Sports clothing firm Lululemon – the official supplier of kit to Canada’s Olympics team – is portraying itself as a sustainable brand despite its rising greenhouse gas emissions and “highly-polluting” activities, according to a complaint filed to the French authorities on Wednesday.
Environmental advocacy group Stand.earth accused the Vancouver-based apparel company of greenwashing in a “first-of-its-kind complaint” submitted to the French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) days before the Olympics Games opening ceremony in Paris.
Stand.earth has called on the French regulator to investigate Lululemon’s “vague, disproportionate and ambiguous” environmental claims which, the green group said, constitute misleading commercial practices. In response, the company told Climate Home its publicity does not misrepresent its operations.
Through its “Be Planet” campaign unveiled in 2020, Lululemon tells customers that its “products and actions avoid environmental harm and contribute to restoring a healthy planet”.
A screengrab from Lululemon’s sustainability webpage
But the company’s latest impact report shows that emissions from Lululemon’s full supply chain – known as Scope 3 – nearly doubled to 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between the campaign’s launch and 2022. That’s equivalent to powering 300,000 gasoline cars for a year.
Stand.earth’s complaint said Lululemon’s emissions are set to grow even further as it tries to hit a goal of doubling sales by 2026.
“Lululemon customers worldwide deserve to know the true impacts of the company’s climate pollution, not the greenwashed version it uses to sell products,” said Stand.earth Executive Director Todd Paglia.
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Earlier this year, Stand.earth filed a similar complaint against Lululemon in Canada that resulted in the country’s Competition Bureau opening a formal investigation into the retailer’s use of environmental claims. A separate complaint accusing Lululemon of greenwashing was brought in early July this year by a private citizen in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
A spokesperson for Lululemon said that Be Planet “is not a marketing campaign” but “a pillar” of the company’s impact strategy, and that the firm is confident the statements it makes to the public accurately reflect its impact goals and commitments.
“We are taking direct action and are committed to collaborating with industry partners to help address supply chain impacts on climate change,” the spokesperson added. “We welcome dialogue and remain focused on driving progress.”
Rising revenues, rising emissions
Lululemon is one of the world’s fastest-growing retailers of athletic apparel, with net revenues rising 19% to $9.6 billion in 2023. The company, which has more than 700 stores in 20 countries, is the official clothing provider for Team Canada at the Olympic Games whose opening ceremony takes place in Paris this Friday.
According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Paris 2024 Games are targeting a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to the average of the London Olympics in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, including Scope 3 emissions such as from spectator travel. This means Paris 2024 will offer the first Olympic Games aligned with the Paris Agreement on climate change, the IOC says.
View of Lululemon name above its retail store in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, NY, August 2, 2023. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)
Lululemon, meanwhile, has committed to reaching net zero emissions across its supply chain by 2050 through a target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), widely seen as the gold standard in corporate accountability.
But the company has come under intense criticism from green advocates over its climate and environmental impacts caused by energy-intensive production, high consumption of natural resources like water and long-distance shipping of items around the globe.
Four-fifths of Lululemon’s manufacturers in 2022 were located in countries that are highly-dependent on fossil fuels like Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The materials most commonly used by Lululemon in its clothes – polyester and nylon – are themselves produced from fossil fuels, according to the Stand.earth complaint.
EU greenwashing crackdown
The environmental group said the case will mark the first test of the French regulator’s readiness for a wave of new European greenwashing legislation.
The European Parliament approved a new directive in January requiring member states to introduce stricter rules surrounding the use of sustainability claims by companies and banning certain practices.
European lawmakers are currently working on a further piece of legislation that aims to define what kind of information companies must provide to justify their green marketing in the future. In its current form, the proposed regulation would require sustainability claims to be based on scientific evidence and checked by an independent and accredited verifier.
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The so-called “Green Claims” directive is currently going through a negotiation process between the European Parliament and the European Council – which brings together EU leaders – before a final text is agreed.
“For decades, companies have faced no consequences for deceptive practices aimed at misleading the public about their environmental and climate justice impacts,” said Stand.earth’s Paglia. “However, we’re now seeing a rising interest in holding these companies accountable for their claims, and a crackdown is beginning to happen from Europe to North America.”
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Canada’s Olympics kit provider hit with greenwashing complaint in France appeared first on Climate Home News.
Canada’s Olympics kit provider hit with greenwashing complaint in France
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Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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