Is Lululemon Actually Sustainable? An Honest Investigation

You may have pulled on a pair of Align leggings and felt like you’d bought something a cut above fast fashion. Softer story. Higher price. That yoga-studio glow. So is Lululemon actually sustainable, or does the $98 price tag just make it feel that way?

We went through the company’s own sustainability reporting, the independent scorecards, and the labor data. Here’s the honest version.

Short answer, up front

Lululemon isn’t fast fashion in the Shein sense. It also isn’t the sustainable brand its marketing quietly implies. The distance between what it says and what it’s measured doing is wide, and in one area, climate, the record is bad.

Let’s walk through it.

What it’s actually made of

Start with the fabric, because that’s most of the footprint. Nulu, Luon, Everlux: the trademarked names are mostly nylon and polyester with a bit of elastane spun in. All three are plastic. All three come from fossil fuels. And all three shed microplastic fibers every time you wash them, the kind too small for treatment plants to filter out.

The company has moved partway. Around 61% of its polyester is now recycled, and it’s pledged that 75% of its products would use “preferred materials” by 2025 and 100% by 2030, according to its own Impact Agenda. The catch is that recycled polyester is still plastic, still sheds, and that 2025 target came and went without the company hitting it.

Climate is where it falls apart

This is the part the marketing can’t soften. In its Fossil-Free Fashion Scorecard, the environmental group Stand.earth gave Lululemon a D-, for taking no meaningful action to get coal out of its manufacturing.

Read that grade twice. The factories making your leggings, spread across Cambodia, China, and Vietnam, run largely on coal. And in a single year, Lululemon increased the climate pollution from producing its goods by 60%. Its manufacturing emissions have more than doubled since 2018.

After tens of thousands of people signed a petition, the company finally set a target to reach 50% renewable electricity and drop coal by 2030. Worth noting what that is, though. A target. Not a change that’s happened yet.

Labor: better paperwork than proof

On labor, Lululemon looks more organized than most of its rivals. Its social auditing program is accredited by the Fair Labor Association, and the company says that covers 100% of its final-stage factories. That’s real, and it’s ahead of a lot of the activewear field.

But an audit checks conditions, not paychecks. There’s no published evidence that the people sewing the leggings are paid a living wage, and Lululemon doesn’t release a full factory list or its detailed audit findings, which Good On You flags in its own rating. When a brand keeps the supply chain that closed off, you’re taking the ethics on trust.

What it does get right

Fair is fair, and the brand earns some points:

• Its own stores and offices now run on 100% renewable electricity. That’s the easy end of the footprint, but it counts.
• “Like New,” its resale program, buys back and resells used gear. Keeping a garment in use longer is the single most effective sustainability move in all of apparel, so this one matters more than it looks.
• It’s put real money into nylon recycling research, backing a startup working on the exact fabric the whole industry struggles to recycle.

None of that cancels out a coal-powered supply chain. But it’s not nothing, and it’s more than the average athleisure label bothers with.

So, is Lululemon sustainable?

No. Not yet, and not to the standard that price tag implies. It’s a mid-tier brand making real investments at the storefront while its actual manufacturing footprint gets worse instead of better.

If you already own Lululemon, the most sustainable move is the one the resale program points at: wear it for years, wash it in a microfiber-catching bag, and resell it instead of binning it. If you’re shopping new and sustainability is the deciding factor, there are activewear brands doing more on both materials and climate for similar money. How to tell them apart is exactly what our sustainable fashion guide and our greenwashing guide are for.

The leggings are well made. The sustainability story is mostly marketing.