Low-cost clothing chain Primark promises to make more sustainable clothing by 2030, amid growing criticism of the textile industry for the pollution it generates.
The brand is particularly committed to "making all clothing from recycled materials or from more sustainable sources" or to "halving carbon emissions throughout the value chain" by 2030 , according to a statement Wednesday from its parent company Associated British Foods.
Clothing sold by Primark, which is one of the brands qualified as "fast fashion" (or disposable fashion), will also have to be designed from the outset to have a longer lifespan by 2025 and to be able to be recycled from the start. 'by 2027, the statement continued.
The commitments also relate to the remuneration of textile workers in a sector often accused of making its employees work for salaries that do not allow a decent living and sometimes in insufficient sanitary conditions.
More sustainable choices.
Affordable for all.
This is how change really looks.
Find out more in the link: https://t.co/NlwZ3yvGaY pic.twitter.com/5FVZ4cuh6V
- Primark (@Primark) September 15, 2021
"The global fashion industry is a huge polluter"
Primark says that all workers in its global supply chain should have a living wage by 2030. This strategy "will result in only a modest increase in costs" for the company by 2030, estimates its parent company, adding that it is an “opportunity to stimulate sales growth”. “Our ambition is to provide consumers with affordable prices that they know and love us for, but with products that are made in a better way for the planet and those who make them,” said Primark CEO Paul Marchant. , in another press release.
This new strategy "is an acceleration of the pace and scale of change" underway in the group, one in four garments sold by Primark being "already made with recycled or more sustainable materials," he added. The lockdowns weighed heavily on the ready-to-wear brand, which had notably closed all of its 189 stores in the United Kingdom in March 2020 and whose sales had plunged by 30% in the last four months of the year.
But its revenues have rebounded this year thanks to the reopening of all its stores, to reach 1.6 billion pounds in its staggered third quarter ending on June 19, 2021, against 600 million pounds a year earlier, had announced. the group in early July. "The global fashion industry is a huge polluter, and most of the clothing in the world is made at the expense of the environment and workers' rights," recently denounced the NGO Greenpeace in the United Kingdom.
On the social side, the sector has seen its image tarnished in particular by the tragedy of the collapse in April 2013 of Rana Plaza, a clothing workshop in Dhaka (Bangladesh), or by reports on the use by certain brands of cotton from the forced labor of Uyghurs in China.
In the United Kingdom, the Boohoo brand has in particular been criticized by certain NGOs for the working conditions and the poverty wages of certain subcontractors.
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