Manual for a Sustainable Approach
Plan for Achieving Objectives |‘C’ ABOUT
Aritzia’s overarching aim is to become a fully sustainable apparel company by 2025. Although this recognizably, may be an ambitious goal, the main obstacle in Aritzia’s path to achieving this plan is the fact that the fast fashion business model is inherently unsustainable. However, in order to support and maximize efforts towards making Aritzia an increasingly socio-environmentally sustainable business, we have developped the following multi-pronged approach. We examined five key areas of Aritzia’s business and outlined steps to integrate more sustainable practices within each of these parts, that push beyond just the industry standard. Many of these rely on Aritzia’s willingness to commit to notions of radical transparency and undertsanding of big picture impacts of its business. The five areas of focus are: • MATERIALS Aritzia has made some progress in sourcing environmentally less damaging materials, however, the scale of use of virgin synthetics and unsustainably grown/manufactured fibres versus sustaianble alternatives still remains disproportionate. In order to emph asize these efforts, we propose that Aritzia focus on focus on scaling the use of renewable and eco-friendly fabrications, switch to using 100% recycled polyester and/or other recycled synthetics and introduce dead-stock materials as a good way test new styles, generally produced in significanlty smaller runs.
• PRODUCTION
Over the last ten years, Aritzia has spent majority of its efforts in attaining a multitude of certifications attesting to its efforts in creating a cleaner, more enivonmentaly-friendly production processes with its manufacturing partners. To actively validate these efforts, we recommend Aritzia transparently declares its Higg Index results on a regular basis, to both its customers, shareholders and relevant stakeholders.Additionally, we recommend Aritzia creates a system of educating the conusmer on the environmental impact of each of its garments as well as be an early adopter of the Cradle to Cradle strategy by keeping technical and bilogical resource loops closed. | P.7
