Fast Fashion Brands

Fast Fashion Brands

Our research found that most major fast fashion brands rate poorly on issues like supply chains, worker rights, environmental criteria, tax conduct and sustainable materials use. 

We rated 51 brands against eight categories. Full scores are available to subscribers.

With a maximum of 100 points available, it's disappointing to see many fast fashion brands still scoring below 25 points. No brands scored over 50 points (although a few came close).

Introduction to fast fashion

Fashion changes. That’s the point. But where changes were once seasonal, under the fast fashion model they now occur constantly, with thousands of new items appearing daily on some brands’ sites. A garment’s lead time (the time it takes for a product to go from design to purchase) has shrunk and Chinese brand Shein now has garments ready to be sold in just ten days.

This acceleration in fashion has exacerbated the already grave negative social and environmental impacts of the clothing sector.

Fast fashion is heavily dependent on synthetic fibres, which are derived from fossil fuels. When discarded, they do not biodegrade and often end up polluting beaches and deserts far from where they were sold. 

The pressure put on suppliers by brands to produce clothing as quickly and cheaply as possible drives worker exploitation and numerous NGO reports have exposed low wages, abusive employment practices, and hazardous working conditions. 

We take an in-depth look at these and other issues in this guide.

Who's in this guide to fast fashion brands?

This guide focuses on fast fashion brands. We’ve included some of the UK’s popular clothing retailers such as M&S, New Look, Next, Primark, and TK Maxx, which have chains of bricks-and-mortar high street shops, as well as online-only brands such as Amazon Essentials and Chinese fast fashion giants Shein and Temu.

We've also included Boohoo and all its brands (over 10), such as Burton, Coast, Dorothy Perkins, Oasis, PrettyLittleThing, Principles, Wallis, and Warehouse; plus ASOS and its brands Miss Selfridge, Topman and Topshop.

We’ve also included some smaller chains such as FatFace because they’re owned by fast fashion companies.

Patagonia and Seasalt were in the previous version of this guide when it focused more on high street stores. These two brands are now included in our sustainable clothing guide.

How Ethical Consumer rates fast fashion brands

Our ethical shopping guides rate companies against a number of specific categories. Some of the categories are included in every guide e.g. climate, while others are specific to the sector being researched. 

The eight categories used in the clothing guides were:

• Animal products
• Climate
• Company ethos
• Israel-Palestine
• Sustainable materials
• Tax conduct 
• Waste colonialism 
• Workers (includes supply chain issues)

Each rating scores out of 100. 

We write about how the brands score in more detail in the guide below, and there is more information about our research methodology at the end of the guide. 

The table below provides a quick summary of how the brands scored against the eight ethical categories.

How the fast fashion companies compare 

The table below summarises the main ethical problems with each clothing company. These are the categories where they scored the lowest within their overall rating.

Materials used by fast fashion brands

The materials used to make clothing are a significant source of climate and environmental impacts and one of the biggest areas for greenwashing. While lots of the fast fashion brands discussed increasing the quantity of sustainable materials, or “preferred materials” as they tended to call them, in their products, we found that there was a widespread lack of transparency when it came to disclosing the quantities actually being used.

Brands with better transparency for materials used

The following brands offered a full picture of their material use that enabled a clear understanding of the proportion of sustainable materials being used:

• Inditex (covering all brands)
• H&M (covering all brands)
• FatFace
• Next
• ASOS
• Miss Selfridge (ASOS)
• New Look
• White Stuff
• Whistles
• Shein (covering all brands).

Secondhand links

Facilitating secondhand sales helps reduce the need for more material to be made.

Several brands received points for having a secondhand store: H&M, M&S, and River Island.

Others such as Shein and Mango encouraged peer-to-peer selling but did not sell secondhand clothing directly and so did not receive any points.

Repair options

Some brands offered repair services.

Hobbs and Whistles, both owned by Foschini Group, were the only brands offering free repairs of their clothing. 

A few others operated paid-for repair services: FatFace, Karen Millen (Boohoo), Next, Miss Selfridge (ASOS), Uniqlo, and Zara.

Is recycled polyester sustainable?

A lot of companies have been increasing the use of recycled polyester as a way to boost the sustainability of their clothing. 

We explain why this is not a meaningful way to improve sustainability and is arguably counter-productive in a separate article.

Which clothing brands scored worst for sustainable materials?

