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Investigatessustainable fashion“PRIMARK CARES” – OR so the labels have told us.
Shoppers who have visited a branch of Penneys in recent years may have noticed that the company – synonymous in Ireland with cheap and popular clothes – has attempted to position itself as just as planet-friendly as more upmarket options.
From “recycled polyester” to “sustainable cotton”, it has used labels and in-store signage to send a message to any environmentally conscious consumers feeling a twinge of anxiety about what may be behind price tags as low as €3.50 for a t-shirt.
Earlier this year, there was even a large second-hand section inside the front door of its flagship store on Dublin’s Mary Street – but perhaps tellingly, the “pre-loved” clothes on these rails were not from Penneys originally (unlike most Irish charity shops, where the brand proliferates to the point that many donated Penneys garments never make it to the shop floor, to avoid overload).
Are Penneys clothes really designed to last?
“Designed to last” was, in fact, the promise the company made in its Primark Cares sustainability strategy, launched with some fanfare in 2021, with TV star Laura Whitmore engaged for a time as a Primark Cares “brand ambassador”. The company has also commissioned research it says proves price cannot accurately predict how well clothes will wear.
We decided to put some garments to the test.
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Primark had promised to strengthen the durability of its clothes by 2025 and to make garments “recyclable by design” by 2027. By 2030, all clothes will be made from recycled “or more sustainably sourced” materials.
The 2021 Primark Cares strategy was fairly light on detail as to what these promises might mean in practice, but the company went on to work with sustainability NGOs to draft more specific standards on extending and assessing garments’ lifespan and on garment recyclability.
(And in fairness to Primark, some of its competitors are doing a lot less when it comes to setting a public environment strategy to which they can be held to account – we’re looking at you, Dunnes Stores).
In particular, Primark established a wash test, whereby clothes should still be in good condition after being washed a minimum of five times, but ideally 23, 32 or even 45 times. The criteria clothes are checked against include shrinkage, bobbling, colour-fastness and opening or twisting of seams.
Primark told The Journal Investigates this is an “industry first”: it had to go it alone because there’s no agreed standard for measuring clothing durability. A third-party “lab” now tests all its garments to the aspirational level of 45 washes – which it says is well above the industry norm of five washes – to help it understand how its products perform.
The Journal Investigates washed a basket of new Penneys clothes five times as per their care label instructions or on a gentler washing machine setting.
The results weren’t great for a pair of €18 men’s jeans we washed five times at 30 degrees. These jeans completely changed colour, with the original brown-tinged stonewash fading to white.
However, with no metal rivets and with cotton used inside the pockets, these jeans include some of the design elements Primark hopes will improve recyclability. And these jeans were made with 20% organic cotton, which is cotton grown without chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
Responding to The Journal Investigates following the wash experiment, Primark said: “In key categories like denim and jersey, our products perform well against our durability criteria. However, it’s an ongoing process and we know there is more to be done so we value feedback in areas we need to do better. We will continue to identify, understand and implement areas for improvement.”
We also tried out wearing a new cardigan for five days without washing, to figure out if washing is really the best metric by which to measure durability.
This €16 cardigan - made from a fully synthetic polyester-acrylic-polyamide mix typical of Primark knitwear – was in a sorry state after just five days of wear, as it was already extremely bobbly, as can be seen in the picture.
This indicates more than washing needs to be considered by any fashion brands that want to assess their garments’ durability.
A 100% polyester women’s going-out top, sold for €16, held its shape and colour in the wash but threads came loose.
A €4 kids’ cotton t-shirt with a Super Mario printed coating lost about 1cm to shrinkage and the vibrancy of the colours of both the fabric and the print coating faded. (A certain amount of shrinkage is to be expected with cotton, and almost all the cotton and cotton-blend items we tested shrank to some extent.)
Penneys, Dunnes and other high street retailers use coatings of this type for an increasing number of brand link-ups with popular TV shows such as Bluey, Pokémon and Stranger Things, and video games such as Minecraft. Branded t-shirts, tracksuits and other clothes of this type are typically sold at a markup.
These coatings are a contaminant that’s likely to inhibit the recyclability of clothes and, as well as not washing well, they shouldn’t be tumble-dried. The coatings have a tendency to crack.
Some men’s cotton-synthetic-blend socks from Primark’s ongoing collaboration with sports brand Kappa became very faded and bobbly in the wash, although the fabric still felt the same. Kids’ cotton-polyester socks shrank considerably.
