Fast-fashion brands like Zara have promised to make and sell clothes in a more sustainable way for both the planet and their workers.
But our reporting found that those promises are undermined by some of Zara’s parent company Inditex’s business tactics.
We spent months digging through supply-chain data and conducting interviews with garment workers, factory owners and former employees, and found that Inditex has dramatically increased its use of dirtier, more expensive airplanes to ship clothes from manufacturing hubs such as Bangladesh, India, and Turkey to warehouses in Europe and stores around the world.
Not only is the carbon footprint of a plane about 35 times higher than a ship, its use as transport of last resort to ensure clothes arrive on time has added to the pressure that garment workers face: producing clothes as quickly as possible, at times working overtime shifts with delayed payments and under harassment. In the case of one particular Inditex brand called Lefties, the cost of air shipment exacerbated pressure at what is already a low-margin business.
From Bangladesh to Spain, we breakdown how Inditex built a supply chain that prioritised speed over the environment and workers.