The worst fast fashion clothing brands for sustainable materials use (scoring 0/100) were:

• Amazon
• Boohoo Group: Boohoo, Burton, Coast, Dorothy Perkins, MissPap, Maine New England, Nasty Gal, Oasis, Principles, Pretty Little Thing, Wallis, Warehouse
• Frasers Group: I Saw It First, Jack Wills
• Mango
• Phase Eight
• Primark
• Temu
• TK Maxx

Karen Millen, also part of the Boohoo Group, managed to scrape 10 points in this category.

How sustainable are recycled textiles?

One way the clothing sector is seeking to combat criticisms about its negative environmental impact is by increasing its use of recycled materials. This has the potential to reduce its climate and waste footprint and is therefore increasingly appearing in brands’ sustainability reports as a positive action.

A series of reports by the Dutch NGO Arisa has investigated the textile recycling industry and reported on conditions in recycling factories in India and Pakistan. The sector was found to be dominated by informality, meaning that workers lack legal recognition and access to basic rights such as minimum wages, health insurance, safe working conditions, and pension schemes. As a result, job insecurity and rights violations are persistent across the sector. The work is repetitive, physically demanding, and often takes place in unhealthy conditions in which workers are exposed to dust and chemicals and are not provided with protective clothing.

The sector is also highly polluting. In Pakistan, researchers found that bleaching water is released into open drains, affecting drinking water, soil, and agriculture, and unusable waste is burnt as fuel or dumped, creating toxic emissions and air and soil pollution. This is harmful to nearby communities.

As part of the research, 20 major brands were asked about their use of recycled textile materials. They had very little awareness of this area of their supply chains and mainly cited the environmental benefits, while making no reference to workers’ rights or working conditions.

Arisa concluded that

“having recycled content in your garment or textile products ... does not automatically mean that you sell responsible products to customers” 

and that to achieve sustainability, a substantial reduction in global clothing production is essential.

Environmental impacts and greenwashing

The fashion industry has come under increasing pressure to clean up its act – from campaigners, from governments, and from shoppers themselves. A 2026 survey found that over 80% of UK shoppers take sustainability into account when purchasing clothes. Unfortunately, rather than making genuine efforts to change their ways, many fast fashion companies turn to greenwashing to present a low-impact image that is often far from the truth.

The global fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for up to 10% of global carbon emissions despite representing under 2% of the global economy. According to the Fossil Free Fashion report 2025: “If SHEIN were a country, it would be the 100th biggest emitter in the world, almost as much pollution as the entire country of Lebanon”.

The industry needs to rapidly reduce its emissions in order to play its part in mitigating extreme impacts on the climate. While many brands offer specific sustainable ranges and are, in some cases, making some progress towards reducing emissions, it is difficult to get away from the fact that the lowest impact clothes are the ones we already own. Lauding the introduction of small sustainability improvements is not going to cut it while the industry is still predicated on encouraging unnecessary over-consumption.

Tighter regulations on greenwashing in the fashion industry

Regulators are increasingly stepping in to ensure companies aren’t exaggerating their green credentials. The Advertising Standards Authority recently banned some Uniqlo ads for clothing made from recycled materials as they potentially misled consumers into believing the items were 100% recycled when only the polyester was recycled. Uniqlo insisted that its customers would understand the clothing was made “to a meaningful extent” from recycled materials.

In April 2025, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) gained new powers to impose hefty fines on any companies found to be making misleading environmental claims. Prior to this the CMA made ASOS and Boohoo sign formal agreements regarding the accuracy of their claims going forward and it reportedly wrote directly to 17 other companies to make them aware of its guidelines. Earlier this year it also updated these guidelines to make it clear that consumer-facing companies cannot shift responsibility down the supply chain if they have not made proper efforts to verify any sustainability credentials found to be misleading. 

Consumers can report misleading claims to the CMA.

Who owns which clothing brands?

Many of the brands in this guide share the same company owner. Here we list the parent companies and their brands. Throughout this guide, reference to these companies encompasses all their brands, unless otherwise stated.

Some of these companies own many other brands, for example, Frasers Group also owns Karrimor, Lonsdale and Slazenger in the trainers guide. The Frasers Group is owned by billionaire Mike Ashley. It rebranded from Sports Direct after it acquired House of Fraser, with both companies still being part of the group.

Frasers owns a 29% share in Boohoo but clearly has somewhat conflicted interests considering it is a major competitor! This is just the latest instalment of a tv-drama worthy rivalry, with Mike Ashley also making a failed attempt to become CEO and to oust Boohoo’s founder and co-chair Mahmud Kamani.

