Collect, reuse, recycle

The items collected are donated to non-profit partners, including Caritas, Red Cross, Oxfam and CEPF, and sorted for repair, resale or recycling; in the case of Caritas this provides jobs for people at risk of social exclusion. The funds raised in the sale of items are kept by our non-profit partners. As another commitment with the Global Fashion Agenda, by 2020 we have established partnerships with over 40 local non-profit organisations for the re-sale of used garments.

Besides, Zara  has a free at-home clothing collection service in several cities in Spain as well as in Shanghai, Beijing, Paris, London and New York.

In our commitment to closed-loop sustainability, we are helping the best in the field develop and improve recycling technology – with the near objective of making new raw materials of equal or better quality than those collected, and creating a closed-loop production cycle. By 2020, we will invest USD 3.5 million in this field, as mentioned in our Global Fashion Agenda commitments. As part of this, we cooperate with Lenzing, the Austrian producer of the plant-based sustainable textile fibre TENCEL™ Lyocell, for the manufacture of premium textile raw materials from our textile waste.

We are also championing research into technology for the creation of new textiles from recycled garments together with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and specific Spanish universities as Vigo University (in cooperation with Clermont, in France), País Vasco, Granada (together with Hamburg, in Germany) and Politécnica de Valencia. 

We also reuse and recycle in our own operations where we can, aiming to achieve our target of zero waste to landfills by 2023. In the last exercice, 91.21% of the Group’s waste (headquarters, logistics centres and Inditex factories) was sent for reuse and recycling. 

Our recycling and reuse activity covers many other areas. For instance, we accounted for 1,302 million tags last year and Zara implemented its “Single Hanger” project in stores all over the world, which consists of one single hanger to transport the garments from the textile suppliers to the stores and subsequent display in the store

The cardboard boxes travelling between our distribution hubs and our stores also have a long life. They carry clothes to our stores and come back with clothes hangers and other materials, making the journey on average six times before they are recycled.

Zara has incorporated in its stores new bags made from 100% recycled and reusable paper, which have have FSC sustainability certification. These new bags reduce the use of ink by more than 70% and saves more than 30% on water consumption during production. In 2020, we will have deleted all the plastic bags in all our brands. 

As part of our Green to Pack project, whose primary objective is to optimise the packaging used throughout the supply chain and reduce waste of any kind as much as possible, the gift envelopes will also be replaced, the design matching the new bags and online order boxes.

We are also innovating so all plastics we do need in any of our activities are designed to be safely reused, recycled, or composted; and circulate everything we use to keep it in the economy and out of the environment, as addresed in the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with UN Environment. By 2023, all single-use plastics will have been totally eliminated for customers sales.

• 14,824 tonnes of garments, shoes and complements collected in our stores, offices and street containers in 2018
• 100% of company waste sent for recycling or appropriate environmental management
• 1,010 million security tags reused, repaired or recycled 
• 110 million hangers recycled