Industria de Diseño Textil (Inditex)

Sustainability strategy and accountability
The company provides evidence of linking its directors’ remuneration policy to increasing the number of sustainable items measured against parameters such as responsible sourcing of raw materials, water discharge audits, waste reduction and packaging materials. Moreover, the company discloses its materiality matrix, which shows its 20 most relevant sustainability impacts and discloses a timeline for each topic as well as accompanying documents.

Stakeholder engagement
Inditex discloses its strategy for engaging with stakeholders, which begins with an identification and prioritisation process. The company discloses its identified main stakeholder groups and how often and through which channels it engages with each. The company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, including biodiversity, and social issues.

Water
Inditex has a commitment to respect the right to water. The company requires access to water and sanitation, including refraining from negatively affecting access to safe water, to be included in contractual arrangements with its business relationships, and it works with its business relationships to improve their practices regarding access to water and sanitation. Furthermore, the company reports how much water is withdrawn for its own operations in water-stressed areas.

Solid and air pollution
Inditex discloses the proportion of hazardous waste treated to reduce pollution compared to total waste, the hazardous waste diverted from disposal and the waste directed to disposal. Additionally, the company is reducing plastic use and waste in its own operations.

GHG emissions
Inditex has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and is successfully reducing its scope 1 and 2 emissions. The company’s emission reduction targets, covering all three scopes, are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
The company requires its business relationships to identify and recognise affected Indigenous Peoples and to obtain their free, prior and informed consent regarding whether and how to carry out projects.

Sustainability strategy and accountability
Inditex discloses some sustainability-related targets, such as emissions reduction targets. However, no further group-wide targets on key sustainability topics for the most material parts of its value chain could be found. Moreover, the company does not disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise regarding nature-related topics.

Stakeholder engagement
Inditex does not disclose an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities.

Lobbying
Inditex discloses some evidence about its lobbying and advocacy practices. However, no further evidence regarding how these practices are linked to nature-related issues or whether they align with the company’s sustainability strategy could be found.

Impact and dependencies assessment
Inditex has not holistically assessed its impacts or how it depends on nature, including biodiversity. It has an opportunity to start such an assessment across its value chains, focused on quantification of its impacts or dependencies.

Key areas and species
Inditex does not disclose the locations of its suppliers that are in or adjacent to areas important for biodiversity. Moreover, the company does not disclose species populations existing in or adjacent to its own locations or the locations of its suppliers. Inditex also does not disclose the status according to national and international conservation lists of species identified in its own locations.

Ecosystem conversion and restoration
The company does not have a commitment to ensure zero conversion or time-bound targets to achieve conversion-free supply chains. Moreover, the company is not committed to restoring ecosystems. While Inditex reports on some restoration projects in Galicia, it does not disclose details and outcomes of ecosystem restoration projects in areas affected by its own operations or by its suppliers.

Resource exploitation and circularity
While Inditex discloses some inputs, including its fossil fuel consumption, it does not provide a clear and central overview of all the materials used, both renewable and non-renewable, or its full material footprint. Additionally, the company does not disclose any efforts to improve soil health or report quantitatively on its group-wide circularity performance.

Water
While Inditex discloses a target to reduce its water consumption in its supply chain by 25%, it does not disclose a time-bound target to reduce water withdrawal across its own operations. Moreover, it does not disclose how it engages with suppliers to reduce water withdrawal. Inditex also does not report a decrease in water pollution or any targets to reduce water pollution. It does not disclose its processes for managing and monitoring discharge water quality or its processes for implementing preventive and corrective action plans for identified specific risks to the right to water and sanitation in its own operations.

Solid and air pollution
Inditex discloses that it complies with hazardous substance regulation but does not report a reduction in the production of hazardous substances. Moreover, the company does not commit to avoid developing or marketing new chemicals or products with SVHC (substance of very high concern) properties. While the company reports the amount of plastic waste generated, it does not disclose the proportions directed from or to disposal. The company does not report on air quality parameters of emissions of harmful air pollutants or report any time-bound targets to reduce air pollutants across the most material parts of its value chain.

GHG emissions
Inditex has a time-bound target to reduce its scope 3 emissions but does not report progress against this target.

Invasive species
Inditex has not identified any activities that could lead to the introduction of IAS in its own operations.

Safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
Inditex does not disclose a commitment to respect local communities’ right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment or to zero tolerance for acts of violence, threats, intimidation or judicial harassment committed against land and environmental rights defenders.

Indigenous Peoples’ and land rights
Inditex does not disclose a commitment to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Moreover, it does not disclose its processes for identifying and recognising the rights of Indigenous Peoples when activities in its own operations may impact their rights, nor does it describe how it obtains Indigenous Peoples’ free, prior and informed consent.

While Inditex describes its process for identifying human rights risks and impacts in its business relationships, there is no evidence that it has a similar process for its own operations. Moreover, while the company publicly discloses the results of its human rights risk assessments, aggregated across its operations and locations, there is no evidence that the company has a global system to take action on its human rights risks and impacts. However, it does disclose categories of stakeholders whose human rights have been or may be affected by its activities. Moreover, the company engages with these stakeholders.

Inditex has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respect the health and safety of its own workers and expecting its suppliers to do the same. There is no evidence that the company discloses a time-bound target for paying all its workers a living wage or that it has achieved paying all its workers a living wage, but it does describe how it works to support the payment of a living wage by its suppliers. Moreover, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, it describes how it works to support the practices of its suppliers in relation to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

Inditex takes steps to identify and address bribery and corruption but does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with business relationships. Moreover, while the company discloses a global tax strategy, it does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement in a public policy document.