Greenwashing

If you go to Zara stores, you sometimes see a box collecting used clothes. They collect old clothes to recycle as one of their social and environmental commitments. I had a look into Zara Korea’s website to find out more about their commitments. Firstly, there was no store information that has a collecting bin. And there is no detailed information or evidence about how they recycle them. Zara also launched an “environmental friendly” line called “Join Life” several years ago, which uses more sustainable fabrics. It’s great that it is making an effort, but considering their massive production and consumption of resources including their regular products, I don’t think it’s good enough to make these things up. 

 

Zara is one of the most popular and famous fast fashion brands. Their main strength is their agility in churning out new products based on the current trends. It only takes a few weeks from designing new items to them making their way to retail stores throughout the world. The number or garments they produce is enormous. The massive scale of their production leads to not only environmental damage such as excessive water usage, energy usage, and pollution, but also impacts on garment workers.  

 

According to Good On You, an application that rates fashion brands on their sustainability, Zara is rated ‘Not good enough’ overall. Because Zara has set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and has a formal animal welfare policy but there is no clear evidence that it is doing enough. There is no evidence that it ensures fair levels of payment for workers in its supply chain either. 

 

It seems like Zara has put quite an effort into to showing their commitments on sustainability to customers on their website. They have been put into many different categories like labour policy, used clothing collection, materials, partnerships with organisations, and so on. There are a lot of commitments and goals, which don’t seem to be possible if they keep the way they are going now, but again, there is no clear evidence of it. As a consumer, it is easy to believe that you are spending your money on a sustainable brand when you see the words like organic, sustainable, green, earth, etc., but they are often used as a marketing strategy as sustainability is a big issue now. I think that big retailers can’t be sustainable enough unless they change their supply system innovatively.