Inditex has joined Canopy’s Pack4Good campaign. Through the campaign, the partners aim to focus on sustainable alternatives to the deforestation of ancient and endangered forests, including recycled pulp and paper, next-gen solutions and FSC certification.
Inditex committed to CanopyStyle a decade ago to stop using ancient and endangered forests for its textiles. Now, the fashion and lifestyle giant has extended its commitment to ensure that these vital forests do not end up as paper packaging.
The fashion sector is a big consumer of paper packaging for shipping boxes, e-commerce envelopes, paper bags, tags and cardboard boxes. “It’s exciting to have Inditex bring the same leadership to reducing their paper packaging footprint as they have for the last decade to eliminate vital forests from their textiles,” said Nicole Rycroft, Executive Director of solutions-driven not-for-profit environmental organization Canopy. “A company of their significance sends a signal to paper packaging suppliers that it’s time to give forests a break and to invest in and scale lower impact alternatives.”
The Inditex Group includes Zara, Berksha, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Stradivarius, Oysho and Zara Home. The group says it has come a long way in reducing its paper consumption with initiatives such as Green to Pack, a program to reuse stock boxes up to five times before sending them for recycling. This has led to an almost 80 percent reduction in paper consumption in this packaging segment.
Inditex also launched the #bringyourbag initiative to encourage the reuse of paper bags and envelopes in almost 70 stores through a fee. This has prompted customers to reduce their use of paper bags by 47 percent.
Inditex is also among the pioneers of the Next Gen MMCF initiative and has made a public commitment to purchase 2,000 tons of the first circular MMCF pulp at a commercial scale and to invest in the development of next-gen materials that do not yet exist at the industrial scale, so that by 2030, 25 percent of the company’s textiles can be made from next-gen materials.
As a Pack4Good partner, Inditex will continue to build on existing initiatives to reduce packaging, including the use of reusable cardboard for in-house use, increasing the proportion of recycled paper and incorporating innovative next-gen fibers into its paper packaging. Next-gen alternatives to wood fiber for paper include many materials that are commonly wasted or burned worldwide, such as cereal straws, hemp stalks, jute or even tomato stalks.
With the addition of Inditex, the Pack4Good initiative now includes 449 brands with a value of over $287.4 billion in annual sales.
