The boss of Primark owner Associated British Foods has claimed the high street chain is ’a solution’ to fashion’s sustainability crisis. Does his claim that shopping in-store is better for the environment really stack up?
The chief executive of Primark owner Associated British Foods, George Weston, has gone on the defensive about the perceived wastefulness of fast fashion – and of his company’s role within that heavily scrutinised industry.
Weston insists that Primark’s efficient supply chains mean the company is less polluting than its online rivals, which make thousands of home deliveries. “Far from being a problem,” he suggests, “we are a solution.”
In the interview with The Times, Weston pointed out that, by contrast, Primark does not transport any of its products by air, or operate a fleet of delivery vans “puffing their way up and down a street”.
Weston’s comments came off the back of ABF’s full-year results, in which Primark attributed falling sales in Germany to “misconceptions by a number of German customers around ethics and sustainability”.
ABF finance boss John Bason says Primark is working hard to fix the “problem” by better educating consumers “about the ethics of Primark and what we’re about”.
But is shopping in-store, as ABF suggests, really more sustainable than shopping online?
Exponential growth
According to figures published in March by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, consumers’ appetite for online delivery is growing exponentially.
Global ecommerce sales jumped 13% in 2017, hitting an estimated $29tn (£22.5tn). The number of people using transactional websites climbed 12% to more than 1.3 billion people – a quarter of the world’s population.
A paper published by Dr Julia Edwards and Professor Alan McKinnon in 2009 suggested “successful home delivery compares favourably with conventional shopping” in terms of carbon footprint.
Edwards and McKinnon found the average UK delivery produced six ounces of CO2, whereas the round trip to a store to pick up an item – an average journey of 13 miles – produces approximately 144 ounces of CO2, or 24 times the amount of a delivered package.
A 2013 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) also found shopping online was greener than in-store, since fully loaded trucks making multiple deliveries was more efficient than multiple single-car journeys.
However, the MIT researchers did conclude that a growing focus on next-day and one-hour delivery meant the last mile was becoming less efficient, so “not always environmentally better”.
As ecommerce has exploded over the last decade, so too has the number of unsuccessful deliveries. A report by IMRG and NetDespatch found 20% of ecommerce deliveries failed in the UK in 2018, at a cost of £1.6bn.
Then there is the issue of returns. Figures from marketing and ecommerce analyst Invesp suggest “at least 30%” of all products ordered online are returned, while warehouse operator Segro estimates that one in four items bought over the crucial Christmas period will be returned, costing UK retailers £2.6bn.
A number of these challenges were flagged in the Environmental Audit Committee’s Fixing Fashion report into the environmental and social impact of the fashion industry, published in June. The final report made 18 recommendations, including a 1p tax on garments to fund recycling and a ban on incinerating unsold stock or sending it to landfill.
But all of its recommendations were rejected by the government, which said it ”prefers voluntary rather than mandatory solutions to address the issues and that a variety of initiatives are already underway”.
For the London Centre of Sustainable Fashion’s Monica Buchan-Ng, while the increase of online deliveries has clearly contributed to the growth of fashion’s carbon footprint, bricks-and-mortar and high street retailers also contribute.
“Assessing the total environmental costs of online versus bricks-and-mortar retail is complex. Online retail incurs a high carbon footprint through transportation, excessive packaging and high returns rates, with little infrastructure or financial incentive to repair or process these meaningfully,” she says.
“The bricks-and-mortar model also has a considerable impact with temporary displays and high energy and building costs.”
‘Fashion is broken’
Marks & Spencer’s former sustainability boss Mike Barry says the carbon footprint of clothing is amassed less through how the consumer gets the product, but more so during its production and use by the end consumer.
“Generally, most of a product’s footprint – both social and environmental – is in the production or the use and subsequent disposal phase, rather than in the selling phase,” Barry says.
A study by Greenpeace this year found that the proportion of synthetic fibres, such as polyester, used in clothing has more than doubled since 2000. Produced with oil, Greenpeace found that one polyester shirt has a 5.5kg carbon footprint, compared to just 2.1kg for a cotton shirt.
The charity said: “If demand continues to grow at the current rate, the total carbon footprint of clothing would grow to 3,978 megatonnes by 2050.” That would account for a quarter of the global carbon budget required to keep the planet within 2°C of warming.
Greenpeace added that global emissions from textile production currently amount to 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 and warned that the impact of washing and discarding clothing is equivalent to 3.3 billion tonnes of carbon a year – or 8% of global greenhouse emissions.
Primark is among the businesses seeking to address this, investing more in sustainable fabrics like cotton, while many of its competitors are increasingly using synthetic polyester.
Nottingham Trent University sustainability expert Professor Tim Cooper believes both high street and pureplay fashion businesses need to do more to tackle the sustainability conundrum.
He says fashion needs to “accelerate progress towards a more sustainable economy”, which requires a “shift to a circular economy in which consumer goods are made to last longer, are maintained carefully and ultimately recycled”.
“[The fashion industry must] radically decrease the volume of clothing manufactured to truly make a difference to the climate emergency”
Monica Buchan-Ng, London Centre of Sustainable Fashion
Cooper believes that high street businesses can play an important role in creating such a circular economy, both as points of sale and by educating customers.
Ultimately, he says that “high street retailers need to move in this direction and not just sell garments, but help owners to take care of them”.
Whether or not online or offline presents the more sustainable shopping option is far from black and white, but rather a mix of greys.
While a number of fashion retailers are beginning to do more to reduce their carbon footprint, the growing consumer demand and lack of any viable plans from government mean the issue is likely to get worse before it gets better.
As Buchan-Ng points out, “fashion is broken” and must “radically decrease the volume of clothing manufactured to truly make a difference to the climate emergency”.
That will be a challenge for all apparel retailers, both online and in stores.
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