and specific guidelines of the FöD economy, but also the Dutch consumer authority ACM. She knows what information you check prioritarian and how to handle it.
Particularly useful for marketing and copywriting
Wynants finds that companies are afraid of communicating through sustainability. “Companies that have been controlled have become more careful, which is good in itself,” she says. However, it would be a shame not to talk about sustainability at all, because then we would be back at the beginning. In addition, not all companies were checked. “You still see terms such as ‘Eco Collection’, ‘Responsible Collection’ or ‘Sustainable Fashion’. That makes it difficult. There are companies that do not know that this is not allowed and accidentally do it. As long as it stays that way, it is confusing, especially for the marketing department. Why are they allowed to do that and we not?”
Josie can support sustainability managers: Inside, to convey the right messages about the ecological and social effects of fashion brands. In practice, however, marketing experts are probably primarily: inside and authors: make use of it inside of texts, believes Wynants.
“Anyone who works in a marketing department is busy wearing a message to the outside world. You cannot from Marketing Expert: You can expect everything to know everything in detail. Sometimes there is new college: Inside or the company works with freelance. It is not easy to work through all regulations. But every time the sustainability manager: to have to address in address is actually not necessary.
The sustainability side on the website or an Instagram post can now be checked quickly by the AI instead of college: inside. “For me, this is an example of how AI does not take any jobs away, but is a supplement to the area of responsibility,” says Wynants. “Because you don’t have to address sustainability management every time. And you stay as a marketing expert: in yourself creative.”
Since it is a sensitive topic, there is a possibility that a change proposal from Josie sounds technical. “But then you can ask you to formulate it less dry, as you would ask Chatgpt, or revise it yourself and thus bring in your creativity.”
Authorities welcome initiatives such as Josie
The FöD economy says that he is “aware of the company, the retailers: support in the inside to reduce their environmental impacts and to communicate this to the outside world,” said spokeswoman Lien Meurisse by email. Although the service does not recommend specific tools, he emphasizes that he “welcomes initiatives that lead to greater awareness of greenwashing”.
The ACM, in turn, welcomes “all the possibilities that lead to companies making better and simpler sustainability statements,” writes press spokeswoman Dorith de Jong by email. “An instrument that supports the company can certainly offer added value. Of course, it is important that the companies themselves critically check whether the results are correct and desirable.”
In any case, Josie is much more secure than the “normal” chatté as a factor tester, Bussé says. “She is not looking for the entire World Wide Web, but is limited to the relevant regulations,” explains the lawyer. However, there is an exclusion of liability for every help request: Josie does not offer strategic or legal advice. “If you have received a warning for greenwashing, it is still better to use human legal advice,” she says.
Josie works with a subscription. You can use the chat bot for 29 euros per month and get an additional access to an online academy for which Bussé and Wynants have recorded tutorials on the subject of greenwashing.
With the support of the Flemish-Dutch journalist exchange and the Pascal Decroos fund, this article was created for special journalism.
This article previously appeared on Fashionunited.nl and was used with digital tools translated.
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