Primark claims progress on sustainability in last year

Primark is scaling up its drive “to make more sustainable fashion affordable for everyone” as part of its ‘Primark Cares’ initiative.

The international value-focused fashion and lifestyle retail giant has published its second ‘Sustainability and Ethics Progress Report’, showing how “it’s embedding and scaling up programmes across the business to drive impact”.

Highlights of the report show 55% of its clothes sold this year contained recycled or more sustainably sourced materials, up from 45% last year, while its target to halve its carbon emissions across the value chain by 2030 has now been assessed and validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

Also, its ‘Primark Sustainable Cotton Programme’ (PSCP) is marking its 10th year, “with almost 300,000 farmers trained in more sustainable farming methods – surpassing its target of 275,000 farmers by the end of 2023”.

It noted that this year, 46% of clothing sold that contained cotton that was either organic, recycled or sourced from the PSCP programme.

The retailer has also rolled out a traceability and compliance platform with TrusTrace to help gather data from the full supply chain of products, from raw materials to finished product. This information will help it to better understand and manage its supply chain.

Primark also said it has been focusing on supporting suppliers to understand the opportunity to switch to renewable energy sources and has scaled up its energy efficiency programmes across 57 factories in Bangladesh, China and Cambodia. 

And it has appointed regional carbon leads to support suppliers and factories locally. 

Within its own operations, Primark has been focused on reducing energy usage in its stores and using more renewable energy. Some 70% of its stores are now powered by renewable or low-carbon electricity and 141 stores have made the switch to energy-efficient lighting.