Over the course of a year, the NGO conducted extensive research using satellite images, legal cases, transport data, and undercover work at trade fairs. This resulted in the discovery of 816,000 tons of “tainted cotton”, traced to some of the most notorious Brazilian plantation owners. One individual is held responsible for the destruction of 100,000 hectares of forest in the Cerrado, an extensive savannah region that encompasses about 20% of Brazilian territory.
The cotton was then shipped to eight Asian factories, where Zara and H&M had clothing and household linens produced. In total, nearly 250 million items were produced, with a combined value of hundreds of millions of euros. These findings highlight the adverse impact of fast fashion on the environment and the necessity for enhanced transparency and accountability within the industry.
A sustainability manager from H&M recently acknowledged to the Swedish Svenska Dagbladet that the company had fallen short of its responsibilities.
The Cerrado tragedy
For years, there has been global attention to criminal activities in the Brazilian Amazon, where forests are being cut down for beef and soy. While awareness of the environmental effects in this area of our food consumption is increasing, another important biodiversity hub in South America is being destroyed for the sake of global consumerism: the Cerrado.
The industrial farms involved are owned by some of Brazil’s wealthiest families and are among the country’s largest cotton producers. They have a long history of court orders, corruption verdicts, and millions of dollars in fines related to the illegal logging of about 100,000 hectares of Cerrado wilderness. One of the foreign investors is Crispin Odey, a major financier of the Brexit campaign, who minimized environmental offenses in the Cerrado as nothing more than a “parking fine”.
800,000 tons of tainted cotton traced from companies making popular clothing sold in the West.
The tragedy of the Cerrado and its diverse inhabitants has largely remained unseen and unheard. This region with its rich vegetation and biodiversity is home to 5% of all known animal species in the world, including giant anteaters, jaguars, and tapirs, and supports the livelihoods of millions of people.
Industrial agriculture has wreaked havoc over the past decades, causing the loss of half of the native vegetation. In contrast to the improved situation in the Amazon, deforestation in the Cerrado increased by 43% in 2023. According to figures from the Brazilian government, the impact on the environment is equivalent to the emissions from 50 million cars per year. Illegal deforestation is mainly caused by a few very large companies that together represent one percent of the total number of farms. Hundreds of species are now threatened with extinction due to loss of their habitat. Some ecologists have suggested that the Cerrado is being sacrificed to industrial agriculture in order to spare the Amazon.
Smash and grab
The production of cotton requires significant quantities of water and pesticides. According to Earthsight, billions of liters of fresh water are diverted annually to irrigate cotton fields, with an additional 600 million liters of toxic pesticides entering the ground.
The “smash and grab” methods used by the largest cotton plantations are typical of export-oriented producers, according to Earthsight. Brazil has significantly increased its cotton production in recent decades, mainly in the Cerrado region, where it is now grown in rotation with soybeans. By 2030, Brazil is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest cotton exporter.
H&M: “We have failed in our responsibility.” Clothing giant Inditex blames the certification program, which has a long history of failures.
As cotton production increases, traditional communities are negatively impacted. Corruption, greed, violence, and impunity have led to the theft of public land and the displacement of local communities. Large-scale farms often seize land, as local activists in one region have informed Earthsight. Those who have lived in the Cerrado for centuries are now facing displacement, hindrance of their livelihoods, surveillance, intimidation, cattle theft by armed farmers, and violent attacks on their leaders.
Research by Earthsight indicates that companies and consumers in Europe and North America are driving this destruction, not by what they eat, but by what they wear. The cotton used by the fast fashion giants H&M and Zara is linked to large-scale deforestation, land grabbing, human rights violations, and violent land conflicts in the Cerrado in Brazil.
H&M and Inditex, the parent company of Zara, are the world’s largest clothing companies. In 2022, they jointly posted profits of about $41 billion. With a global presence of 4,400 stores for H&M and nearly 6,000 for Zara, along with other Inditex brands such as Pull&Bear, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, and Stradivarius, they dominate the fast fashion industry with countless collections per year.
Scapegoats
H&M and Zara do not directly purchase cotton, but rely on suppliers in Asia to source and process raw cotton into finished garments. According to Earthsight researchers, these suppliers source their cotton from the western region of Bahia in Brazil, from large producers SLC Agrícola and Grupo Horita. However, the cotton production of SLC and Horita in western Bahia is associated with various illegalities.
SLC is the largest cotton producer in Brazil, with 44,000 hectares of cotton plantations in western Bahia. Horita is one of the six largest producers, with at least 140,000 hectares of land in the region. Both companies are family-owned, with their owners among the richest people in Brazil.
The tainted cotton traced by Earthsight was certified as sustainable by the organization Better Cotton (BC). According to annual reports, H&M and Zara are the largest users of BC cotton worldwide. Nearly half of all BC cotton comes from Brazil. Following the findings of Earthsight, BC announced a 12-week investigation in September 2023. Inditex recently criticized BC in a letter shared with the press. The letter suggests that Inditex was heavily reliant on BC to monitor its supply chains, despite previous accusations of greenwashing, secrecy, and failure to protect human rights.
Earthsight argues that BC and similar programs appear to be useful scapegoats to deflect criticism in industries that want to rely on cheap raw materials. Despite the introduction of updated BC rules on March 1, 2024, Earthsight notes that there are still gaps, conflicts of interest, and weak enforcement. According to the new rules, cotton from land that was illegally deforested before 2020 can still be certified as sustainable by BC, even if the land was stolen from local communities.
The drivers of deforestation
Sam Lawson, director of Earthsight, has issued a cautionary note about the impact of the cotton industry on the Brazilian forests. He has highlighted that the growth of cotton over the past decades has led to an environmental disaster. Clothing, towels, and linens from brands such as H&M and Zara can be linked to the destruction of the Cerrado. Lawson has expressed doubt about the claims of these companies about sustainability and traceability, suggesting that they are merely window dressing. He recommends the implementation of rigorous legislation to address the issues within the cotton industry, rather than relying on consumer choices. Lawson suggests that consumers carefully consider their purchases of cotton products.
Various laws to regulate supply chains are already in effect or will be soon. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDD) Directive is expected to be completed in April or May, but will only apply to the largest companies. A new EU deforestation regulation requires companies to trace some raw materials to production that must be deforestation-free and legal, but cotton is not mentioned. A similar gap also exists in legislation in the United States and the United Kingdom, which also limits itself to illegal deforestation. Brazil’s PPCerrado plan to combat deforestation in the Cerrado does not cover deforestation allowed by local governments, leaving the door open for non-sustainable policies at that level.
Commercial agriculture and logging are the primary drivers of deforestation and forest degradation worldwide. In the EU, textile consumption ranks second in terms of pressure on land, directly after food consumption. The largest consumer markets, such as the EU and the US, contribute most to this problem. The EU is the largest importer of clothing in the world, followed by the US in second place.
The report, Fashion Crimes, the European retail giants linked to dirty Brazilian cotton, is available in English here and Portuguese and Spanish here.
