In recent years, the landscape of Indian retail has witnessed a remarkable transformation, as major players in the industry have shifted their focus from mere charitable endeavours to actively prioritising the well-being of people, the planet and profit.
From renowned retailers and brands to emerging e-commerce giants and start-ups, a diverse range of stakeholders are now putting in dedicated efforts toward sustainability.
Leading the charge in Indian retail are influential companies such as Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Limited, Reliance Trends, Reliance Brands, Arvind, Trent Limited, Raymond Ltd., Shoppers Stop, V-Mart, V2 Retail and prominent e-commerce platforms including Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Meesho and various other D2C brands. These industry leaders have embarked on numerous initiatives aimed at supporting sustainability across multiple facets of their operations.
One key area of focus for these retailers is energy and water conservation besides preserving flora and fauna. Additionally, there is a strong emphasis on sourcing sustainable raw materials, ensuring that the production of their products is environmentally responsible and minimises the use of resources.
Packaging is another crucial aspect that retailers are addressing. They are investing in sustainable packaging solutions, seeking alternatives to single-use plastics and adopting eco-friendly materials to reduce waste and environmental harm.
Furthermore, these retailers recognise the importance of diversity and inclusion (D&I) within their organisations. They are taking steps to foster inclusive workplaces, ensuring equal opportunities and fair treatment for employees of all backgrounds. By championing D&I, they are not only promoting social progress but also harnessing the power of diverse perspectives and experiences to drive innovation.
Beyond their internal operations, these retailers are actively engaging with consumers to raise awareness about health and sustainability. They are encouraging customers to adopt sustainable practices, make mindful purchasing decisions and embrace a more eco-conscious lifestyle. By doing so, they are driving positive change at both an individual and societal level.
In addition to their commitments to people and the planet, these retailers are also mindful of maintaining a profitable business model. They understand that sustainable practices can lead to long-term cost savings, improved brand reputation and enhanced customer loyalty. With their well-established corporate structures, legal and ethical responsibilities and strong collaborations with international brands and retailers, they are able to leverage their influence to promote sustainability effectively.
The growing consumer awareness and demand for sustainable products and practices further motivate and propel these retailers to embrace sustainability as a core principle. By aligning their business strategies with the principles of sustainability, they are not only contributing to a greener future but also demonstrating their dedication to responsible corporate citizenship.
Becoming sustainable
Targeting from luxury to value segment, most of the retailers and brands in India are focusing on nearly all the areas where they can save resources. This includes the use of sustainable raw materials, thrust on sustainable and best manufacturing practices in their manufacturing set-ups as well as in their vendor base and support to their staff as well as the society. Their entire operations right from sourcing to delivery are integrated in a way that has a minimum negative impact on the environment.
For example, Reliance Retail, with its fashion and lifestyle business of over 3,100 stores with a presence in over 1,000 cities, has made a capital investment of approximately Rs. 7.73 crore in various energy conservation initiatives like efficient HVAC equipment at stores/sites. The company’s design strategy is charted to have minimal impact on forest and conventional resources. This is guided by the core principles of sustainable circular economy reduction in consumption of packaging material/ packaging material waste; multiple-use packaging instead of single-use/one-time-use packaging; converting waste packaging into materials for new packaging items.
Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABRFL), which has 3,977 stores and covers almost all the segments of apparel retail, is among the few top retailers that have their proper annual sustainability report and it was declared Asia’s ‘Most Sustainable Company in the Textile, Apparel and Luxury Goods Industry’ by S&P Global CSA for a second consecutive year. Just to mention in brief its environmental achievements in FY ’22, 61 per cent of its products by volume had at least one out of five sustainability attributes. The company also added 33 per cent renewable energy to its energy mix across operations against the target of 35 per cent. On the water and waste front, it exceeded its targets. Against ReEarth mission of 2025, the retail giant is already water positive and ensures that no waste gets disposed to landfill from any of its operations. Against the company’s commitment of using 100 per cent sustainable packaging material by 2025, it has already achieved over 86 per cent.
Retailers also focus on using sustainable raw materials, adopting Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) and taking a variety of steps to ensure the betterment of mental and physical health and well-being of their employees. One of the best examples is Shoppers Stop. Its project Ecoliva is about using sustainable raw materials like viscose rayon and bamboo and further focus is on collections made with ‘zero discharge’ of water as part of its line of sustainable clothing. The company has around 29 per cent women in its workforce, with a much higher representation of 39 per cent in corporate service offices. In the last financial year, it had one per cent of people working with persons with disability and LGBTQIA+ community and the company is increasing its emphasis on the same. It has a policy of ‘No Questions Asked’ menstrual leave for the female workforce, to promote a healthy and supportive workplace.
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There are retailers which also focus on sustainable logistics like Tata Trent has shifted from diesel-based trucks to CNG, increased the size of the trucks to reduce the number of trucks travelling and opened regional distribution centres to optimise logistics.
It has also adopted a few interesting initiatives like it is using smart lighting for stores, maximising the use of rooftop space for solar electricity generation and achieving complete circularity of waste from stores, distribution centres and corporate offices.
