The Effectiveness of Zara’s Join Life Program to Minimize Textile Waste

Abstract

The fast fashion industry has been rapidly increasing in both popularity and production yearly, especially with numerous new fashion trends inspired from the media. With the consumer behavior of buying clothing items based on the trend, a shorter product life cycle is implemented and causes the environment to be catastrophic. The fashion industry itself has polluted waterways with toxic dyes and microplastic fibers and textile waste have polluted landfills; in addition, carbon emissions and greenhouse gas emissions are largely produced during the production process until arriving into customer’s wardrobes. This contributes to the worsening of global warming and climate change, an issue that is concerned for the earth’s future and the living lifestyle of the population. Hence, customers are more environmentally aware and support businesses that are labeled as eco-friendly in this era. With that, fashion businesses have been transforming into a ‘green’ business to compete in the market. Zara is one of the examples as they launched the Join Life program, a program that reduces environmental damage in their production process and raw materials by using fabrics and technologies that are safer. Previous research still lacks in recognizing Zara’s Join Life as an environmental protection program and its effectiveness. Therefore, the case of Zara’s Join Life’s effectiveness to minimize textile waste and benefit the environment will be further investigated and studied as it helps people to give more support and contribution to this program, especially with the growing market of fast  fashion.