With the growing number of millennials concerned about climate change, more and more brands are attempting to “go green” — or at least appear to.
The latest company to jump on the bandwagon is Zara, which recently launched it’s “Care for Water” capsule collection in partnership with Water.org.
According to Zara, the collection uses organic cotton grown using techniques that require minimal water. They are also using what they call “Zero Liquid Discharge” factories that allow them to recycle water during the manufacturing process.
The collection is part of a much larger partnership that their parent company Inditex has had with Water.org since 2015, but this is the first time that Zara has launched a line like this. Inditex also owns clothing brands Pull & Bear and Bershka, among others.
Zara has actually done little to advertise the partnership, unlike fellow fast-fashion brand H&M, which brags endlessly about its Conscious collection. H&M’s conscious products use a minimum of 50% sustainable materials such as organic cotton and recycled polyester.
Despite all of these efforts to join the eco-friendly movement, both Zara’s Care for Water collection and H&M’s Conscious collection make up a very small percentage of their overall clothing produced and certainly doesn’t make up for their large contribution to climate change. Fast fashion brands produce an absurd amount of carbon dioxide emissions during manufacturing and the cheaply-made clothes are often thrown-out after just one season and are now piling up in landfills.
Shopping consignment is always a better option than choosing fast fashion but if you truly prefer to shop new, then you can buy brands committed to sustainability like People Tree, Reformation, Everlane, Kotn, and more.
To learn more about how fast-fashion contributes to the growing climate crisis, read our post here.
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Feature photo by Zara
Lena Finkel is the Editor and Founder of Femestella. Prior to starting Femestella, she worked at People, InStyle, and Tiger Beat. Her favorite Housewife is Bethenny Frankel and when she’s not watching RHONY, you can probably find her obsessing over her tuxedo cat Tom or hoarding drugstore lipsticks.
