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While it’s great for delivering up to the minute trends, it’s no secret that fast fashion isn’t doing any favors for the planet. Do you ever think about what it takes for that off-the-runway item to appear in stores in a matter of weeks? Where are the materials coming from? And who is making the clothes? And what happens to them after the trend has quickly come and gone? We can answer that last one: According to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, a whopping 92 million tons of solid waste from fast fashion ends up in landfills every year. Unfortunately, that’s not all. A study by the Ellen McArthur Foundation discovered that one entire garbage truck of textiles is wasted every second. Plus, fashion is the second biggest consumer of water. While clothing production has gone into overdrive, people aren’t wearing pieces for nearly as long.
Enter Zara’s new sustainability pledge. The Spanish fast fashion retailer’s parent company, Inditex, just revealed it at their annual shareholders' meeting on July 16. Inditex is the third largest clothing company in the world, with eight brands in their portfolio: Zara, Zara Home, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, Bershka, Uterqüe, Oysho and Stradivarius. All of them have committed to the pledge, which promise that 100 percent of the cotton, linen and polyester they use will either be more sustainable, organic or recycled by 2025. These fabrics account for 90 percent of all raw materials used by their brands.
"[We] are highly focused on making clothes in a responsible, sustainable way, that limits the impact on the environment and [which] challenges ourselves to continually work as hard as we can to improve how we manufacture," Marta Ortega, daughter of Inditex founder Amancio Ortega, told Vogue. "It’s something that we all feel really passionately about as individuals, as well as in a work capacity. [We are] always looking for ways in which we can do better: working on new technologies, new ways to work with recycled materials, and helping create new fabrics that our designers, as well as others in the industry, can work with in the future. It’s the right thing to do, both morally and commercially, and it's an approach that we’re absolutely committed to."
Their promise doesn’t end there. Inditex vowed for all of their head offices to earn the top green certifications for buildings, as well as for all of their stores to be more ecologically efficient, implementing using 80 percent renewable energy across the company. By next year, they aim to end the use of plastic bags, which they have already done at Zara, Zara Home, Massimo Dutti and Uterqüe. And by 2023, their goal is to send 100% of waste from their offices and stores for reuse or recycling.
Instead of tossing their clothes in the garbage when a trend has lost its luster, starting in 2020 customers can bring their used clothing into stores and drop it off in containers, where it will later be sorted for recycling, charity or reused. This can save literally tons of clothes from going to landfills, as Zara introduces an average 500 new designs every week.
While being eco-conscious is nothing new for some brands that are synonymous with the ethos, like Stella McCartney and Reformation, this is a major step in sustainability for fast fashion. Like any good fashion trend, hopefully it will spark lots of copycats.
