Zeeman

Zeeman has long-term (minimum 5 years) partnerships with most of the factories and suppliers they work with. 

Safe working conditions? 

In 2020, 76 out of 435 factories or suppliers at all levels of the supply chain were audited. Secondly, in the same report, Zeeman lists 100% of the factories while Fair Wear Foundation lists 97%. Zeeman aims to conduct audits of even more of their suppliers. However, is an audit of (currently 17%) of their suppliers – sufficient to qualify the working conditions as ​‘good’?

Are living wages paid? 

According to Zeeman’s code of conduct, the supplier should ideally pay living wages, but is obliged to pay at least the national minimum wage in the countries.

The Fair Wear foundation cites that Zeeman can demonstrate the relationship between their (low) purchase prices and their (living) wages.

Therefore Zeeman understands that their extremely well negotiated procurement costs are directly related to wages. In response, the Fair Wear Foundation indicates that the retailer still excessively negotiates purchase prices.

Nevertheless, Zeeman has achieved their garment wage targets for the year 2021 in the Pakistani factories. Thus, 7% of the total production volume was created by involving workers and all the different stakeholders in questioning and negotiation. Zeeman is now working to further roll out this process at other suppliers as well. (source Fair Wear Foundation).

To its credit, Zeeman does want to start making structural improvements. For example, it contributes (financially) to the FFI in India. And like many other discount fashion chains it produces at the Soorty factory consortium. A group of state of the art factories that focuses on large volumes but works very hard on sustainability.

Since 2020, Zeeman has been working with an ECO label to indicate garments with more than 50% recycled materials in the store. In total, the share of sustainable materials in the entire Zeeman assortment is 29%. By sustainable materials, Zeeman means BCI cotton, organic cotton, recycled cotton, recycled polyester, Ecovero viscose and Livaeco viscose. Of all the cotton used by Zeeman in 2020, 58% was conventional cotton, 37% BCI cotton, 3% GOTS-certified organic cotton and 2% recycled cotton. They have future plans to structurally increase this percentage. 

If you look at the COSH! cotton survey, you’ll see why we don’t support BCI cotton. We would welcome an increase in the use of organic and recycled cotton. Therefore, we look forward to numerous new quality basics made from recycled content at Zeeman in the future. 

In addition, they have compiled a list of harmful chemicals and set guidelines for this. Of all their clothing collections and textiles, 75% are produced according to the Oeko-Tex®

Zeeman is particularly committed to circularity through the collection and sale of second-hand clothing in a number of their Dutch branches in collaboration with recycling organization Het Goed.

In their newly made products there is not (yet) a significant amount of recycled content used. However, many products consist entirely of one material/​monomaterials which makes the products recyclable after they are discarded. Zeeman also often chooses cotton, a fabric that is biodegradable. Synthetic fabrics such as polyester release microplastics during washing and are not biodegradable.

Moreover, Zeeman is economical with materials so that there are few surpluses.

Zeeman transports as much as possible by boat so the carbon footprint is lower than it would be if they transported by road. However, the products do travel long distances because most of the suppliers are in China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Turkey.

Zeeman hardly uses any animal materials for their textile products. Only the knitting yarn may come from sheep wool. So the clothing collection is essentially vegan. They also do not use fur, leather, feathers etc. However, nothing is known about the animal welfare of the sheep for the wool.

The discount chain carries offerings in the main categories of baby & children’s clothing, leg wear, household textiles, underwear & nightwear. They also have women’s and men’s fashion and non-textiles offerings such as food, home accessories and cleaning products.

Zeeman says they offer quality basics and textiles at the lowest possible price. They use simple designs in order to produce cheaply and in large quantities. They reuse these designs and sometimes modify their colors and prints. As a result, it can be said that Zeeman’s design is timeless and can also be worn for a long time without going out of fashion

Zeeman works with three types of products: Always in-stock items that are stockpiled, basic items that go directly to the stores and seasonal products.

Following the quality requirements and controls that Zeeman has in place, COSH! assumes that Zeeman’s products are made to last about 1 – 2 years.

Zeeman has done top-notch work in terms of mapping and understanding all ​“Tier 1” suppliers for end consumers. Meaning all the factories that handle the final assembly step in the production process.

However, some of the suppliers in earlier stages such as spinning mills, dyeing mills are not mapped. The origin of the materials is more difficult to trace at present. Zeeman set a goal to know the origin of 70% of their cotton, from cotton plant to finished product, by 2021.