Frasers Group is currently making a bid for full control of Hugo Boss having increased its share from around 30% to nearly 50% while aiming for more. It lost points under our Israel-Palestine rating as Hugo Boss has stores in Israel. Clearly keen to expand the empire, Frasers has also recently bought Harvey Nichols out of administration for just over £40m.

Workers’ rights in the clothing sector

Campaigners have been exposing abuses of garment sector workers for decades. Readers of our clothing news column in our magazine will be aware of the stream of reports on issues such as wage theft, union busting, hazardous factory conditions, and ruthless crackdowns on workers protesting for better pay and conditions.

After facing years of justified criticism, most brands report that they are taking some steps to improve worker conditions. For example, they all have some form of code of conduct with which their suppliers must comply, many publish the names of their suppliers (a measure which increases campaigners’ ability to hold them to account), and some discuss and are beginning to address the issue of living wages.

For these actions, they receive points in our workers rating.

However, the vast majority of the brands in the guide score poorly overall, with all but one scoring under 50. 

This is because we deduct points if a brand has been criticised for poor practice, such as sourcing from a factory where there is evidence of labour rights abuses. The clothing sector loses points for this type of criticism more than any other sector that we rate. For example, brands including Boohoo, H&M, New Look, Primark, and White Stuff scored 80 or 90 for their policies but lost 50 points because of media and NGO reports of connections to factories where labour abuses have taken place.

This is indicative of the gulf that exists between brands’ reporting and the reality for supply chain workers. And so it remains the case that brands have much further to go to end the exploitative practices that characterise the sector.

Brands scoring 20 or below for workers' rights

We rated brands out of 100 for workers' rights. The worst scoring brands scoring 20 or below were:

• Amazon
• ASOS (and its brands Miss Selfridge, Topman and Topshop)
• FatFace
• Gap
• Inditex Group (all brands including Zara)
• I Saw It First
• Jack Wills
• Mango
• M&S
• Next
• Shein (and its other brands Missguided and Romwe)
• TK Maxx

Clothing factory safety

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh which killed 1,138 workers meant that clothing brands could no longer ignore the deadly conditions in which their products were made. The Bangladesh Safety Accord was launched, a binding agreement between brands and unions to ensure factories are regularly inspected by independent engineers to identify fire, electrical, structural, and boiler safety hazards.

As a result, the numbers of deaths and injuries dropped dramatically.

The agreement now also covers Pakistan and has been rebranded as the International Accord but so far it does not cover other garment-producing countries such as India, China, Morocco, and Turkey where workers continue to be at risk of death by fire, explosion, or building collapse.

Most of the brands in this guide have signed the Accord but some have not.

Clothing brands that have not signed the International Accord

The following brands have not signed the International Accord to protect workers in their supply chain:

• Amazon
• Foschini Group (Hobbs, Phase Eight, Whistles, White Stuff)
• Frasers (Jack Wills, I Saw It First)
• Shein (Shein, Missguided, Romwe)
• Temu
• TK Maxx

You can write to these brands directly asking them to join the Accord, and you can sign a petition to urge Amazon to join.

Are workers training their own AI replacements?

It’s possible that garment brands won’t have to worry about workers’ rights for much longer as those very workers are unwittingly training their own AI replacements. 

Reports emerged in 2026 of garment workers in India wearing head-mounted cameras to record their activity. The footage collected is being used to train robots to mimic the movement of humans, in particular the precise and complex actions required to make clothes or other products. Robotics companies will need millions of hours of footage to ensure robots can operate successfully in the real world and garment factories have started cooperating with an emerging cluster of data-gathering companies to feed this need.

The workers have had no say in this process and are receiving no benefit from it. They weren’t told what the cameras were for and received no compensation for sharing their skills with the data-gatherers other than a soft drink. In some cases, the data was used to provide factory owners with productivity reports which ranked workers according to how much time they spent actually working and tracked their socialising. 

It seems that this already exploitative sector has found a new way to extract value from its workers with no recompense other than ultimate redundancy.

Retail robots

It’s not just supply chain workers that are being displaced by robots. 

Lefties, a brand in the Zara group, opened its first UK shop in Liverpool in August 2026. It uses automated checkouts and robots for sorting clothes and hangers which the company director says is to “make shopping convenient and enjoyable”. But it’s cheaper than Zara and we can only assume that one of the ways it’s keeping costs down is by reducing staff numbers.

