MADRID (Reuters) – The owner of the fashion brand Zara, Inditex, will start charging 10 euro cents ($0.12) for paper bags from next week at all of its shops in Spain as part of a push for sustainability and packaging reuse, the company said on Friday.
The world’s biggest fashion retailer will roll out the measure in more than 1,400 shops in its home country, which account for 14% of the company’s sales, and will evaluate extending it to other markets in the future.
The bags will be charged in shops across all its brands, including Zara and Massimo Dutti.
The move follows the company’s commitment to eliminate plastic throughout its operations. It replaced all plastic bags in its shops and online orders last year with recycled and recyclable paper bags.
“It’s a further step … We want to encourage customers to reuse bags,” an Inditex spokesperson said.
It plans to invest all the proceeds from the paper bags in environmental projects run by local non-profits in Spain.
Spanish newspaper Expansion, which first reported the Inditex plan on Friday, said the company had recently made payment for paper bags a voluntary option in Germany.
($1 = 0.8613 euros)
(Reporting by Corina Pons, editing by Andrei Khalip and Steve Orlofsky)
