But God at What Cost?! : Ethical dilemmas when it comes to sustainable brands

By Maddie Brooks

When you search the phrase “sustainable brands”, the results paint a picture of a greener, cleaner Earth, depicting items like reusable water bottles, clothes with recycled fabric, or electric cars. But the term sustainability shouldn't only be linked to the environmental impact of a product or company, but also the people who live here. As supply chains seem to stretch further and further around the globe it's important that we’re able to see what companies are doing to ensure good practices for both environmental and human health, and what they might be hiding.

Sustainability practices, such as sourcing specific organic raw materials like cotton can cost a business twice as much as conventional materials. This can lead to cutting corners to keep costs relatively low for consumers. While the average choices a company uses to mitigate costs include longer shipping times or smaller stock sizes, there is a darker side to keeping costs low. In 2011, an internal audit of Patagonia, a notorious “sustainable brand” for outdoor gear and clothing, revealed that exploitation, forced labor, and human trafficking was occuring in raw material mills throughout the company's supply chain. The backlash from this discovery incited the company to invest in social programs both locally and abroad, continue audits to reveal and dispel trafficking and exploitation across the supply chain, and make public all companies, mills, factories, and sources of raw materials involved in Patagonia’s supply chain to increase transparency. Though this scandal increased visibility of human rights within the sphere of sustainable goods, the complexity of large corporate supply chains make it nearly impossible to wipe the slate clean.

In December of 2021, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) argued that several brands, including Patagonia, may have been directly or indirectly complicit in the forced labor of members of the Uyghur population in China’s Xinjiang province. The company released a statement in the months after citing the “painstaking and important” job they have taken upon themselves to ensure no human rights violations are taking place within their supply chain, down to the farm level. The validity of this response is questionable, as the COVID 19 pandemic had halted most international travel at the time.

If a company can't verify with complete certainty that human rights violations are not taking place in it's supply chain, can it be held responsible? In addition, is it possible for large corporations to even keep track of the nature of every operation supporting their supply chain ? Patagonia’s response to this question is “not yet”. As of right now, the company continues to be as transparent as possible about their supply chain, as well as the steps and programs (such as the Fair Labor Association) they take to ensure a continuing decline of human rights violations within the industry.

So I suppose the question for consumers comes down to “do our choices as individuals really make an impact when it comes to something small like a new jacket?” Can we rely on these corporations to really back their reputations as being sustainable, both in the social and environmental sense of the word? I would agree with Patagonia here, and respond “not yet”.

Visibility is the name of the game here; when companies like Patagonia can be transparent about their missteps and actively work on sharing information with consumers and strive to include ethical impacts in their definition of sustainability, then perhaps with enough scrutiny we as consumers can choose how best to support that cleaner, greener, and more ethical planet we’d like to be a part of.