Are people boycotting fast fashion brands?

When we surveyed our readers in 2024, just under 10% of respondents said they are boycotting fast fashion. This figure was higher if individual brands that were nominated are added in like Boohoo, Primark and Shein.

This summer we asked our staff about their shopping habits and here is what a couple of them said:

“I avoid the high street as much as possible, but if I do end up in a high street clothes shop, I look for cotton based products. I really hate the practices around fast fashion and high street shops; there is so much suffering and pollution involved in making these clothes. I also hate the culture around it, having to be on trend or look a certain way. I've never been that mad about actually going shopping either so secondhand platforms suit me quite well.” (Nadine)

“For the last nearly 30 years I’ve lived in small towns which don’t have many high street chain stores. This has never bothered me as ever since I was in college I’ve preferred finding quirky or different items in charity shops.” (Alyson)

Although this is not evidence of official boycotts, more and more consumers are turning away from fast fashion brands and shopping secondhand or with more ethical clothing brands.

There are some official boycotts of fast fashion brands such as Amazon and Zara, both due to Israeli military connections. (See further below for more on this.)

Waste colonialism: what is it?

For our 2026 clothing guides we have introduced a new rating called waste colonialism, but what is it?

Waste colonialism describes how high-GDP countries use communities elsewhere as dumping grounds for their waste. The Or Foundation defines it as when one group uses “waste and pollution to dominate another group of people in their homeland”.  

In fashion, this is visible in the flow of unwanted, secondhand, and excess clothing from the Global North to the Global South, shifting environmental, economic, and human costs onto communities that did not create the problem.

Fashion's dominant business model relies on selling ever-increasing volumes of new clothing. Between 2000 and 2015, global clothing production doubled while the number of times clothes were worn before being discarded fell by 36%. Fast and ultra-fast fashion have pushed this model to its extreme but luxury brands have also been criticised for dumping unsold stock.

The result is more clothing exported than can realistically be resold, reused, or recycled. The Global North transfers much of the cost and responsibility for sorting, cleaning, repairing, altering, and reselling elsewhere. And as quality deteriorates, more of what is exported becomes unusable. Communities are left doing more for less economic return, while the Global North exports the cost of its waste.

Where does discarded clothing typically end up?

Our Waste Colonialism rating focuses on three places where the consequences are particularly visible: 

• Accra in Ghana
• Nairobi in Kenya
• Chile's Atacama Desert. 

These are not the only places experiencing waste colonialism, nor are they interchangeable. Clothing reaches them through different routes and supports different secondhand economies. Together they illustrate how overproduction transfers the burden of dealing with discarded clothing.

In Accra, Kantamanto Market is named the world's largest secondhand clothing market, seeing 15 million garments every week. These are recirculated by retailers, tailors, dyers, and upcyclers, but falling quality and overwhelming volumes mean significant quantities cannot be resold and end up on Accra's beaches.

In Nairobi, around 36m pieces are shipped directly from the UK each year. Textile waste reaches places like Dandora – one of Africa’s largest dumpsites – where synthetic clothing joins other waste amid open burning and pollution. An estimated one in three items shipped to Kenya contains plastic that will damage the environment for centuries.

In Chile, millions of tonnes of clothing enter through a duty-free port each year. Clothing that cannot be resold accumulates in illegal dumps around the Atacama Desert, where an estimated 60,000 tonnes has formed piles visible from space.

Difficulties of gathering data on discarded clothing

We looked at research identifying brands in each location. Much of our methodology was informed by The Or Foundation, which has spent years working alongside Accra’s Kantamanto community. Its Tag Ur It data documents labels on discarded clothing recovered during beach cleanups, with workers recording and photographing the brands they find.

This is a painstaking, physical audit of clothing recovered so far, not a complete census of these waste streams. In Ghana, workers dig clothing out of beaches, locate labels, and manually document them. 

Similar limitations apply to data from the Changing Markets Foundation working with communities in Kenya, and local groups in Chile. Labels may be missing or illegible and brands under-represented.

Repeated identification therefore confirms a company's products reaching these waste streams but absence does not prove its clothing isn’t there.

Clothing brands rarely disclose the volume of discarded clothes

The rating also considers whether companies are taking steps to fix the system creating this waste. Knowing which clothes are exported is only part of the answer, we also need to know how much companies produce.

