Bershka

How sustainable is Bershka?

This screening has been done by Fairify on March 22^nd 2020

Ber­sh­ka is a popu­lar, Spa­nish fashion brand owned by Indi­tex, one of the world’s lar­gest fashion retai­lers, boas­ting eight dis­tinct brands. All of these brands are huge on their own, yet Indi­tex only reports on sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty as a mother com­pa­ny.

Indi­tex is one of the pio­neers of fast fashion as we know it today. All of its brands (Zara, Pull & Bear, Ber­sh­ka, etc.) pro­duce clo­thing with an extre­me­ly fast style-to-mar­ket speed, which has allo­wed the com­pa­ny to grow into the third lar­gest fashion com­pa­ny in the world. But this busi­ness model comes at huge envi­ron­men­tal and social costs. Desi­gning and pro­du­cing clo­thing that’s not meant to last results in almost two thirds of all clo­thing ending up in land­fills. The emis­sions gene­ra­ted by Inditex’s end­less loop of pro­duc­tion and ever-chan­ging styles are not ful­ly tra­ced or publi­shed by the com­pa­ny, but the num­bers have to be enor­mous.

There are tar­gets in place though. In 2019, the com­pa­ny signed the Fashion Indus­try Char­ter for Cli­mate Action and it has set a 30% reduc­tion tar­get for its emis­sions by 2030. In line with the objec­tives of the Paris agree­ment, the end goal is car­bon neu­tra­li­ty by 2050. Zara, fol­lo­wed by other Indi­tex brands like Pull & Bear and Mas­si­mo Dut­ti, has pro­mi­sed 100% more sus­tai­nable mate­rials by 2025. In that same year, 80% of ener­gy in its own stores have to come from rene­wable sources.

But it’s not only about tar­gets, it’s also about what’s being done right now. The only cre­dible action towards reduc­tion tar­gets we can actual­ly observe, is a switch of gears towards the consump­tion of more rene­wable ener­gy. The com­pa­ny has to move towards trans­pa­ren­cy, and for now rele­vant num­bers are still mis­sing in its repor­ting. For example, there are no true scope 3 sup­ply chain emis­sions and there’s very lit­tle data on mate­rial ori­gins of Inditex’s pro­ducts.

The limi­ted trans­pa­ren­cy raises a lot of ques­tions that the com­pa­ny needs to ans­wer. Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for ani­mal mate­rials are not pro­vi­ded and whe­ther wor­kers tru­ly get paid a living wage, remains unknown.