Is Athleta Sustainable or is it Greenwashing?

Oct 28

Welcome to my "Sustainable or Greenwashing" series where I'm sharing if brands and products are actually what they say they are.

Is Athleta sustainable or is it greenwashing? 🧘

Athleta is the activewear brand a lot of us reach for when we want the "better" version of leggings — the one with the B Corp logo on the website and the Fair Trade tags on some styles. It is also owned by Gap Inc., which is about as mass-market as it gets. So which story is the real one?

Athleta started in 1998 in Petaluma, California, as a women’s athletic apparel company, and Gap Inc. bought it in 2008 for around $150 million. Today it is a $1.2 billion brand with more than 250 stores across the US and Canada — and it has been shrinking, with sales down 10% last fiscal year and six straight quarters of declines. Gap’s own CEO calls it “a work in progress.”

Here is the strongest card Athleta holds: it has been a Certified B Corporation since March 2018, with a B Impact Score of 94.5 — and that score has gone up at every assessment, from 84.3 to 91.9 to 94.5. That is independently verified, and it is genuinely strong. It also has real Fair Trade work: in 2017 it debuted more than 40 Fair Trade Certified styles made in a certified factory in Sri Lanka, where workers earn a premium per product to invest in things like childcare, transport, and women's health.

And there is resale. Athleta runs "Always Athleta" (Preloved) with thredUP — you can trade in gently used Athleta clothes for shopping credit, and ineligible items get reused or responsibly recycled. In 2024, Gap Inc. also announced plans for Athleta to become the first performance apparel brand to use Ambercycle's cycora® regenerated polyester — made from old textiles — at scale, starting in 2026.

So what is the "but"? The first one is that most of the big sustainability numbers you will see attached to Athleta are not actually Athleta's numbers. They are Gap Inc.'s. The 100% more-sustainable cotton and 65% recycled polyester figures are parent-company totals across all Gap brands. The only Athleta-specific materials figure I could find is from 2019 — 60% sustainable fibres — and it is six years old. Good On You, which rates Athleta "It's a Start" across Planet, People, and Animals, notes the brand does not publish an aggregate breakdown of its materials at all.

The second "but" is the people side. Good On You and The Commons both flag the same gap: there is no evidence Athleta ensures living wages in its supply chain. Its code of conduct covers ILO principles and it audits final-stage production, but no living-wage commitment, no published evidence. And the parent company's record is part of the picture too: Stand.earth named Gap among fashion giants relying on biomass boilers marketed as a "green" alternative to coal, and gave Gap (Athleta) a D on its Fossil Free Fashion Scorecard.

Then there are two findings worth knowing about. In 2022, the Center for Environmental Health tested sports bras and athletic shirts and found Athleta among brands whose products could expose wearers to up to 22 times California's Proposition 65 safe limit for BPA through skin contact — and in 2023 it added Athleta leggings to the list. And in October 2026, an hourly employee filed a proposed class action in Washington state alleging denied rest and meal breaks, unpaid overtime, and no paid sick leave — those are allegations about US retail store workers, not factory workers, and they are unproven, but they are on the record.

To be fair, I will give them this: the B Corp score is real and rising, the Fair Trade factory work is real, and the resale program is real. "It's a Start" is not the worst score in this series. But the headline numbers are mostly the parent company's, the living-wage evidence is not there, and the BPA findings are the kind of thing that makes you check the label a little harder.

So is Athleta sustainable or is it greenwashing?

I'm going to say 50/50. The B Corp certification and the Fair Trade styles are genuinely good, and they are independently verified. But too much of the sustainability story is borrowed from Gap Inc., there is no living-wage evidence, and the BPA findings and the biomass criticism sit on the other side of the scale. It is a better-than-average activewear brand that still has real work to do.

If you love the Athleta fit, the most sustainable version of that habit is buying secondhand first — and I have covered brands doing fashion differently, like Reformation, Allbirds, and Patagonia, on the hub. What do you think — is Athleta sustainable, or is it greenwashing? Let me know, and if there is another brand you want me to cover, send it my way!

I have many more deep dives on the Sustainable or Greenwashing hub — stick around for all things mind, body, and planet! 🌎

XOXO,
Krys

Sources:

Krystalynn Gier

Krystalynn Gier is an eco-educator and sustainability content creator who is passionate about sharing low waste living tips, health and wellness hacks, and cozy home decor with those interested in learning about a low waste life.

https://www.krystalynngier.com

Is Athleta Sustainable or is it Greenwashing?

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