For our rating we checked the Or Foundation's Speak Volumes campaign which calls on companies to disclose the number of garments they produce each year. 

Yes, it sounds basic. 

But there is still no reliable figure for global fashion production. M&S, Adidas, and Nike are among the brands most commonly found on Accra’s beaches, yet have not joined Speak Volumes. 

Of 1,039 brands approached, just 193 disclosed their volumes, and even fewer had committed to ongoing disclosures.

What are the solutions to waste colonialism

As part of its Stop Waste Colonialism Campaign, the Or Foundation is pushing for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), making producers financially responsible for what happens to their products at the end of their lives. 

They argue for global accountability: 

“Waste should not transit borders without accompanying EPR funding.” 

One controversial example of EPR came in 2022, when Shein agreed to pay The Or Foundation $15 million over three years towards managing fashion waste in Ghana, as part of a wider $50 million EPR fund. The decision faced criticism given Shein’s own ultra-fast fashion model and role in driving overproduction. But The Or Foundation stated that this is an agreement, not a partnership or endorsement: in its words, the money is Shein “paying the bill that’s due”.

The responsibility should not fall on communities already paying the price for fashion’s overproduction to refuse reparative funding from the companies responsible for it. 

The Or Foundation also argues for volume-reduction targets, as funding waste management does not address the root of the crisis of an industry built around producing ever more.

Creative local actions

Meanwhile, affected communities are dealing creatively with what arrives. 

In Chile, EcoFibra shreds textile waste into building insulation while in Accra the Obroni Wawu festival (‘Dead White Man’s Clothes’) features upcycled collections, and the Tide Turners Cleanup team removes over 18 tonnes of textile and other plastic waste from Accra beaches every week. And Desierto Vestido staged an Atacama Fashion Show using dumped clothing. 

But more is needed from those creating the problem.

Are any fast fashion brands vegan?

There are no vegan brands in this guide and overall the sector scored poorly in the animal products category.

Our research looked at use of animal products by the clothing brands and if there were animal welfare policies in place.

The highest score was 50 (out of 100), achieved by:

• ASOS (and its brands Miss Selfridge, Topman and Topshop) which had some adequate policies covering some of its animal fibres;
• Boohoo Group which sold very few animal-based products;
• I Saw It First also scored 50 because, although it wasn’t explicitly vegan, it didn’t appear to sell any animal products – most products were made of polyester. It didn’t score more because its parent company Frasers didn’t have any animal welfare policies and it owned many brands which sold leather and wool.
• Next (including its brand FatFace).

The following companies scored 0 for animal products:

• Amazon
• Elite Depot Limited (Missguided, Romwe, Shein)
• Gap
• H&M
• Inditex
• Jack Wills
• Marks & Spencer
• Temu

Many of these brands had been criticised for animal abuses found in their supply chains, for example, in April 2026, PETA released footage from a South African sheep farm that sells its wool through a broker that supplies H&M Group. PETA also criticised Temu for “flooding its platform with products made from fur, wild-animal skins, angora, and a long list of other products of cruelty.” You can support PETA’s Temu campaign on its website.

See our separate feature on animal products in the clothing sector.

Fast fashion brands and tax 

Only Uniqlo scored 100 for tax conduct as we found no evidence of tax avoidance activity. 

Two thirds of the companies in this guide scored 0/100 for tax conduct. These were 

• Amazon
• ASOS
• Elite Depot Limited (Missguided, Romwe, Shein)
• Frasers Group (Jack Wills, I Saw It First)
• Inditex (all brands including Zara)
• M&S
• New Look
• Primark
• River Island
• TK Maxx
• Temu

Elite Depot Limited and Temu are both headquartered in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands, and New Look and River Island are headquartered in Jersey, another tax haven. 

Shein was criticised by the Fair Tax Foundation for transferring the majority of its UK earnings to Singapore to avoid paying UK tax. 

The remaining companies have more than one subsidiary in tax havens such as Bermuda, Luxembourg, and Mauritius.

Israel-Palestine rating

We introduced the Israel-Palestine rating in 2025 due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Our separate feature explains what we look for in this rating.

The highest mark for fast fashion brands was 80 (out of 100). The companies which scored this did so because, while we couldn’t find any direct relation between them and Israel or the abuse of Palestinians, they did not appear to be taking any proactive steps to uphold Palestinian rights.

