Ethical fashion: Zalando will only retail eco-friendly labels by 2023

16 / 06 / 2020

By Vogue -

Zalando‘s story began in Berlin in 2008, when Robert Gentz and David Shneider decided to create an online site specializing in shoe sales. Today, offering an extremely wide fashion selection, it is the number one online fashion sales platform in Europe, with around 32 million customers in 17 countries. Aware of its ecological impact in the fashion industry, Zalando is committed to distributing only brands that meet ethical and eco-responsible standards by 2023. This represents a transition towards greener fashion, which Zalando has already initiated by partnering with 9 Nordic labels, who are pioneers in sustainable fashion, for its spring 2020 collection.

An innovative tool to measure brand efforts

But today, the online platform is looking further ahead, aiming to distribute only brands that meet ethical and eco-responsible standards by the year 2023. “As Europe’s leading online platform for fashion and lifestyle, we want to raise the bar, act first and bring our partners on the journey to address today’s most important issues,” says Kate Heiny, Director of Sustainability at Zalando in a press release.

This is thanks to the Higg Brand & Retail Index, an innovative tool that measures the efforts made by brands in terms of social and environmental responsibility. “The Higg BRM will establish a global standard for fashion brands and retailers to measure and talk about sustainability performance,” says Kate Heiny. “For the first time we will have comparable data at brand level to identify improvement areas and work on solutions collaboratively.” Zalando will therefore ask all the brands distributed on its platform to use this tool to gauge which labels are making real efforts. Yet the online platform does not stop there: it also plans to reduce its operational carbon footprint by 80% by 2025.