is zara a fast fashion brand?
what is fast fashion?
Fast Fashion can be explained as cheap, in-vogue clothing that takes ideas from the catwalk or high-fashion culture and transforms them into articles of clothing in stores dangerously fast to satisfy buyer needs, with no regard to sustainability.
The idea is to get the freshest styles available as quickly as possible conceivable, so customers can eat them up while they are currently at the peak of their fame and afterward, tragically, dispose of them after a couple of wears. It frames a vital piece of the harmful pollution, toxic waste, overproduction, and utilization that has made fast fashion one of the world’s biggest polluters, producing 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
If you want to know more about fast fashion and its consequences on our society, check the article is fast fashion a social issue?
is zara fast fashion?
Zara is a brand owned by the group Inditex, which owns many other brands like Pull&Bear and Stradivarius. So their business practices can be extrapolated to all of the other brands in one way or another.
Zara not only IS a Fast Fashion brand, but they are the pioneer of this unethical business practice. Furthermore, the term Fast Fashion was created in the 90s by the New York Times to describe how Zara took designs from paper to the store in less than two weeks.
So yes, Zara not only is Fast Fashion, but it’s the brand that first created and pioneered this business practice. So now we know who to blame for the unsustainability of today’s fashion industry.
how zara treats the environent
We know that Zara basically created Fast Fashion and the terrible consequences of this business practice on today’s world, but that was many years ago, what is the environmental impact of Zara today?
We first need to point out that Zara doesn’t even have a page where they talk about sustainable practices or anything at all, which is a huge red flag.
Overall, Zara doesn’t have good practices at all, they are a Fast Fashion brand and like any other Fast Fashion brand, they have a very bad impact on the environment. They produce a ton of low-quality clothes with harmful materials that are ditched quickly, producing, even more, waste and pollution.
However, Zara is starting new products to become more „sustainable”, but sadly there is no evidence any of these programs are doing something at all and it seems they are just an unethical marketing campaign.
how zara treats workers
We know what Zara is doing for (or should we say against) the environment, but, what are they doing regarding the working conditions of their factory workers?
Zara has factories all across the globe, in countries such as Spain, Brazil, Myanmar, Turkey… Note how they have factories in countries that may be considered developed, but as we will see this does not mean that the workers are in decent conditions with decent wages.
Zara and the group Inditex have been involved in a LOT of scandals regarding the working conditions in their factories, for example, the factories they have in Sinkiang, China, where there are „job training centers” that are working to benefit the Uighur population according to the Chinese government, which is a fancy way of saying slave-like labor.
Not only that, but the factories they have in Brazil or Turkey or even Spain are not good either, they have also been involved in scandals for using basically slave labor in Brazil, for not paying workers in Turkey, and for the bad conditions the workers have in Spain, even though we may think workers in these countries have better conditions than others. They have also been reported for discriminating against immigrants in Brazil and for taking covid measures just in Spain during the pandemic while workers in other countries were completely unprotected.
The truth is, as we said, having factories in „developed” countries doesn’t mean that the workers have good working conditions or a decent wage. For example, receiving a $1000 wage in Spain is usually just as good as a $500 wage in Romania, and depending on where you live, you may even be better off with $500 in Romania because of the currency change and cost of living.
Overall, worker conditions are Zara’s biggest flaw, and they have a LOT more scandals and controversies regarding this subject. If you want to know more about this, check Impact Policies’ article on Zara.
summary
To sum it all up, Zara seriously needs to change their business model to adapt to today’s standards and to reduce its terrible impact on the environment and especially its workers. But they will not do that unless people become aware of this problem and stand up against Zara and Fast Fashion.
We hope you have learned a lot today, We’re thrilled to teach people around the world :). By the way, do you know about fast fashion and its terrible consequences for the environment, the people, and the economy? Do you know what Slow Fashion or the Sustainable Fashion movement is? You have to read these articles about this unknown but urgent subject, click here to read „Can Fashion Ever Be Sustainable?”, knowledge is power, ignorance is doom.
We also have a big surprise just for you! We have prepared a carefully dedicated About Us page where we will tell you who we are, what we do, our mission, our team, and many more! Do not miss out on this opportunity and click here to check it out. Also, you can visit our Pinterest, where we will pin sustainable fashion-related content and clothing designs that you will surely love.