‘Bag of Love’ is another interesting initiative of the company. In association with Bhansali Trust, it has built an institute in Radhanpur village of Gujarat. The lower-income household women of this village and 150 neighbouring villages were trained to stitch by Trent employees and experts. Once the women passed the training exam, they were employed to make bags for Tata’s retail ventures like Westside, Zudio. So far more than 1.5 million bags have been made and 1.1 million metres of fabric have been diverted from landfills.
Apart from the above-mentioned top retailers, few of the value apparel retailers have an aggressive approach to sustainability. V-Mart, with 423 stores, reused 61 per cent of its packaging cartons in 2021-22, 80 per cent of its recycled material were used for packing. It is also having sustainable lines of clothing (1.9 per cent of the total procurement of the identified category of Spring/Summer ’22 was acquired from sustainable sources). While more streamlined logistics through collaborative location delivery help reduce fuel consumption and the cost of transportation, it also has a focus on education and sports, plantation drive in its CSR activities.
Sellers’ Instagram taking lead in sustainability
With the growing popularity of Instagram as a business platform and the youth’s thrust on sustainability, there are many emerging labels doing reasonably good business by just selling through Instagram. Instagram stores are gaining enormous popularity due to the access that they provide.
Doodlage, Ka-Sha, B Label India, The Terra Tribe, Grandma Would Approve are among the few labels growing on Instagram.
Along with a strong focus on sustainability, such labels/ brands’ overall presentation and strong design aspects are the major reasons behind their growth. At the same time, enhancing visibility with engaging visuals also contribute to the brands’ popularity on the Instagram platform. Audience resonate well with brands sharing authentic stories about their offerings.
Also Read : Indian apparel industry taking lead in green manufacturing
E-retailers equally concerned
E-retailers are also taking the lead in various sustainable, employee-friendly and CSR activities and this covers a large gamut of activities right from moving away from the use of plastic in its packaging.
Walmart-owned e-commerce giant Flipkart has introduced recycled and sustainable materials as part of achieving a target of zero wastage. Having reduced the use of plastic packaging across India, the company is phasing out non-sustainable materials completely from its Maharashtra supply chain.
Swapping poly pouches with recycled paper bags, bubble wraps and airbags with shredded carton waste and two-ply roll and using eco-friendly paper shreds, Flipkart is also supporting its vendors in similar efforts. The e-commerce giant has many MoUs with various State Governments and other organisations
to support the state’s crafts, products and artisans.
Flipkart and Myntra also commit to responsible sourcing of sustainable packaging and man-made cellulosic fibres, and for the same, they have collaborated with not-for-profit environmental organisation Canopy. Both of them have joined Canopy’s Pack4Good and CanopyStyle initiatives to extend their commitment towards sustainability and conserve forests by moving towards incorporating sustainable packaging and material sourcing.
Myntra’s one-year partnership with LENZING™ ECOVERO™ is also marked by 60 per cent adoption of eco-fibre in its in-house brands. Myntra’s viscose-based apparel is made largely of LENZING™ ECOVERO™ branded speciality viscose fibre, an environmentally responsible viscose that is certified with the EU Ecolabel and produced using an eco-responsible process.
Bengaluru-based Meesho, India’s leading social commerce platform, has come up with a few interesting initiatives in the last two years like it has started a 30-week gender-neutral parental leave policy. It moves away from gender-based differentiation to parenting and rolls out equal benefits for men, women, LGBTQA+ and live-in partners. Notably, the new parental leave policy covers childbirth, adoption and surrogacy. In another move, it started a boundaryless workplace model that allows its employees the choice to work from home, office or any other location. It announced an 11-day companywide break for its employees; this ‘Reset and Recharge’ allowed the employees to completely unplug from work and put their mental well-being on priority.Not only established corporate retailers or e-commerce giants having a large amount of funding are into such interesting initiatives, even strongly emerging retailers are following similar polices. Jaipur-based leading brand JaipurKurti.com (Nandani Creation Limited) has one-day period (menstrual) leave policy for its women employees, amounting to a total of 12 leaves annually. These leaves will be over and above the regular leaves and holidays.
Retailers/brands’ noble activities are associated with their product launches. WROGN, an apparel brand for men co-created by Virat Kohli, launched a limited-edition capsule in collaboration with the Virat Kohli Foundation. Together, three celebrities – Virat Kohli (Cricketer); Karan Johar (Filmmaker) and Badshah (Rapper) have created an initiative that blends fashion and philanthropy to support sports welfare and animal welfare through the Virat Kohli Foundation. The proceeds from this collection will be donated to the cause supported by the foundation. There are many such examples where capsule collection or sustainable clothing line have been launched with a specific purpose.
A lot more to do for many
Through the above-mentioned achievements, retailers have proven that the Indian apparel retail scenario is much ahead in sustainability and CSR, but at the same time, a lot more is yet to be done, especially as there are several old brands that have more than 200 EBOs and own manufacturing set-ups and being public limited companies, their information is also in the public domain. But these companies just follow the law of the land and nothing beyond that. Many well-known brands and retailers don’t have any prescribed mechanism for sustainable sourcing.
Almost 11 years ago, M&S opened its first sustainable store in India. Spread across three floors, the store hosts a range of sustainable construction and design features to reduce energy usage and waste. However, hardly any Indian brand or retailer has such a strong focus on sustainability in stores. Indian retailers are now focused on using carry bags having pre-consumer waste textiles, compostable biodegradable polybags, but there are many more sustainable steps that should be included in their stores.
