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(Bloomberg) — The carbon footprint of transporting that Zara outfit you’re looking to buy has just gone up. 

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The annual report of Inditex SA, the Spanish owner of the apparel chain, shows that its transport-related carbon emissions grew twice as fast as product volumes, reaching a record high in 2024 in spite of the company’s ambitious climate goals.

Emissions related to transport were up 10% in 2024, according to the report. But the weight of raw materials used in its products — the best available proxy for production volumes — only increased by 5%.

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While the group, which also owns the Bershka brand, doesn’t disclose details on how it transports its merchandise, it does report figures on energy used for inbound and outbound transfers. In 2024, inbound transportation — the journey that products make from factories to logistic centers — required 15% more energy than the previous year, the company’s filing showed.

Inditex has come under fire recently for its use of air freight. Air-freighted fashion has been key to Inditex’s success of a tightly managed inventory process, bringing fresh designs to market faster than rivals. 

A significant part of the space at the Zaragoza airport, Inditex’s main airport hub in Spain, is assigned to the company — in 2020, it was more than 75%. The airport increased cargo shipments by 40% in 2024, according to its operator Aena.

“A substantial increase in air transport is the most plausible explanation” behind the overall rise in Inditex’s transport-related emissions, according to David Hachfeld, a researcher and campaigner at Public Eye, a Swiss non-profit organization that has researched its use of air freight and last year launched a campaign to call on the company to reduce it.

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Some fashion retailers and exporters of Asian products have resorted to air transport since attacks in the Red Sea disrupted traditional shipping routes.

“Sea and road transport are by far the most significant methods used to ship our garments,” Inditex said in response to questions from Bloomberg. 

It also noted that its transport emissions rose last year at a slower pace than sales, which advanced 10.5% at constant currency rates. Inditex added that it’s still committed to halving its total emissions by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2040.

“This commitment is for our emissions as a whole, but takes into consideration that the de-carbonization of each element of our value chain will not reduce proportionately or at the same pace, due to the availability of new technologies or solutions – such as alternative fuels, for example,” it said.

Based on numbers reported by companies, Inditex had the second-highest carbon emissions among the world’s biggest fashion brands in 2022 — more than double that of its significantly smaller rival H&M, according to global data provider Statista. Companies often use different methodologies to calculate their emissions, making direct comparisons difficult.  

This year, Inditex changed its method for calculating its carbon footprint, a shift that resulted in a reduction of emissions for previous years. The new math showed that the company had decreased its overall emissions by 5% in the six years to 2024, but that number barely budged in the last year.

Inditex “sends huge quantities of clothes around the world by plane,” Public Eye says. “But the Spanish fast-fashion giant is not alone in doing this. We also found evidence of thousands of tons of products being needlessly transported by plane to the detriment of the climate.”

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