Inditex, Adidas, Burberry, Ralph Lauren and H&M join the pact against climate change

A total of 32 companies have joined the Fashion Pact to promote the environmental sustainability of the textile and fashion sectors and thus fight against climate change. Among the signatories of the agreement are Inditex, Adidas, Bestseller, Burberry, Carrefour, Chanel, Galeries Lafayette, Gap, Giorgio Armani, H & M, Hermes, Nike, Ralph Lauren or Zegna, among others.

The agreement, which will be presented today at the Elysee Palace in Paris at an event convened by the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, promoter of the initiative, will be attended by the president of Inditex, Pablo Isla. In this first working meeting will also be present the Ministers of Economy and Ecological Transition of the French executive, Bruno Le Maire and Elisabeth Borne.

Isla pointed out that “all of us who make up Inditex are committed to Sustainability, a key strategic axis of our company, and that is the real engine of the project: the conviction of all to take care of our environment with an eye on the long term”. Precisely, the president of Inditex recalled the objectives presented to the General Shareholders’ Meeting held in July, through which the company aspires to exercise a transformative role in the industry.

Among other milestones, Inditex will completely eliminate the use of plastic bags in 2020 (something that already happens in Zara, Zara Home, Massimo Dutti and Uterqüe) and by 2023 single-use plastics for customers will have been completely eliminated, and all waste from the group’s centers will be recycled or reused. Also, by 2025, 100% of the cotton, linen and polyester used by the Group’s eight brands will be organic, sustainable or recycled.

Commitments

In this sense, the Fashion Pact, which includes luxury, fashion, sports and lifestyle companies, as well as distributors and suppliers, is also committed to establishing concrete quantitative objectives with which to face the challenges of the industry in terms of combating climate change, caring for the oceans and conserving biodiversity. Likewise, it will promote the participation of these companies in other complementary sectoral initiatives, and will favor the development of accelerators with which to help achieve the established challenges.

The signatory companies commit to work within the framework of the ScienceBased Targets (SBT) initiative, scientifically measurable objectives, which concentrates its strategy on three essential aspects for the protection of the Planet: The fundamental objective is to stop climate change, concentrating its actions on reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, to control global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Raw materials

“This implies, among other measures, the sustainable extraction of raw materials and the use of renewable energies in all high-impact production processes of the supply chain in 2030,” they say in Inditex. In addition, it is intended to restore biodiversity, the priority being the development and application of scientifically measurable objectives (SBT) with which to protect and restore ecosystems, as well as the implementation of specific actions in the supply chain, such as the elimination of raw materials whose extraction requires intensive consumption of high impact.

With regard to the care of the oceans, another key aspect, some of the planned measures are the elimination of single-use plastics in 2030 and the development of research on microplastics and will be addressed in parallel to the valuable work already developed by other initiatives with which Inditex has been collaborating, such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Textil Exchange, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Better Work or Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC).

Source: The Economist