What is zara doing to be more sustainable?

As a fashion brand, Zara has made a name for itself by democratizing the latest clothing styles for consumers at an affordable price. But the rapid pace of that trend-driven business model, known as "fast fashion," can come at high environmental and social costs.

Last week, Zara's parent company, Inditex, announced its plans to grow more sustainable.

The fast-fashion giant pledged that by 2025, all of its eight brands will only use cotton, linen and polyester that's organic, sustainable or recycled, which is 90% of the raw materials its uses. CEO and executive chairman Pablo Isla said that renewable sources will power 80% of the energy consumed by the conglomerate's distribution centers, offices and stores. It also plans to transition to zero landfill waste.

It's a significant step for a company that churns out 500 new designs per week, says Elizabeth L. Cline, the author of two books on the impact of fast fashion.

"What they're doing is they're sourcing materials that do have a better environmental profile," she says. "These are materials that use less water, less energy, less chemicals to produce."

Cline says the move sends a powerful message down the supply chain to manufacturers about being more green.

Still, Cline cautions that the announcement should be taken with a grain of salt, arguing that fast fashion and sustainability are inherently incompatible.

Cline says that even if Zara is using materials that are more ethically sourced or have a lower environmental impact, the vast majority of the carbon footprint of fashion comes from the manufacturers who supply brands with their materials. When a business is built on a fast turnover of styles, making those products still swallows a lot of energy, regardless of whether it's using organic cotton or selling products in more eco-efficient stores.

"The business model will have to change and evolve for them to operate sustainably," she says.

Agriculturally, growing cotton impacts soil health, carbon emissions and water consumption, says Mark Sumner, who lectures on fashion and sustainability at the University of Leeds in England. Polyester, a popular and cheap synthetic material in fast fashion, requires the oil industry's extraction and refinement of petroleum, processes known to fuel climate change. Then there's the energy-intensive processes of converting that raw material into wearable garments. Dying the fabric can also introduce harmful chemicals.

"When we add up all of those different impacts we then start to get to see a picture of those environmental issues associated with clothing," he says.

What complicates things even more, says Sumner, is that depending on who you ask, the definition of sustainability can vary.

"The fashion industry isn't actually just one industry, it's a whole raft of other industries that are used and exploited to deliver the garments that we're wearing now," he says in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered.

Which is why Cline thinks any excitement over Inditex's announcement needs to be tempered.

"They're acting overly confident about a subject that we're still figuring out," she says. "We are still gathering data. We are still figuring out best practices. So for Zara to kind of come out of the gate and say we're going to be sustainable by 2025 belies the long road ahead of us that we have on sustainability and fashion."

Inditex is committing $3.5 million to researching textile recycling technology under a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an investment Cline supports.

At the same time, Cline says it can't be up to the fast-fashion industry alone. Consumers and government regulators have a role to play too.

Inditex's announcement is a response to consumer pressure, Cline says. "We're in the midst of a consumer-led revolution in fashion sustainability."

Unfortunately, she says, a big part of that movement is tilted toward greenwashing — a term that refers to a deceptive marketing ploy in which companies spend more effort on its eco-consciousness image than actually being eco-conscious.

The fact that Zara's parent company has gone public with its sustainability targets is a good sign, Sumner says.

Following our extensive sustainable brand criteria, each brand will receive scores for transparency, maker well-being, environmental sustainability, material sustainability, and leadership. In order for a brand to be considered sustainable, they need to score at least 50 points.

We’ll go over the good, the bad, and where there is room for improvement. The brand we’re holding to the fire this week? Zara.

Zara is a fast fashion pioneer. New inventory comes in so quickly that a shopper is likely to get a completely new shopping experience each time they walk into a store.

Recently, Zara has been making an effort to boost its sustainability image with the launch of its Join Life movement. This launch includes sustainability commitments, ethical goals, and, of course, a product line. But has this recent effort been enough to make Zara a sustainable brand?

Let’s see how they stacked up.

For transparency, Zara scored just below 50%. Not great.

The good: Zara’s parent company was one of the more transparent fast fashion brands when it came to supply chain traceability. They mandate all subcontractors receive safety audits and participate in a continual review process that allows for contracts to be terminated if a factory consistently fails to make improvements.

