Uniqlo

How sustainable is Uniqlo?

This screening has been done by Fairify on March 31^st 2020

Uniq­lo is a fast-fashion brand. The com­pany is owned by Fast Retai­ling Inc., which is the mother com­pany for a num­ber of Japa­ne­se brands, like Uniq­lo, GU, PLST and Hel­mut Lang. The com­pany reports as a mother com­pany, so the public infor­ma­tion about Uniq­lo in par­ti­cu­lar is the same for its eight sis­ter brands. Whi­le the fast fashion com­pany announ­ced chan­ge with the intro­duc­tion of a Human Rights and an Envi­ron­men­tal Policy in 2018, it’s still at a very early sta­ge.

Uniqlo’s 2018 Envi­ron­men­tal Policy sta­ted that it’s going to adopt the use of more sus­tai­na­ble mate­rials inclu­ding the ban­ning of fur. It also announ­ced recy­cling and water reduc­tion. There’s a tar­get for 100% more sus­tai­na­ble cot­ton by 2025, for which it has joi­ned the Bet­ter Cot­ton Initia­ti­ve. The fashion brand is also imple­men­ting water reduc­tion tech­ni­ques in jeans manu­fac­tu­ring and com­mit­ting to recy­cling with its repair and reuse pro­gram. But whi­le the­se are great deve­lop­ments, it’s still baby steps com­pa­red to what is pos­si­ble.

The company’s supply chain is not being moni­to­red and impro­ved with the help of envi­ron­men­tal mana­ge­ment tools, like the Higg Index, which can track data on impor­tant topics like energy con­sum­ption and che­mi­cals. Becau­se the com­pany is either not in pos­ses­sion of the data or choo­ses not to publish it, the­se envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce fac­tors remain lar­gely unk­nown. Without the pro­per trac­king of the­se ele­ments of its supply chain, a cal­cu­la­tion of its car­bon foot­print is impos­si­ble, which is why a supply chain foot­print is mis­sing and the com­pany has no tar­gets in pla­ce to redu­ce them either. Besi­des that, Uniqlo’s mate­rial policy is not good, with currently no sus­tai­na­ble fibers at all. From a big com­pany like Fast Retai­ling with glo­bal pre­sen­ce, more is to be expec­ted.

The Japa­ne­se retai­ler doesn’t offer much trans­pa­rency con­cer­ning its ope­ra­tions. The com­pany has a Human Rights Policy and it con­ducts third-party audits through its mem­bership with the Fair Labor Asso­cia­tion. All of the fac­to­ries that the com­pany works with are requi­red to sign Fast Retailing’s Code of Con­duct and agree to be asses­sed by third-party audits like the Fair Labor Asso­cia­tion, who report on its fin­dings and indi­ca­te whether Fast Retai­ling Inc reme­dia­tes the faults. The­se are mostly rela­ted to fire safety, safety at the work­pla­ce and over­ti­me. The­re is also no proof that the com­pany takes action towards pay­ment of a living wage. It shows that, out of the 617 fac­to­ries Fast Retai­ling works with, the FLA con­duc­ted sixty assess­ments bet­ween 2016 and 2018 in mainly Chi­na, Viet­nam and Ban­gla­desh. The com­pany is impro­ving labor con­di­tions, but can impro­ve repor­ting by increa­sing trans­pa­rency and inclu­ding data of labor violations.

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