The largest apparel retailer in the world, Inditex, which owns Zara, announced on Friday that its suppliers would purchase 2,000 metric tonnes of a raw material produced by Swedish business Renewcell from waste cotton textile.

One of the first textile-to-textile recycling companies on a commercial scale in the world, Renewcell assists apparel merchants in substituting recovered textiles for virgin ones. It creates textile pulp known as Circulose, which is derived from chemically recovered cotton waste.

This week, Inditex announced an agreement to purchase recycled polyester from a U.S.-based startup. Like other fast-fashion retailers, Inditex is under pressure to cut waste and use recycled fibres. By 2030, the Spanish corporation wants to get twenty-five percent of its fibres from “next generation” materials.

According to its annual report, Inditex put 621,244 tonnes of items on the market in total last year.

“A public agreement to purchase any amount of fibers made with Circulose is positive in our view,” Renewcell Chief Executive Magnus Hakansson told Reuters in an email.

“It signals to the rest of the market that Inditex is actively pursuing its goal to source and use more next-generation materials,” he added.

To be incorporated into its collections, Inditex claimed that its suppliers would buy the first order of a raw material created from a combination of cellulose and cellulose obtained from a forest that is sustainably managed.

In order to add Circulose to organic cotton and use it to produce one of its blue denim pants, Levi Strauss has already inked a deal with Renewcell.

According to Renewcell’s website, Swedish retailer H&M also decided in 2020 to employ Circulose material across all of its brands for a period of five years.

Renewcell announced earlier this month that as of the end of September, it has sold about 14,400 tonnes of Circulose.

(Adapted from Nasdaq.com)