They also have, “collaboratively design[ed] specific programs on the subjects of health and safety, worker participation, training and awareness, a living wage, responsible purchasing practices, migrant protection, and women’s empowerment.”

The bad: Almost all of the actual information on Zara’s site links to their parent company: Inditex. While that isn’t inherently a bad thing, it can be difficult to find information specific to Zara on the Inditex website. The company doesn’t provide a detailed enough factory list and the results of their audits are not publicly available.

Zara received a 10/33 for maker well-being. While they have begun taking steps to improve the working conditions of their workers, with Zara’s size and profitability, there’s really no excuse for them to be so far behind other brands.

Zara has a solid code of conduct. Their audits ensure that the code is enforced and allow termination if companies can’t live up to their standard. Additionally, there is some evidence that Zara is working on collaborative well-being and education initiatives.

As much as we’d hoped that Zara would’ve implemented well-being initiatives at their factories, their website suggests otherwise. Less than half of their factories implement these programs, which means that half of their factory employees don’t receive the support they need. Not cool.

At Eco-Stylist, we don’t applaud half-assed effort. Put in the effort, Zara, and maybe you’ll earn an A.

Zara scored just below 50% for environmental sustainability.

Zara has recently publicized a list of environmental commitments. These goals span the next five years and include everything from water conservation to reducing waste in landfills. They’ve also worked to ban some harmful chemicals in production.

The main issue with Zara’s environmental policy is lack of transparency. They fail to disclose the number of resources that go into their production. This makes it difficult to determine how impactful their sustainability goals can truly be.

The good: Zara has a policy for animal protection.

The bad: to get the points in this section, Zara needs to be producing over 50% of their material sustainably and in ways that protect the human rights of producers. The company simply isn’t there.

This is a difficult category to score points in. Even many of our most sustainable brands struggle to get full credit.

That being said, Zara falls far behind truly sustainable brands. Their “sustainable” clothing is such a small portion of their products that it’s impossible for it to make meaningful change. They’re also still promoting the mass consumerism that feeds into fast fashion, and is inherently unsustainable.

Zara’s current business practices fall abysmally short, scoring them a measly 34 points. Come on, Zara–I was rooting for you! We were all rooting for you! Let’s hope their sustainability goals improve their score in the future… for now, they receive a failing grade from us.

Want to see other brands we’ve put to the test? Check out our first brand in #fiveweeksoffails: Express.

Zara claims that as of 2022, 50% of their entire collection meets the Join Life standards. It sounds great, but what does this actually mean?

First off, even with Join Life, Zara still isn’t paying their clothing makers living wages or providing strong evidence via certifications (or other means) that they have an ethical supply chain. Second, while their use of sustainable fabrics is improving over time, it’s hardly ground breaking.

At the end of the day, Zara is still a fast fashion brand, promoting fashion overconsumption and the belief that clothes are disposable. They try hard to create FOMO so consumers will keep coming back to buy clothes they don’t need. We recommend avoiding Zara.

As noted, not only is Zara a fast fashion brand but they are one of the inventors of the business model. Zara and H&M really helped create the fast fashion business model, which has made the whole fashion industry less sustainable overall.

Learn more about the problems with fast fashion here.

Want to dig even deeper into Zara’s ethics and sustainability? Check out our video:

The team at Eco-Stylist put together our top 3 favorite alternatives to Zara. Click each one to see their brand rating or to shop.

For more Zara swaps check out our ethical brand guide for 90+ good brands.

We have ambitious sustainable targets for our key raw materials. Our move to innovative, organic or recycled raw materials is a key path to transform our industry, reduce our emissions and use clean energy and water. Circularity goes hand in hand with great design.

Zara may be one of the biggest retailers on the planet, but how sustainable is it, and does it use ethical practises?

The fashion brand, which is owned by Inditex, has almost 3,000 stores in 96 countries, with new stock arriving every week to keep consumers coming back for more.

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Everyone from celebrities Alexa Chung and Rosie Huntington-Whitely counts themselves fans of the brand, so it’s not surprising that Zara was valued at almost £14 billion in 2022.

Despite the retailer’s profits suffering from the effects of the pandemic in 2020, it still appears to be reigning supreme when it comes to the high street.

Here, we take a look at the brand’s ethics, sustainability and position on animal welfare.

