The Rhineland-Palatinate consumer advice center has filed a lawsuit against the Dutch lingerie supplier Hunkemöller. The reason: misleading advertising by the company in relation to sustainability. This was found by the consumer advice center as part of an investigation of the 30 online fashion shops with the highest turnover. Two other companies were warned.
Specifically, it is about some items of clothing offered online that Hunkemöller advertises as sustainable. However, it is not guaranteed whether the product consists of sustainably produced materials.
The company justifies its advertising with its membership in an organization that promotes the production of sustainable cotton and requires that member companies cover their cotton needs from at least 10 percent of the cotton produced in this way. However, this proportion of sustainable cotton is mixed with conventionally produced cotton in the supply chain, so that it is ultimately not clear which garments and how much of this “greener” cotton is actually used.
Sustainability of certain items questioned
“It is not certain that the articles advertised as sustainable are made of this environmentally friendly cotton at all,” explains consumer law expert Jennifer Häußer from the Rhineland-Palatinate consumer advice center. “With our lawsuit, we want to contribute to more transparency in advertising with sustainability.”
Terms such as “sustainable”, “climate neutral” or “environmentally friendly” are currently not defined by law and companies determine themselves what they mean by this. This can mislead consumers.
The consumer advice center had previously warned Hunkemöller, but had not received a cease-and-desist letter from the company, after which it filed the lawsuit.
Popken Fashion and Fashion ID also received warnings
Hunkemöller is not the only company that the Rhineland-Palatinate consumer advice center has noticed in this context: Fashion ID GmbH & Co. KG, operator of the online shop peek-cloppenburg.de, and Popken Fashion GmbH have also been warned.
In the case of the former, the consumer advice center objected to the fact that items of clothing were advertised as sustainable without sufficiently transparently explaining what the explicitly advertised sustainability results from.
Popken Fashion GmbH also advertised sustainability for individual items in its online shop and justified this with the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 label. However, the seal certifies that the end product is free of harmful substances and not criteria such as the use of environmentally friendly materials or resource-saving production processes. The consumer advice center saw this as misleading and acted accordingly.
In the meantime, she has been able to reach an out-of-court settlement with both companies, and the companies have meanwhile redesigned the websites in question.
Hunkemöller could not be reached for comment at the time of publication. This article will be updated with new information as necessary.