If I were Director of Sustainability by Andrea Hernandez

If I were the Director of Sustainability at Aritzia,  I would focus on energy conservation,

reduced production quantities, and recycling materials. Currently, I am working as a fitting

room stylist for the company Aritzia. There are many companies that are worse off than

Aritzia when it comes to their sustainable practices however, there are also companies that

are doing much better than they in this department. If I were the D.o.S, there would be a few

changes I would make in order to bring company awareness to the things that are not currently

being done but also to bring customer awareness.

Due to the fact that Aritzia has a fairly youthful demographic, ranging from ages of about 15

to 50 with core customers being between 20 and 30, this is a perfect crowd to educate on

being sustainable. They will continue to shop and live on our planet for another years to come;

educating them as early as possible is crucial. One improvement that can be made is reducing

quantities in production. Considering that there are locations across the U.S and Canada, there

are many thousands of products being made. However, many times, certain styles stay on the

shelves through the season and even through sale and end up serving as a waste of a garment.

Now this happens, each season, each store, each year, each country. If Aritzia reduced the

number of products for the styles that have proven not to do well, they would not only save

money but save resources, save tons of water, and prevent waste overall.

Another major yet simple adjustment to Aritzia’s operation would be to power stores through

solar panels and utilizing LED lights to preserve energy and waste less. As discussed in our

presentation with Dr. Chandu, this would not only be an environmental improvement but an

economical one as well. If each store did this, they would be saving abundant amounts of energy

and making money back in return; a win win.

In addition to this,  using more eco-friendly fabrics and reusing past seasons fabrics would also

benefit the brand and the environment. I have seen many brands now recycling previous seasons

fabrics and reworking then into something completely different while still maintaining the

“Aritzia” look. If they did this, on top of using more natural products that wouldn’t sit for

decades in a landfill once thrown out, they would be preventing waste without even knowing it.

Lastly, I would push for recycling more and wasting less paper. It is not necessary to wrap each

product and 9 time out of 10, it will be immediately thrown out once the customer returns home.

On top of this, not reusing bags because they are “wrinkly” or “used” just so the customer can have

a perfectly crisp bag is, in my opinion, selfish. As stated by the team at Waterkeeper Alliance, only

10% percent of recycled product actually ends up being recycled, so why increase that number by

not reusing the bags?

Each of these improvements could easily be put into place if and when Aritzia instills a

sustainability branch for their company. Once that happens, these changes can be made and the

Aritzia customer will start to become more aware. With influencers, models, Instagrams posts,

website ads, etc speaking on this topic, customers will become more educated on the issues at

hand and why they need to be taken seriously. This will lead to a domino effect of customers

supporting this idea and this sustainable lifestyle in shopping only with brands who care.