Zara backs down following Greenpeace report

Mannequins hold banners reading: \'No More Fashion Victims\' The world’s largest fashion retailer Zara committed to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire supply chain and products by 2020, following public pressure in response to Greenpeace’s Detox campaign. As part of the breakthrough commitment, Inditex will begin requiring 20 suppliers to disclose pollution data as early as March 2013, giving those living near these facilities access to information about discharges to their local environment.
“Greenpeace welcomes Zara’s commitment to toxic-free fashion. If the world’s biggest fashion retailer can do it, there’s no excuse for other brands not to clean up their supply chains and make fashion without pollution,” said Martin Hojsik, Detox Campaign Coordinator at Greenpeace International.
“People around the world have spoken out against toxic fashion and it’s now time for other brands such as Esprit, Gap and Victoria’s Secret to listen to their customers and urgently Detox.”
Zara’s commitment comes just nine days after Greenpeace launched its report “Toxic Threads: The Big Fashion Stitch-Up” in Beijing on November 20. Since then, more than 315,000 people have joined the campaign, with tens of thousands taking action on Facebook and Twitter, and over 700 people protesting and performing street theatre outside Zara shop fronts around the world.
Zara becomes the eighth brand to commit to eliminate releases of all hazardous chemicals throughout its supply chains and products since Greenpeace launched its Detox campaign in 2011. As a part of the commitment Zara is reinforcing the ban on APEOs, and pledges to set further short-term elimination timelines for other priority hazardous chemicals, including PFCs. Most notably, Zara will now require at least 20 suppliers to start releasing pollution discharge data by the end of March 2013, and at least 100 suppliers by the end of 2013. The supply chain disclosure project will include azo dyes that give rise to cancer causing amines.
“People have the right to know what their rivers are polluted with and what hazardous chemicals are in their clothing. Zara’s commitment to act more transparently is a milestone in the way clothing is manufactured and will be key to forcing brands to follow through on achieving zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020,” said Yifang Li, Senior Toxics Campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia.
Greenpeace’s Detox campaign demands fashion brands commit to zero discharge of all hazardous chemicals by 2020 and require their suppliers to disclose all releases of toxic chemicals from their facilities to communities at the site of the water pollution.
A new video launched today further exposes those brands failing to take action on the issue, calling on people around the world to share the fashion industry\'s toxic secret and convince more brands to Detox.