Zara, using the excuse of sustainability, even charges for paper bags.

Rather than being an advantage for everyone, this choice proclaimed as green is a detriment for the customers of this very popular brand.

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Zara is one of the most popular fashion brands among young people, also due to its prices, which are always considered competitive compared to the quality of the garments. But precisely to make the most of this popularity, the owners of Zara have thought it a good idea to ride the tiger of (false) sustainability, and with the excuse of green They even charge for the paper bag where the purchased items are placed. As if Zara customers were at the supermarket. The mini-sting arrives quietly, when it's time to pay the bill. The kind cashier prepares the receipt, rings up the individual items purchased, and finally, before reciting the total price, asks the trick question: The answer is obvious, since we're talking about clothing products, which are often bulky: Yes, please.

But what the cashier doesn't say, and the customer doesn't know, is a not entirely irrelevant detail: The envelope costs money, you pay. It's not free., as has always happened, especially in some shops. In this case from Zara, a leading clothing chain that has millions of customers entering its stores every day. And they silently pay their tax. That is, 0,15 cents for a paper bag (obviously recyclable, the company is keen to point out) and 0,25 for an envelope, always made of paper, but in a gift version. Maybe with an extra ribbon. Wasted paper, like on many other occasions that at least don't have the nerve to show up with the label of the sustainability.

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The most paradoxical thing about this opaque mechanism of yet another tax on the shoulders of the consumer, in fact, is that these paper bags, from Zara as from other companies in the sector, are presented as . Where one forgets that the sustainability It cannot be an additional cost for consumers and a lever to invent revenues out of thin air. More than sustainability, here we are in the presence of a textbook case of greenwashing, which, following in the footsteps of large groups like Zara, many small and medium-sized companies tend to follow. And don't be fooled by the low figures, 0,15 cents per bag: as Totò used to say, it's the sum that makes the total. And you need to multiply that 0,15 cents per bag by all the times you enter a store and they charge you for a shopping bag, from Zara to supermarkets (where we've always recommended using a cloth bag), and by the number of consumers in your situation. The totals demonstrate the waste that is consumed every year under the banner of sustainability, to the detriment of consumers and to the benefit of companies that use the label green they discovered another way to make money. Not exactly transparent.

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