Popular items of H&M and Zara clothing have been linked to large-scale illegal deforestation, land grabbing, violence and corruption by an NGO investigation that pulled the threads tying fast fashion to a boom in Brazilian cotton. The UK investigative NGO Earthsight spent over a year analysing satellite images, court rulings, shipment records and going undercover at global trade shows to trace nearly a million tonnes of tainted cotton from some of the most notorious estates in Brazil to clothing manufacturers in Asia that supply the world’s two largest fashion retailers. Read the full press release here.
It was a great pleasure working with the highly professional team at Earthsight. All the journalists I alerted before publication were equally pleased to learn of their work. The outreach was necessary as a plan b to a pre-arranged Context / Reuters exclusive, which in the end resulted in a very small number of stories, notably the Daily Mail. The investigation went on to feature in nearly 1,100 articles, TV and radio appearances, including a front page splash in Denmark’s leading political title Politiken. Prominent coverage in some of Europe’s leading outlets was led by El Pais, La Vanguardia, La Repubblica, Deutsche Welle, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde, Liberation, France Inter, AFP, Euronews, Vogue, NU.nl, Gazeta Wyborcza, Altinget, Information, YLE, Expresso, Publico, CNN, the Irish Mirror, Le Soir, Jornal de Notícias, Helsingin Sanomat, WWD, Die Morgen, De Tijd, KK and picked up by a number of large outlets outside Europe, including the South China Morning Post, Times of India and Folha de S. Paulo. Pressure from the Swedish public broadcaster SVT, newspapers ETC, national wire TT led to an immediate mea culpa from H&M. The team managed to keep a cool head during accidental broken embargoes and last minute industry maneuvering, as it became clear the exposee would be seen widely.
“Jack was instrumental for the successful dissemination of our Fashion Crimes report. He worked intensely to secure media coverage for the report, which appeared in hundreds of online and print articles, radio and TV broadcasts across dozens of countries. It is undoubtedly one of our organisation’s most successful media pushes ever. Jack has the right tools and working methods in place that make collaboration stress-free. We’ll almost certainly be working with him again.”
Earthsight deputy director Rubens Carvalho
