First Dutch investor quits clothing industry over human rights, sustainability concerns

ASN Impact Investors, an asset manager focused on sustainability with around 4.2 billion euros in its portfolio, has sold all its interest in clothing companies. According to ASN, companies like H&M, Zara, and Asics are giving in to pressure from Chinese competitors and making too little progress in the area of sustainability and human rights. ASN is the first Dutch investor to quit the clothing industry.

It is a “devil’s dilemma,” ASN director San Lie told NOS. By pulling out, ASN can no longer talk with these companies as a shareholder. “There have been some improvements in terms of working conditions, but too little is happening, and it is not happening fast enough,” he said.

The sector is trapped in the consumerism cycle of only producing more and more. Lie said. “These clothing companies now compete with Chinese parties like Shein and Temu, who produce even faster. This is an obstacle to sustainability.” Consumers carry some of the blame. “We know about the appalling conditions in factories and the beaches full of clothing waste. Yet we are inclined to buy new clothes when we walk into a shopping street.”

The clothing industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world, with high greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution. Polyester clothing—the backbone of fast fashion—is responsible for a large part of the microplastic problem, releasing tiny bits of plastic in the wash.

Because both the clothing industry and consumers seem unable or unwilling to change, Lie believes the government must intervene and counteract the industry's negative effects. Other countries are already taking steps. France, for example, is working on legislation that could make fast-fashion clothing items up to 10 euros more expensive each.

Another consequence that super fast fashion like Temu and Shein has had is that it dried up the market for second-hand clothes from the Netherlands. About 55 percent of the around 1 billion clothing items Netherlands residents discard each year end up in the incinerator. The rest goes to recycling or is exported abroad, particularly to less affluent countries in Africa.

“Ultra-fast Chinese fashion producers, such as Shein and Temu, are enabling people who could only afford to buy second-hand to buy new clothing for the first time. That is eating into our share of the market,” Lennert Vermaat of Vereniging Herwinning Textiel, the association focused on finding a new life for discarded textiles, told NRC. Collection and sorting companies are stuck with mountains of second-hand textiles that no one wants.