People! Zara commits to go toxic-free

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Zara, the world’s largest clothing retailer, today announced a commitment to go toxic-free following nine days of intense public pressure. This win belongs to the fashion-lovers, activists, bloggers and denizens of social media. This is people power in action.

Greenpeace campaigners began a dialogue with Zara (a brand within the Inditex group) in 2011 about eliminating releases of hazardous chemicals from its supply chain and clothes. But it wasn't until this week that the fast-fashion giant caught on to the urgent need to solve its toxic pollution problem.

Zara has now committe to eliminate all discharge of hazardous chemicals from its supply chain and products by 2020. And they're going to get rid of some of the worst chemicals, such as PFCs, even sooner. As a significant user of PFCs, Zara's commitment to eliminate this chemical group by the end of 2015 is a breakthrough.

The Detox commitment announced today covers Zara and the seven other brands in the Inditex group: Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe.

The commitment is good news for the environment, but also a breakthrough for the public's right to know what is being released into our waterways. Zara says that by the end of 2013 at least 100 of its suppliers in the Global South (including at least 40 in China) will publicly disclose data about their releases of hazardous chemicals into the environment. The open data will be chemical-by-chemical, facility-by-facility and at least year-by-year.

Last Tuesday we launched the Detox campaign globally with a fashion show and press conference in Beijing. Related images and comments began to rise like a spring tide on social networks within hours of the story breaking. Zara's Facebook Page quickly filled with comments from fans calling on the company to Detox. Thousands of people began to share their desire for “fashion without pollution!” and demands for Zara to Detox on Twitter and Sina Weibo, China's leading microblogging site.

You can see who's commenting about the campaign on Twitter and Weibo in one place – people around the world speaking out in a dozen languages to a combined reach of more than 7.1m followers. On Twitter alone there were at least 43,800 mentions of Zara and the Detox campaign this week. More than 300,000 people signed up to join the campaign to Detox Zara, and many tens of thousands of people emailed and tweeted directly to the company for an ambitious Detox commitment.

Personal opinion:

I find it a good iniciative. With this, it's possible that Zara, at the beggining, lose money. But with the time they make more money because people were be interested in this new concept and I'm sure that other fashion companies will do the same, it's a guarantee of future...

Also with the interesting and original advertising they are doing, they attract the attention of consumers. I'm very happy that so international companies are consolidate with this things because it could do it all powerful companies, but so thus we can see the interest of only some companies to be consolidated with the world, and not only in making money.... and we appreciated it.