Some other garments held up really well in our five-wash test. A €16 women’s knitted jumper made from synthetic material held its colour and shape after five washes on a delicate cycle – and indeed washing on a delicate cycle or at a lower temperature is likely to be a good strategy to help clothes last longer.
A women’s €10 polyester fleece ended up with one loose thread but held its colour and shape. We washed it in a bag for catching fibres and it didn’t shed (synthetic textiles are a a huge source of microplastic pollution in the ocean).
A €3.50 men’s cotton t-shirt shrank but held its green colour. The colour of the t-shirt’s print changed from white to beige, but it still looked fine.
And what of Primark’s other pledges on clothes designed to last – on recyclability and more sustainable materials?
Gwen Cunningham, sustainability lead at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), said that when it comes to making clothes recyclable, “mono-materials” – 90-100% cotton, for example, as opposed to a more complicated blend – should be the go-to.
Blended fabrics are all but unrecyclable with current technology, agreed Ursa Trunk, a campaigner with the environmental NGO Changing Markets.
Globally, less than 1% of old clothes are recycled to make new garments, and blending fibres is basically a “one way ticket to landfill”, Trunk said.
That means a garment such as the polyester-acrylic-polyamide cardigan we tested will not be recycled if the owner sends it to the clothes bank at the end of its useful life – and given how bobbly it became after just a few wears, this item is highly unlikely to be sold second-hand either.
The basket of goods used for our experiment was representative of Primark’s wider stock, which contains vast amounts of blended fabrics.
However, there’s a tricky toss-up for designers and consumers to consider between durability and recyclability, Cunningham added. Blends often wear and wash better – for example, they are less likely to shrink.
As for the sustainability of the materials themselves, Trunk cautioned that consumers need to be wise to what polyester is: a form of plastic, and a fossil fuel-based material.
She added that consumers also need to be wary about recycled polyester, which may sound sustainable but really isn’t. Even the European Commission has raised concerns about the accuracy of green claims about recycled polyester fabrics.
Several of the garments we tested contained recycled polyester – and had prominent labels drawing consumers’ attention to this.
The problem is that the vast majority of recycled polyester is made from plastic bottles, not old clothes, Trunk explained. If the same material was reused for more plastic bottles, it could be recycled again – but as clothes, it’s ultimately destined for landfill or incineration.
Primark is not alone in using recycled polyester as part of a shift in material choice – Adidas, Puma and H&M are among the companies employing the same strategy as they try to position themselves as more sustainable.
Primark also promotes the fact that many of its garments are made with at least some cotton from its Sustainable Cotton Project – or Cotton Project, as it had to rename it last year. The earlier usage of the word “sustainable” fell foul of new UK rules on environmental claims.
Primark told us that nothing about the programme changed with the name. It said the scheme trains and supports cotton farmers to boost output and to use less water, chemical fertiliser and pesticides. It said it has trained over 300,000 farmers to date.
Durability isn’t just about a garment’s physical characteristics, said Gwen Cunningham from NCAD. Designers must think about whether a garment is likely to be remain desirable and useful over time – and consumers need to think about this too.
Cunningham said buying “second-hand first” is always the best thing consumers can do, but when we buy new, we should ask ourselves whether the garment will really work for us.
The questions we can ask ourselves include: how am I going to wear this, when am I going to wear this, and how versatile, timeless and useful is this garment going to be for me?
Primark said it hopes its work on durability will help to shape future EU legislation in this area. It also wants to see collaboration across the industry and said it’s working with others.
It has stopped using the Primark Cares labels it used to put on clothes that used a minimum amount of “recycled or more sustainably sourced materials”, on the basis that it wants this to be the norm.
With over €10bn in sales last year across 17 countries, any improvements in sustainability this retail giant can achieve will have a significant impact.
In the final analysis though, Primark just wants to sell us more clothes – and the reality is that the most sustainable clothes are always going to be the ones we already have in our wardrobes.
Reporter: Valerie Flynn • Additional reporting: Kira Schacht of DW • Editor: Noel Baker • Social Media and Video: Cliodhna Travers • Video: Nicky Ryan • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
This story is part of a collaborative project among several media outlets in the European Data Journalism Network in context of Chat Europe. Project lead: DW. Contributing partners: El Orden Mundial, FACTA, The Journal Investigates and Voxeurop.
For data and methodology behind the project’s analysis, see this GitHub repository.
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