Topshop

How sustainable is Topshop?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­ri­fy on April 7^th 2020

Top­shop is a popu­lar fast fashion brand for women that’s owned by Arca­dia Group, a Bri­tish mul­ti­na­tio­nal high street retail­er. The infor­ma­ti­on Arca­dia Group pro­vi­des is not brand-spe­ci­fic, which makes it dif­fi­cult to look at its brands’ sus­taina­bi­li­ty indi­vi­du­al­ly. The infor­ma­ti­on that the com­pa­ny does com­mu­ni­ca­te is pro­vi­ded on its web­site, but not in a gene­ral sus­taina­bi­li­ty report. This makes it har­der to find out how well it does as a com­pa­ny. Fur­ther­mo­re, the infor­ma­ti­on that it does pro­vi­de can feel like a cour­se in sta­tis­tics and often mis­re­pres­ents how the com­pa­ny is real­ly doing. For exam­p­le, report­ing on scope 3 emis­si­ons only includes busi­ness tra­vel, which is a drop in a bucket com­pared to real sup­p­ly chain emis­si­ons.

It’s unfort­u­na­te that the com­pa­ny is not trans­pa­rent and a lot of infor­ma­ti­on is miss­ing. That being said, it’s a big posi­ti­ve that it publishes an ela­bo­ra­te list of fac­to­ries, mills, tan­ne­ries and pro­ces­sors in its sup­p­ly chain. The inten­ti­ons in Arca­dia Group’s Code of Con­duct are gre­at, but the com­pa­ny ope­ra­tes in many high-risk count­ries whe­re there’s a sub­stan­ti­al risk of harmful working con­di­ti­ons and the lack of pay­ment of a living wage, espe­ci­al­ly for migrant workers. Wit­hout audit results from inde­pen­dent third par­ties in an acces­si­ble report, the­re is no pro­of of a tru­ly fair and sus­tainable pro­duc­tion process.

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