theguardian.com-MPs criticise high street fashions throwaway culture

MPs criticise high street fashion's throwaway culture
theguardian.com/fashion/2018/nov/27/mps-criticise-high-street-fashion-throwaway-culture
Zoe Wood November 27, 2018
Major high street names including Primark,
Boohoo and Missguided have come under fire
for fuelling a throwaway fast fashion culture
that has been linked to the exploitation of lowpaid
workers in UK factories.
Britons buy more new clothes than any other
country in Europe and MPs are looking at the
environmental and human cost of £2 and
£200 T-shirts amid growing concerns the
multibillion-pound fashion industry is wasting valuable resources and contributing to climate
change.
The low prices in Primark stores, where T-shirts can cost as little as £2, were challenged by
MPs on the Commons environmental audit select committee, who suggested shoppers
viewed its clothing as disposable.
“Isn’t the real problem with the fast fashion industry that if you are selling stuff at £5 people
aren’t going to treat it with any respect and at the end of its life it’s going to go in the bin?”
asked the Labour MP Mary Creagh, the committee chair.
Paul Lister, Primark’s head of ethical trade and environmental sustainability, denied that was
the case: “We are proud of the quality and durability of our garments. They are not bought to
throw away.”
Lister said the retailer kept its prices low by shunning traditional advertising, which saved it
about £150m compared with rivals and “that goes straight into price”. He said he knew of no
one under 16 working in any of its supply factories.
“Factory to store, we keep our costs to the absolute minimum and in store we keep margins
very tight,” he said. “Our business model takes us to a £2 T-shirt.”
While Primark was forced to defend its low prices, Burberry was scrutinised over its nowdefunct
policy of burning piles of unsold expensive clothes .
Leanne Wood, the brand’s chief people and corporate affairs officer, told MPs it was an
industry-wide practice: “We’re the only luxury business that’s reported it in their accounts … but
it is something that happens in the industry.”
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Online retailers Asos, Boohoo and Missguided were questioned about the health checks
carried out on the large number of Leicester factories they worked with.
An investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches alleged last year UK factories supplying retailers
such as River Island, New Look, Boohoo and Missguided were paying workers between £3 and
£3.50 an hour. A Financial Times investigation (£) also found examples of exploitation in
Leicester factories.
Creagh questioned how it was physically possible for Manchester-based Boohoo to sell UKmade
dresses for £5 when the hourly minimum wage was £7.83.
The company’s joint chief executive Carol Kane said the company did not make any profit on
the £5 dresses, which were “loss leaders” designed to attract shoppers to its website. The
typically short dresses, made out of polyester and elastane, featured no zips or buttons, so
were easy for machinists to run up, she said.
“We do not make a profit on a £5 dress,” said Kane, adding that the cost price of the garments
was even less at £2.50 to £3. “It’s a loss leader. It’s a marketing tool designed to drive visitors
to the website.”
Asos and Missguided told the hearing they had pulled production from a number of factories
in Leicester that fell short of their standards.
The select committee is examining the impact of clothing production, ranging from
environmental cost to worker conditions, especially when garments are produced cheaply and
quickly in response to fast fashion trends.
With 300,000 tonnes of clothing sent to landfill every year in the UK, Primark said it would
launch a clothing collection service in all its stores next year in a similar vein to Marks &
Spencer’s “shwopping” scheme.
But Mike Barry, M&S’s head of sustainable business, said collecting unwanted clothes was not
the biggest problem for the industry – it has collected 30m garments over the past decade –
but what to to with them, given the lack of a domestic industry to process the material. “It is
quite possible to prevent clothing going to landfill but much harder to do something with the
fibres you recover.”
The environmental cost of UK fashion
Britons spend £52.7bn a year on fashion, according to the government-backed Waste and
Resources Action Programme (Wrap). The lion’s share (£47.4bn) goes on clothing while
£4.5bn is spent on accessories.
The amount of clothes bought each year continues to rise – 1.13m tonnes in 2016, up from
950,000 tonnes in 2012, according to a 2017 Wrap report.
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The total carbon footprint of the clothing worn in the UK was 26.2m tonnes of CO2e in 2016,
up 9% on 2012. The carbon footprint per tonne fell 8% but was outweighed by the increase in
consumption.
About 1m tonnes of clothing is cleared out of wardrobes every year. Of that, 700,000 tonnes is
collected for reuse and recycling with the remainder sent to landfill or incinerated, at an
estimated cost of £82m.
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