Zara, the largest global fashion brand, wants to save the planet one guilt-free blouson at a time. Jesus Echevarria, its chief communications and corporate affairs officer, tells Nicola Watson how it’s done.
Zara wants to be sustainable at every production stage.
It practises Right To Wear, a code of conduct which ensures that the Spanish high-street giant, from design to factory to shop floor, operates as sustainably as possible.
It explores every nook and cranny of the whole brand machine: from the composition of materials and chemicals used (Zara has a pre-approved list of ecofriendly ones) to the factory emissions, workers’ safety, minimum wage, and ensuring the least amount of fabric wastage.
Designers find ways to fully utilise the materials for each garment, and factory staff who process the cutting stage try to fit as many segmented pieces of a garment as possible into one sheet ready for the cutting machine.
Fabric scraps – not cable ties, rope or ribbon – bind garment pieces together, ready for the sewing machines. Staff must also detail how many of each garment are sold before more orders can be placed.
“A full-time team whose sole purpose is to audit these key elements also ensures the brand’s ethos is consistently upheld,” says Echevarria.
It uses recycled materials as much as possible.
Earlier this year, Zara launched Join Life – a capsule collection which focuses on fashion made from recycled and eco-friendly materials.
For instance, the cotton used is ecologically grown, produced using practices that help to protect biodiversity.
These practices include crop rotation and choosing natural fertilisers. Zara aims to increase the amount of cotton – an oft-used material – that comes from more environmentally and socially sustainable sources.
In conventional recycling, textile scraps are ground up and mixed with pure fibres in order to create new fabrics.
Currently, only a certain amount of second-hand clothing can be transformed into new fabrics. So, Zara is collaborating with entities like Caritas, the Red Cross, MIT and its own providers to develop new tech that will allow it to recycle more garments in the future.
It doesn’t do fur “We are a part of the Fur Free Alliance and have been furfree for more than 20 years,” says Echevarria.
Its worldwide stores are constructed and run on four pillars, one being sustainability
To ensure each store cuts 30 per cent of emissions and saves 50 per cent of water by 2020, Zara plans to install new software to measure air and water wastage, and provide methods to lower these figures.
