The Environmental Jigsaw of Greenwashing

A lot of brands globally, even major multinational corporations claim to be environmentally friendly. Playing around with words like natural, eco-friendly, and sustainable in the wrong context. They keep a lot of the facts hidden from the consumers. This misleading of people into believing a brand is environmentally friendly, is called greenwashing. 

So let’s go back to school for a bit to brush up on our knowledge. 

What do we mean by natural, eco-friendly and sustainable?

Natural-

Anything which is procured directly from the environment is natural.
But all that is natural is not necessarily eco-friendly or sustainable.
A natural product might still be causing harm to the world. Conventional cotton is the best example. Cotton is produced naturally but has a detrimental impact on the world. Right from water usage to landfill waste. To put it into perspective, to make one King Size Bedsheet, conventional cotton wastes about 10,000 liters of water! India is a farming nation, yet 50% of all chemical fertilizers are used for cotton farming that end up in lakes and rivers as residual waste.

A 'natural' substance like 'conventional cotton' which commands about 75% of all cotton share globally results in a lot of problems for the environment. 

Let's not forget, even oil is a natural substance! Hence Tesla :-

Eco friendly-

Anything that is positive to the environment can be termed eco-friendly. Eco-friendly products are not necessarily-natural or sustainable. Even a Tesla-model S due to its electric nature is eco-friendly (Not to mention ridiculously fast). The idea is that these products cause minimal harm to the environment and are a step in the right direction.

Sustainable-

Sustainability might not necessarily have anything to do with natural products but is eco-friendly and has a very important impact on the environment. Even harmful substances like plastic can be recycled, reused, and turned into sustainable products. It is all about elongating the life cycle of products and reducing the burden on the planet by eliminating the need of creating more wastes. Even those products that are made from substances that are not natural or eco-friendly at all, can be sustainable. 

You might have noticed how these words can be used cunningly in the wrong context by brands.

We at D’Moksha are all about transparency, quality, and truth. 

So factually in the right context-

The fabrics we use are necessarily qualified to be eco friendly and/or sustainable with a skew towards natural. The packaging we provide is sustainable with zero use of plastic. We minimize wastes in the factory by up-cycling waste materials to recreate designs (more on this very soon). We are also very selective in the partners we procure fabrics from - they are certified to be environment friendly.