Prioritising the use of innovative, recycled or organically and regeneratively farmed raw materials is key to transforming our industry, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and making responsible use of water and energy.

Creativity and disruption by design are essential aspects of our Sustainability Innovation Hub, the platform we use to search for better materials and processes, teaming up with startups and forging strategic research alliances with leaders from the chemicals industry, innovation accelerators and benchmark partners.

Through that platform we are working to scale up new types of recycled fibres through offtake commitments, such as Infinna™, a recycled fibre made from cotton-rich textile waste, and cycora®, recycled polyester made from textile waste. We are also making direct investments in startups:

/ CIRC, which has developed ground-breaking technology that will enable industrial-scale recycling of textiles made from poly-cotton blends, one of the biggest challenges facing our industry.

/ Infinited Fiber, a startup specialised in recycling cellulose fibres.

/ Galy, which has devised innovative technology for growing cotton in a lab using cotton plant stem cells.

Best available technologies and measures to reduce enviromental impact

Responsible water management and consumption, the proper handling of waste and safe use of chemical products are the three cornerstones of this plan. To achieve our goal of reducing water consumption in our supply chain by 25% this year, we are working with our suppliers on optimising their wet processes, ensuring efficient consumption at every step and for each type of fibre, as well as the reuse of waste water. We are also working with ZDHC to make progress on the safety of the chemical products used. By 2027, 95% of the substances used by the factories in our supply chain must be ZDHC-certified. To facilitate this transition, we are supporting and accompanying our suppliers, a programme that includes the provision of expert advice. This support will include personalised decarbonisation plans, training and tools. A good example is our Best Available Techniques (BAT) Guide, which contains detailed information about practices with a lower impact than conventional practices.

TExecution of our roadmap is predicated on constant collaboration with our suppliers and a rigorous monitoring system to guarantee transparency and encourage continuous improvement. Our alliance with the International Apparel Federation to work with business organisations, brands and other players on the transformation of global supply chains in the textile and garment industry is one example.

We continuously review our stores and entire distribution chain to see what mechanisms and ideas can be introduced to reduce our impact on the planet.

We mainly use ocean freight and ground transportation and we rely on air freight to cover intercontinental distances for which other modes are not effective. Moreover, thanks to the fact that a very significant percentage of our garments are made in countries located near to our head offices and distribution centres, mainly Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Turkey, we are able to minimise the distances travelled in procuring our products.

We are working with our logistics partners to make each shipment more efficient by maximising the use of space and consolidating loads to prevent empty trips. We are propelling the use of high-capacity vehicles such as duo-trailers that have the ability to reduce emissions per trip by 30%. We are also promoting multimodal transportation, combining train and ground transportation to reduce our environmental footprint. In ocean freight, which represents the majority of our imports, our goal is to have 90% of trips use alternative fuels as early as this year, reducing the related emissions by over 80%. We have also signed agreements for the use of sustainable fuels for our air freight, another aspect of our effort to move towards more efficient logistics.

The efficiency of this procurement and distribution model, coupled our integrated stock management system, allows us to minimise the volume of surplus end-of-season stock: less than 1% of all items put on sale.

We continue to work to improve our renewable energy management and purchase mechanisms. All of our facilities (head offices, distribution centres, factories and owned stores) have been consuming 100% renewable energy since 2022, reducing our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 88%. Moreover, some of our flagship stores and all of our logistics facilities boast the most prestigious green building seals.

As part of our circular economy commitments, in 2020 we stopped giving customers plastic bags (in our stores or with online deliveries) and we eliminated 95% of the single-use plastic ending up in customers’ hands in 2023. We actively encourage our customers to bring their own shopping bags and discourage the use of new materials by charging for shopping bags in our stores. Thanks to this measure, the Group managed to reduce the consumption of new paper bags by over 50% in 2024, earmarking a sum equivalent to the money collected through the sale of bags to environmental initiatives in over 30 countries in partnership with entities of the calibre of WWF (with whom the Group is collaborating on 14 projects for the restoration of ecosystems and protection of threatened fauna all over the world), Water.org, an organisation we are working with to improve water and sanitation infrastructure in several countries in Southeast Asia, and the regional government of Galicia, with whom we are working to prevent forest fires in north-east Spain.

Our responsibility does not end at our facilities. We want to help our customers to extend the life of their garments. That was behind our decision to launch Zara Pre-Owned in 2022, a pioneering platform which offers repairs, person-to-person sales and the possibility of donating used clothing. Zara Pre-Owned is now available in 16 European markets and the US. We also offer our customers the possibility of depositing their used clothing, footwear and accessories in containers in our stores for subsequent reuse and recycling in partnership with non-profits.

WIn 2024, we supported 953 social and environmental projects, in which we invested €135 million. These initiatives directly benefitted more than 4.6 million people. Our goal is to help 10 million people by 2025.

Through strategic alliances and support programmes with over 450 organisations, the company strives to have a positive impact on multiple communities, locally and globally. These projects notably include initiatives for improving access to health services under agreements with MSF, Medicus Mundi and Every Mother Counts, among others; for integrating people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups through our for&from stores and work with NGOs such as Caritas and Entreculturas; and for fostering education and research, through stable collaborations the University of Coruña, MIT and Tshingua University, among many other universities.

Biodiversity is what allows our ecosystems to work, playing a crucial role in water purification, soil fertility, crop pollination and climate regulation. That is why we have committed to protect, restore, regenerate or otherwise improve biodiversity across 5 million hectares. In the biodiversity protection field we are working with Conservation International on the Regenerative Fund for Nature to help scale up regenerative farming and breeding practices and on Mountains to Mangroves, a project for conserving and restoring the Eastern Himalayas region, an ecosystem than represents a twelfth of all biodiversity on the planet.