Essay on Ethical Business Initiatives by Zara

        Zara is one of the companies that is into trendy fashion and clothing and changed the line of dressing along with accessories around the globe (Zikmund et al. 2012). 64 major fashion brands, according to the latest report on WWD, have committed to taking considerable and actionable steps to be ethical and more sustainable; Zara is included in these 64 major fashion brands. Seeing the Zara brand on this list is a significant step toward making sustainable, real, and ethical change in the fashion industry. While people love the good deal on trendy outfits, these fast fashion styles’ cost is higher significantly than the reading of their price tag: From pay structures for factory employees and dismal working conditions to the harmful but cheap materials’ use that end up in landfills (Hardy, 2018).

        Zara’s last controversy has been reported in 2014 and after that Zara is trying to incorporate the sustainability’s idea with appropriate supply chain management. However, the outcome of the event could impact much of the craze or productivity of Zara. Still, the customers of Zara are very loyal to the company around the world and followers that are Zara fashion and retail stores’ religious part. Zara is believed to have most of the features apart from the human rights’ issues (Voegtlin, Patzer & Scherer, 2012). Moreover it has been shown by the researches that fast fashion like Zara make materials use that is toxic materials’ part causing harm to the skin of people and can cause cancer even. The outcome of fashion companies, in such case, lies in the customers’ mentality changing the customers’ buying decision. It has been claimed by Zara to toxic raw materials use that goes to an extent of 70 percent (Emery, 2012).

        Zara has earned A’s for the compliance efforts and supply chain transparency of the store. Zara, through its business model, wants to help the society and environments’ sustainable developments with which it interacts. Zara’s environment commitment is a part of the corporate social responsibility policy of the Inditex group. The parent company of Zara, Inditex has been recognized for tracing the second tier suppliers strongly back to the production of fabric. A 100 percent rating has been earned by the company for traceability monitoring and final manufacturing in a research report that is observed as a higher score than the competitor apparel brands of Zara had. Currently, Inditex provides the required information about where the suppliers of Zara are located globally, however the company does not disclose the specific suppliers of the brand. Inditex, in addition to facilitating the open supply chain, is also a member Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) member that enforces ethical and eco-friendly cotton production in the whole world (Scarano, 2017).

        There are various actions and objectives by Zara that are carried out within a business frame work of environmental commitment by Zara that is directly linked to customers as well as stores. Zara, at the sores, saves energy and takes lot of care to its stores to make it eco efficient. Zara has been developing special management models that are eco efficient for its stores. These eco efficient management models of Zara proposes various measures to be applied to all business processes, from a store design itself, the cooling system equipment or lighting heating, to the possible furniture recycling and decoration recycling. Furthermore, it reduces the waste production and recycling is highly encouraged. The recycling of security tags and hangers that are collected in the Zara stores and managed to be transformed into the plastic items, is waste management’s example. Millions of security tags and hangers are processed each year in Zara additionally both the plastic and cardboard used are eventually recycled. Zara focuses on awareness increase among team members of the store. Specific multimedia training and in-house communication campaigns are regularly planned at Zara to heighten awareness of employee of the need for sustainable and environment friendly practices like using sustainable transport, trimming energy consumption, or modifying behavioral habits (Fashiongear, 2018).

        Zara is involved in various environmental practices at service to customer, it uses biodegradable plastic or paper bags. Use of biodegradable plastic or paper bags is highly encouraged at Zara because 90 percent of the bags given by Zara to its customers are paper bags. However in a minority of case, plastic bags are also used, at specific times like sales and marketing campaign. All the plastic bags used by Zara are biodegradable that are ultimately decomposed via natural biological process preventing an environmental pollution that traditional plastic causes. These plastic can be recognized with the d2w logo. Zara generates recyclable information. The commitment of Zara to use recyclable materials and PEFC paper is extended to materials that can be used for information to customer. The fashion catalogues of Zara are printed on paper with PEFP or FSC MARK (guaranteeing sustainable forest management that so certificated) (Fashiongear, 2018).

        Environmental policies of Zara with the product seemed to be highly ethical. Zara encourages the ecological fabrics’ use, like organic cotton and it supports ecological agriculture in the production of clothing’s selected items (100 percent cotton, absolutely free of bleaches, chemical agents and pesticide). These products, with a distinctive lable, can be easily identified at the stores of Zara. Zara has been Producing PVC –free footwear. Zara does not use non-biodegradable or petroleum derivatives materials in producing the footwear. Environmental policy in the transport is also an ethical business initiative by Zara as it has introduced biodiesel fuel; fleet of Zara of Lorries transport more than 200 million clothing stuffs annually and uses 5 percent biodiesel fuel. Zara has become enabled by this measure to reduce CO2’s emission into an atmosphere by over 500 tones. Animal welfare policy of Zara is quite ethical in which all animal products, including leather and fur that Zara sells exclusively come from animal nurtured in livestock form and not from the animal that is sacrificed for skin sale (Fashiongear, 2018).

        I consider that ethical approach is really important in the business. I strongly believe that corporate social responsibility and Ethical behaviour can bring significant advantages to a business. Ethical approach in the business can attract customers to the products that ultimately means boosting profits and sales of the business. Moreover, ethical behavior in business can make employees of the company want to stay with business that can ultimately increase productivity by reducing labour turnover. Furthermore, I believe that more employees want and prefer to work for the companies that are involved in ethical business behavior that ultimately decreased costs of recruitment and enable that company to have most talented employees. The ethical business behavior can attract investors keeping the share price of company high and protecting the company from takeover.

        As an individual customer, the ethical approach of company significantly and highly influence my purchasing behaviors. Because I believe that the company not good to environment and does not give any importance to corporate social responsibility cannot be good to its customer. Before going for shopping, I always search about the company that what ethical initiatives the company is taking. If there is not any, I don’t go there and switch my shopping plan to some other company that is involved in ethical practices.

References of  Ethical Business Initiatives by Zara