Trendy fashion brands Get Up to protest Adani

Trendy urban fashion brands are joining the battle against Adani, encouraging customers to fund the campaigns of ecowarriors trying to stop the coal mine.

TRENDY urban fashion brands are joining the battle against Adani, encouraging customers to fund the campaigns of ecowarriors trying to stop the coal mine.

In the past month, Australia’s most famous eco-conscious fashion label, Gorman, and campaigning UK cosmetics retailer, Lush, have funnelled funds to anti-Adani activists, including left-wing lobbyists GetUp!.

STATE SPLIT OVER ADANI MEGAMINE

CARMICHAEL COAL MINE PUSHING AHEAD

Both companies have also run social media campaigns attacking the mine.

Shopper Marina Cooper with one of the Gorman bags in Fortitude Valley. Picture: AAP/John Gass

“To stop Adani building the biggest coal mine in the world in Queensland, we have designed a Coal Kills bag to send a clear message that we think Adani is a bad idea,” Gorman says on its campaign web page.

Lush directed all funds from the December sales of its charity pots, which range from $15.95 to $32.50, to “grassroots organisations working to stop Adani”.

“Adani are threatening to start digging before Christmas,” the company said on a Facebook post.

“Now is the time for everyone who cares about climate change to step up and take action.”

Resources Minister Matt Canavan said Australia’s coal and energy industry “wins the Pepsi morality challenge against the fashion sector any day of the week”.

“Fashion is lovely but it’s hardly an essential input into people’s livelihoods,” he said.

“I just think it’s a little hypocritical for companies that produce luxury items to be lecturing poor countries about what they should do.”

Gorman is selling bags, which are made in China from recycled plastic bottles, online and in stores for $4, with 100 per cent of the funds funnelled to GetUp!.

But the company’s halo was tarnished in 2016, when a leading industry ethical fashion report that examines supply chains and workers’ rights gave Gorman a grade of “F* (did not participate)”. They improved to a “C+” in the latest report.

Gorman and Lush were asked for comment but did not respond.

Mr Canavan said the fashion industry had plenty of ethical issues to concentrate on and he believed opposition to the mine was small but vocal.

“It’s a loud minority concentrated in inner urban areas but the vast majority of Queenslanders and Australians understand that we need a strong resources sector to have a strong country, including those who live in the city because the biggest mining town in the country is Brisbane,” he said.

It is not the first time Adani has faced corporate hostility, with US ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s running a “scoop ice cream, not coal” campaign in 2017.

An Adani spokeswoman said some of the companies’ claims, including that Adani engaged in illegal mining activity and was the largest mine in the world, were false.

“While we understand people have varied views on the Carmichael Project, we’re disappointed these companies are participating in misleading campaigns funded by overseas investors, without first approaching us or researching the project to understand the facts,” she said.

Marina Cooper, from Mitchelton, has been shopping at Gorman for two years and loves the store’s idea to make a stand against coal mines in Queensland.

“The bags are a great idea just to get the message out to people,” she said.

“I think it’s a good start … you have to start somewhere. It’s such a beautiful bag with beautiful colours rather than focusing on the dark, dull coal mine — it’s a nice contrast to spread the message.”