Is your favorite brand of clothing trading “tainted” cloth from Brazil?

Cotton clothes, towels and bed sheets from H&M and Zara are “stained ” by illegal deforestation and human rights abuses, according to a new investigation.

800,000 tonnes of cotton have been traced by the renowned Western retailers to Portuguese estates where property getting, assault, and corruption are common.

This fabric is exported to a number of Asian companies, who collectively produced nearly 250 million clothes and homegoods for international retailers like H&M, Zara, and its sister businesses in a year.

“These companies talk about good practice, social duty and documentation schemes, they claim to invest in tracking and conservation, but all this now looks about as phony as their retail window arrangements, ” says Earthsight producer Sam Lawson.

Better Cotton, the largest fabric certification program in the world, certified all of the fabric traced by the NGO as green.

Where is Brazil’s fabric coming from?

The world is well aware of the importance of the Amazon, and there are frequently updates on the volume of forest damage caused by grain plantations and cattle ranches.

However, just south of the bush is another significant ecosystem that is being ravaged at an unsettling level, despite the most recent reports from the ‘lungs of the Earth ‘ being cautiously optimistic.

The Cerrado area is characterized by serious plateaus and lush valleys. It is, amazingly, house to five per share of the world’s species- including big anteaters, big animal and jaguars.

In recent years, more than half of this exotic plains, which stretches across a fourth of Brazil, has been cleared for extensive crops. Last year, forest around soared by 43 per share.

This “plundering ” of the Cerrado coincides with a boom in Brazilian cotton production for export, says Earthsight. By 2030, the nation is on pace to surpass the US as the world’s largest fabric producer.

Environmentalists warn that this lovely region is being sacrificed in order to save the more well-known Amazon, to which it is still intrinsically linked.

“Internationally, the Cerrado is not very well known. We would have more [public ] policies that support the protection of the region if it had a title like the Amazon, according to Ane Alencar, research director at Brazilian volunteer IPAM, earlier this year.

How is the Cerrado’s land cleared for fabric crops?

The northern Bahia condition of the Cerrado is mainly scarred by industrial-scale gardening. According to locals and Earthsight investigators, agricultural enterprises these remove almost two billion litres of water each day, drying riverbeds and streams.

The NGO discovered that H&M and Zara’s manufacturers supply cotton grown in this position by two of Brazil’s biggest exporters by examining thousands of delivery records.

These organizations- Single Agrícola and Grupo Horita- are owned by two of Brazil’s richest people. And according to Earthsight, they have a long history of court rulings, problem decisions and millions of dollars in sanctions from clearing 1,000 square miles of Cerrado forest.

Violence-filled land disputes against traditional communities on the Estrondo mega-state, where Horita is the main landowner, date back decades. Estrondo was one of the largest land grabs in Brazilian history, according to the attorney general of Bahia in 2018. A year later, two community members were shot by Estrondo’s security guards, after an escalation in intimidation and harassment.

According to Earthsight, these businesses ‘ operations are “emblematic of a broader reality of export-oriented agribusinesses harming the Cerrado, its traditional communities, and the climate.” ”

It is rare for large-scale farms not to grab land, local campaigners in one region told Earthsight.

According to the Brazilian government, clearing Cerrado vegetation for agriculture produces as much carbon as the annual emissions of 50 million cars.

And cotton, which is often produced in rotation with soy on these mega estates, is especially damaging due to the heavy use of pesticides.

How is this ‘tainted ’ cotton threaded into Zara and H&M clothes?

Between 2014 and 2023, Horita Group and SLC Agrcola directly exported at least 816,000 tonnes of cotton from Bahia to foreign markets according to shipment records obtained by Earthsight.

Eight Asian clothing companies sourced this raw cotton and supplied H&M and Inditex ( Zara’s owner ) with it. PT Kahatex in Indonesia was the biggest buyer of this “tainted ” cotton, before sending millions of cotton socks, shorts and trousers to H&M.

All Inditex imports to Europe arrive in Spain and the Netherlands, before being distributed to stores across Europe as the season’s ‘must-have’ items.

The fast-paced fashion industry giants have signed up to a Better Cotton (BC ) certification system as part of an effort to clean up their act. Most of the firms ’ products are made with BC-certified cotton, making them the world’s biggest users of cotton carrying the BC seal of approval.

The issue is that the BC label was present on all cotton Earthsight that were linked to human rights violations and environmental degradation in Bahia.

Yesterday, it was reported that Inditex has demanded more transparency from Geneva-based Better Cotton in response to the investigation. A third party audit of three farms that were allegedly a target of Earthsight was completed earlier this month by BC, and it intends to publish its findings on April 26.

Additionally, it stated that the Brazilian Association of Cotton Producers, one of its strategic partners in Brazil, was updating certain aspects of its standards to conform to Better Cotton standards.

How can the trade in dirty cotton be stopped?

Earthsight contends that the EU has a significant responsibility to clean up its supply chains because it is one of the biggest importers of clothing in the world ( after the US).

According to Lawson, it has become very clear that crimes relating to the commodities we consume must be resolved through regulation rather than consumer choices.

That entails that lawmakers in consumer-oriented nations should adopt strong laws with strict enforcement. In the interim, shoppers should consider other options before purchasing their next piece of cotton clothing. ”

The NGO points out ongoing gaps despite there being a number of pending laws to regulate supply chains. The largest businesses will only be covered by the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive ( CSDDD), which will be finalized in the coming months.

While a new EU Deforestation Regulation requires businesses to trace some of their raw materials to deforestation-free and legal production, cotton is not.

What do Zara and H&M say?

“We welcome Earthsight’s commitment on these issues and take these allegations extremely seriously, ” H&M said in response to the finding. The Better Cotton certification owner has started a thorough investigation into the specific allegations, and we are in close contact with him. ”

H&M– with sister brands including COS, Monki, & Other Stories, Arket and Weekday- says it reached its goal to source 100 per cent of cotton from recycled, organic or more sustainable sourced ( e. g. BC cotton ) back in 2020.

Inditex- which owns Berksha, Pull&Bear and Massimo Dutti as well as Zara- told Earthsight, “We take very seriously any information regarding improper practices in the textile industry.

“After receiving your letter, we have shared its contents with Better Cotton, who confirmed to us that they have launched an investigation, in collaboration with their on-the-ground partner, ABRAPA. ”