14 November 2025
By Olivia Lee
Zara is a popular shopping spot. The brand is exciting and delivers new inventory every week, giving shoppers a brand new experience each time they visit. Their constant online drops lead to endless scrolling, meaning new fits and mega hauls. But now that conversations around what sustainable fashion means are everywhere, many people are asking how sustainable is the fashion industry really? And specifically, can Zara count as one of the sustainable fashion brands?
From the outside, Zara has been trying to look like they are joining this sustainable fashion movement. They seem to be making small, sustainable steps, from their paper carrier bags to launching Zara preloved, which taps into sustainable fashion trends like circular fashion and secondhand shopping. These moves make it look like the company is shifting towards sustainability, because sustainable fashion is the future and brands like Zara know we care.
But when you zoom out, the situation is much darker.
There has been one measurable improvement, emissions from purchased “goods and services” declined by 6%. This came from using textiles with a slightly lower environmental impact, showing some awareness of what sustainable fashion means, and perhaps even the potential for a bigger change.
But when you’re producing billions of garments a year, small improvements do not balance out the scale of the problem. If we’re asking how sustainable is the fashion industry, quantity matters just as much as material.
Zara once promoted its Join Life label, expressing sustainability commitments, ethics goals and even a product line of clothing made from more sustainable materials and processes, such as organic cotton and recycled polyester. This could have been a step proving sustainable fashion is the future for big companies, however, their parent company, Inditex discontinued the label in 2023.
They claimed it was no longer necessary as a large portion of their products met the initiative’s criteria. But if that were true, we’d see more sustainable processes from Zara, including lower raw material use. Instead, raw material usage increased by 5%, making us question if they really care about becoming a more sustainable fashion brand.
Even with promises to use more sustainable fibres by 2030, Zara still relies heavily on fast production cycles. Reports from 2024 show the brand increased air freight to move garments faster, raising indirect “Scope 3” emissions, the biggest part of their environmental impact.
How sustainable is the fashion industry when speed and volume remain the business model? The answer is, it isn’t. Sustainable fashion is the future, but it requires slow fashion principles like rewearing, thrifting and borrowing, not constant newness.
Zara, like all fast fashion companies, is built on constantly producing more, and so long as this is the case, they just cannot be sustainable. If you’re exploring what sustainable fashion means, it’s important to try buying less through thrifting, swapping or borrowing, or buying from sustainable fashion brands actively reshaping how sustainable the fashion industry could become.
We’ll be sharing a list of sustainable fashion brands we genuinely love in an upcoming blog. Sustainable fashion is the future and we want to make it exciting and easy for you.
