Your Guide To Mindful Shopping Decisions

Today’s customers are lost in the sea of cluttered brand narratives luring them into believing that they are saving the planet by buying from these brands.

- Falguni Patel

Sustainability has become an ubiquitous buzz-word in fashion lexicon in recent years. You see, a tagline “Safe for Earth”; the eco-warrior in you gets excited to save the planet and ends up buying that product. But was it actually saving the planet while advocating you to consume more?

To add to the increasing bandwagon, Fast Fashion leaders and mass retail designers are introducing “Green Collection” to offset the debates around environmental damage done by their companies. As a consumer, you get excited to make a purchase from a fast fashion brand despite knowing its tryst with environmental and labour regulations, giving it the benefit of doubt for its current good intention. While there are brands that are working towards becoming more transparent in their practices, there has been an incremental increase in green-washing as well.

Greenwashing, according to the Cambridge dictionary, means behaviour or activities that make people believe that a company is doing more to protect the environment than it really is. It is a marketing ploy to lure you into buying things that you don’t need by making you a saviour of the planet. It addresses to your emotion of doing good and engages you in consumerism.

So how to identify if a brand is greenwashing or not and how to make mindful shopping decisions? How do you know whether the brand is genuinely sustainable and environment friendly or not?

Here is your five-point list of making mindful shopping decisions in a world that is bent on Greenwashing.

1. Know the Source of Origin