Zara recently published a sustainability manifesto on its website under the slogan, ‘Working towards sustainability.’

This manifesto highlights what work Zara has been putting in to become more sustainable in 2020, including:

It also highlights their goals in the future for 2023, 2025 and 2040. You can read it in full here.

Zara operates with a business model not too dissimilar to fast-fashion brands such as Pretty Little Thing, Nasty Gal and Boohoo.

The brand releases an incredible 24 trend-led collections every year, 500 designs a week and almost 20,000 per year, which in turn leads consumers to see their clothes as disposable and adds to even more waste from the garment industry that ends up in a landfill.

However, it was reported that the brand had suffered a 44% slump in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zara announced it was closing 1,200 of its stores around the world, thus reducing energy consumption – albeit out of necessity, not a choice.

Of course, Zara’s fast fashion business model can never be environmentally friendly as manufacturing so many new garments create huge amounts of waste every year.

This goes some way to explain why the average American is estimated to throw away 37kg of clothes each year, 85% of which will end up in landfill or be burned.

However, Inditex, the company that owns Zara, pledged to create all of its collections from 100% sustainable fabrics by 2025.

They also claimed that 80% of the energy consumed in Zara’s headquarters, factories and stores will be from renewable sources by the same year and its facilities will produce zero landfill waste.

Inditex, which also owns brands Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Bershka and Stradivarius, also started a repair and reuse program called Closing The Loop in 2016, which allows shoppers to drop off used garments in-store or through the post to be recycled, while their packaging is also recycled.

Dow Jones named the fashion group as the most sustainable retailer from 2016 to 2018, and Zara also launched their Join Life range in 2016, which is made using recycled materials.

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But despite the well-meaning steps, Zara has been criticised for failing to catch up with other brands. Their Join Life range accounts for such a small percentage of their collections that it fails to have much of an impact on the brand as a whole, and as such a large company, many feel there’s no excuse.

Zara’s transparency has also been called into question, as they fail to disclose the number of resources that go into production.

The brand, along with over 100 others, has also been linked to Amazon Deforestation. According to Slow Factory, ‘none of these brands are deliberately choosing deforestation leather’ but they do continue to work with manufacturers that source their materials from opaque supply chains.

You can learn more about the fashion brands that have indirectly contributed to Amazon deforestation and what you can do about it here.

The brand’s efforts to be transparent in its sustainability practices have also been questioned. A study of the top fast-fashion websites in the UK done last year reportedly revealed that 60% of environmental claims in these sites, including Zara’s, could be considered ‘misleading’.

Changing Markets Foundation said that many of these brands use the words ‘sustainable’, ‘low-impact’, ‘eco’, and ‘recycled’ but 59% of them do not live up to the Competition and Market Authority’s (CMA) guidelines on avoiding greenwashing — the list was topped by H&M but also included Zara.

It’s important to note the working conditions and wages of Zara’s staff.

Who can forget their unpaid factory workers from Turkey, who said they were left with ‘no choice’ but to sew hidden messages into clothing for customers to find?

They were hired by manufacturer Bravo Tekstil, who produced clothes for Zara, before closing down in 2016.

Unfortunately the garment workers did not get paid for the three months up to the company’s closure, until Inditex worked with a trade union and other retailers including Mango and Next to establish a ‘hardship fund’ to help the group of Turkish workers.

Since the bad publicity, Zara have started to improve the working conditions of their workers.

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They have a code of conduct that protects workers, and audits take place to ensure this is enforced. Zara also publish a list of suppliers, information of supplier audits and on gender equality, forced labour and freedom of association.

However, Zara still fails to pay a living wage across its supply chain – despite such a huge profit margin.

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They also fail to disclose evidence that their well-being programs are present at half of their factories, which suggests many workers are left unsupported.

In 2020, over 100 workers lost their jobs at the Huabo Times factory in Myanmar, which produces clothes for Zara, after forming a union. One worker claimed that they worked 10-hour days, six days a week and were regularly expected to work overtime to make enough money. Workers at the factory make around $3 per day, or £2.44.

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Meanwhile, the founder of Inditex, Don Amancio Ortega, is the sixth wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of over £59 billion.

