Inditex, parent company of brands including Zara and Massimo Dutti, has joined the Canopy Pack4Good initiative that seeks sustainable packaging alternatives to logging ancient and endangered forests. These include recycled pulp and paper, next-gen solutions and Forest Stewardship Council certification.
The company’s move builds on its decade-long CanopyStyle commitment to eliminate the use of products from endangered forests in its textiles. The fashion sector as a whole is a major consumer of paper packaging for shipping boxes, ecommerce envelopes, paper bags, hang tags and paperboard boxes.
In April 2024, 15 brands, including John Lewis, Kering and Pangaia, joined Pack4Good. The addition of Inditex brings the total to 449 brands worth more than $287.4 billion in annual revenue.
“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 Canopy in a statement. “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.”
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The Inditex Group already has paper use reduction programs in place including Green to Pack, which reuses warehouse-to-retail paper boxes up to five times before sending them for recycling. This has resulted in a nearly 80% reduction in paper use within that segment of packaging along with millions in cost savings. Inditex also has launched the #BRINGYOURBAG initiative, which encourages reuse by applying a fee for paper bags and envelopes in nearly 70 markets, incentivizing customers to reduce paper bag consumption by 47%.
As a Pack4Good partner, Inditex will build on these initiatives to reduce the amount of packaging it uses, including employing reusable boxes for intra-business use, increasing recycled paper content and incorporating next-generation fibers into its paper packaging. These next-gen alternatives include materials that are plentiful around the world but are commonly wasted or burned, including cereal straws, hemp stalks, jute and even tomato stems.
Inditex has emerged as a leader in sustainability initiatives in recent years. Zara launched Zara Pre-Owned to encourage resale in the UK in October 2022, and in July 2023 Inditex announced plans to cut its value chain emissions in half by 2030, putting it on a path toward zero net emissions by 2040.