Fast fashion retailer Primark has announced a fivefold increase to its Sustainable Cotton Programme, which trains cotton farmers in environmentally-friendly farming methods, as it strives to use 100 percent sustainable cotton across of all its product categories.
The move comes as Primark continues to improve its sustainable credentials with the news that 160,000 independent cotton farmers will be trained in sustainable farming methods across three of its key sourcing countries – India, Pakistan and China by the end of 2022.
The expansion into China marks an important step in the retailer’s ongoing commitment to minimising its impact on the environment, as the project teaches the farmers about the most appropriate farming techniques for their land, from seed selection, sowing, soil, water, pesticide and pest management, to picking, fibre quality, grading and storage of the harvested cotton, as it looks to offer more sustainably-sourced cotton to customers at affordable prices.
Primark’s ethical trade and environment sustainability director, Katharine Stewart, said to FashionUnited in a phone interview: “Primark’s ambition is to get to 100 percent sustainable cotton, we are going as quickly as we can to switch out conventional cotton for sustainable cotton, and it really is growing day-by-day. As quickly as we can get more cotton, it’s going into new products.
“By extending the programme into another major cotton-sourcing country, we will be able to offer our customers even more products made using sustainable cotton – without any price premium – instead at the Primark prices our customers know and love.”
Primark to train 160,000 cotton farmers in sustainability drive, as initiative extended to China. The initiative, launched in 2013, was devised as a way to allow Primark to not only bring more sustainable cotton into the supply chain, but to offer transparency and give its customers “complete confidence” in the source of its cotton, which Stewart states can be “traced from farm to store, to Primark customers, right down to the region where the cotton was grown”.
Cotton was chosen as its main sustainable focus as it is the main natural fibre used to make many Primark products, from pyjamas, T-shirts and jeans, to babygrows, bedding and towels, and sustainable cotton has already started to be used in women’s pyjamas, 14 million pairs sold since 2017, and earlier this year it launched women’s denim, which has already hit 3 million pairs, as well as within 6 million duvet covers and towels, and Stewart added that the scheme would see Primark’s sustainable cotton rolled out to men’s denim and T-shirts next.
Stewart added: “We were encouraged by sales of women’s pyjamas, as that’s the line that we do year-in-year-out, we have sold more than 14 million pairs of that particular style to date, and we were really pleased by how the product line sold through.”
“There is a growing demand from our customers,” stated Stewart, “They want sustainable cotton but without the premium price point, and all our sustainable cotton products are the same price as if they were made in conventional cotton, as all the cotton from this programme trades at the same price as conventional cotton. There is a cost in training the farmers, but we finance that.”