As for the COVID-19 pandemic, Zara discloses policies in place to protect workers and suppliers in its supply chain from the impacts of Covid-19. In August 2020, it was reported that Inditex had pledged to maintain workers’ rights throughout their supply chains and the stability of payments to suppliers during the crisis.

The group had previously signed a joint agreement with global workers’ union IndustriALL, and during the pandemic, they reiterated their commitment to ensuring health and safety standards were met, and bargaining rights and workers’ rights to unionise were maintained throughout their supply chains.

Zara also committed to stable payment terms to allow suppliers to honour payments to their workers, ensuring they didn’t lose wages during the pandemic like certain fast fashion retailers’ employees did, such as those for Arcadia.

Zara uses wool, leather, down, and exotic animal hair, but their Animal Welfare Policy does ban fur, angora and animal testing in their clothing products.

Unfortunately Zara provide no evidence it traces any animal products to the first stage of production.

Read their Animal Welfare Policy here.

Last year, people noticed that Shein has dozens of designs that can be considered as Zara dupes. But it’s more than just design that people compare between the two fast fashion brands.

According to the sustainable fashion index, Good On You, Zara’s green and sustainable efforts are not yet good enough. But compared to Shein, Zara has taken steps in creating good supply chain management through their Closing The Loop program.

Shein also received the lowest possible score Good On You has ever given a brand—avoid at all costs.

Like many high-street fashion brands, Zara are working towards becoming more sustainable and ethical – but there’s still a long way to go.

Working at such a huge scale, it seems impossible for the much-loved brand to ever be truly environmentally-friendly, but they could run an ethical business by paying their staff fairly and treating them with respect.

READ MORE: Is sustainable fashion size inclusive? This plus size woman finds out

Despite Zara perhaps being the most popular fast fashion chain in the world, it could also lose its gleam by not thinking sustainably.

Topshop, which was previously part of the Arcadia group and has since been taken over by ASOS, went into administration last year and many were quick to pull apart its lack of ethical and sustainable practises, high price point and failure to innovate for reasons why it went bust. Shoppers are now more savvy than ever before.

However Zara isn’t the only fast fashion brand around. We’ve written a comprehensive list of high street brands which are fast fashion, and explained exactly what fast fashion means here.

READ MORE: I’m giving up fast fashion for 2021 – here’s how it’s going

Wear Next believes it’s important to highlight the negative and unjust practises taking place in the fashion industry. We believe ethics and sustainability are an important talking point to bring about change and we encourage you to contact fashion brands to demand this.

However, we understand that sustainable fashion isn’t accessible to everybody due to various factors, such as budget and the ability to find confidence-boosting clothes that fit. We will continue to offer you fashion inspiration and guidance to suit everybody and their budget, while also highlighting the unjust systems at play in the fashion industry.

We encourage our readers to shop mindfully and purposefully, ditching impulse purchases as a way to start shopping sustainably. If you want to learn more about fast fashion, we recommend books from this reading list.

Would you still shop at Zara? Let us know in the comments below.

In the past sustainable fashion was synonymous with bamboo, beige and basic garments, but recently slow fashion has started to change.

There are plenty of exciting small fashion brands that don’t compromise on style. If you like Zara, we recommend checking out these made-to-order fashion brands.

By Megan Crosby

By Megan Crosby is a small fashion brand by – you guessed it – Megan Crosby.

She designs and hand makes a selection of colourful, playful and beautiful clothes.

Shop her designs at bymegancrosby.com and don’t forget to check out our interview with Megan.

With Love Evie

With Love Evie might be a lesser-known sustainable label, but it’s growing quickly.

Like Megan Crosby, Evie Ashwin designs and hand makes a selection of dresses, tops and trousers in her recognisable heart-printed ginghams and florals.

Shop her designs at withloveevie.co.uk and don’t forget to check out our interview with Evie.

Molby The Label

Molby The Label boasts a whole host of celebrity fans, from Louise Thompson, to Holly Willoughby.

Her recognisable split-colour gingham Tilda dresses are instantly recognisable.

Shop her designs at molbythelabel.com and don’t forget to check out our interview with Karina here.

Omnes

Omnes is a sustainable fashion label with flare, offering style-led sustainable pieces designed in London.

The brand works with a select few fabric producers, ensuring their products as sustainable as possible.

Shop at omnes.com