Two companies scored 0 as they are BDS targets: 

• Amazon because it provides cloud computing services to the Israeli state and military
• Inditex because of close ties between the chair of ZARA’s Israeli franchise and ultra-nationalist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Frasers Group, H&M, and Mango all had stores but not subsidiaries in Israel. 

AB Foods, owner of Primark at the time of writing, owned a subsidiary in Israel.

M&S’s subsidiary Ocado was found to source some products from Israel. 

Over 25% of shareholdings of TJX Companies (TK Maxx) and Next were held by companies named in various reports as complicit in the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians. There is also a hotel chain in Israel within the River Island company group.

Senior figures in Next, The Foschini Group, and River Island were also connected to charitable foundations which have donated to groups supportive of the Israeli government.

Unequal pay structures: CEO salaries

In our company ethos rating, companies lose points for excessively high pay to top directors or CEOs. While CEO salaries in the fashion world are not quite as eye-watering as some other industries, they are still pretty galling considering the widespread exploitation occurring in the garment sector. 

Oxfam has estimated that it takes a CEO from top high-street fashion brands a mere four days to earn what the average Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in their entire lifetime.

The least excessive pay was at New Look where the poor CEO had to scrape by on a measly £700k. 

The highest payout was at TJX Companies (owner of TK Maxx) at a whopping £19.7m in 2025. The CEO of Amazon received over $2m in 2025, however this comes in the wake of receiving over $200m in 2021.

After the company failed to meet its targets, the CEO at Frasers Group made the noble decision to waive his £1m salary. Don’t worry though, if he manages to turn things around by 2030 he is in line for a bonus payout of £100m. 

Gamification marketing rewards frequent purchases

For the fast fashion model to flourish, companies need to convince shoppers to keep buying new clothes and it’s evident that ultra-low costs and a manufactured cycle of new trends have helped drive over-consumption.

Fashion’s marketing techniques have long been criticised for creating unrealistic beauty standards and the perception that these can be attained by purchasing the latest styles. 

We are increasingly seeing the use of gamified apps to keep people shopping, particularly from companies like Shein and Temu. Professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University, Mark Griffiths told the BBC: "They've mixed shopping and gamification really well. Temu's marketing strategy means you are literally having to browse to get your rewards” and compared it to how slot machines work.

Shein rewards user interaction in various ways, including through awarding points for every 7 day streak on their app.

Addictive shopping apps can be particularly harmful for young or vulnerable people and the EU has launched an investigation into Shein for its marketing tactics.

What's the solution to fast fashion?

With fast fashion a problematic industry, what is best for consumers to do?

1) If you want clothes specifically from some of the brands in this guide, we recommend using secondhand retailers to find good quality preloved items by those brands:

• The guide to sustainable clothing brands includes eight secondhand retailers, and all bar one score more points than the clothing brands in this fast fashion guide.
• Read our article on buying secondhand online to give you top tips if you decide to buy preloved.

2) If you don't have a specific brand in mind, you may wish to look at the sustainable clothing brands guide, which rates 23 ethical clothing brands who focus on slow fashion, clothing made to last, and higher ethical credentials. 

Additional research by Francesca de la Torre and Yalda Keshavarzi.

How was Ethical Consumer's research carried out?

Below we set out our research process and methodology. 

1) Categories used for rating fast fashion clothing brands

These are the eight categories we used for this research, and why we used them:

• Animal products: we assessed whether brands were using animal-derived materials to make their clothing and, if so, what steps they were taking to protect animal welfare. Most points went to companies that use no or minimal animal-derived materials. Points were also given if a brand only sources responsible animal products, such as organic wool.
• Climate: we assessed what companies were doing to reduce their climate impact. Taking steps to reduce carbon emissions is essential if we are to meet international agreements and minimise the harmful effects of climate change.
• Company ethos: we assessed what type of company owned the brand and whether they were linked to controversial sectors. More points were given to business types such as not-for-profit organisations and co-operatives. Points were deducted if the business was found to be linked to controversial sectors, such as fossil fuels or arms.
• Israel-Palestine: we assessed whether companies have connections with the Israeli state, with marks lost when connections were found. This is an important issue because the Israeli state has been accused of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.
• Sustainable materials: we assessed what materials a brand is using to make its clothing and how environmentally sustainable these materials are. More points were awarded for more environmentally sustainable fabrics, notably natural and organic fabrics.
• Tax conduct: we assessed whether it is likely that a company is using tax avoidance strategies to minimise its tax bill. This is an important issue because tax pays for essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education.
• Waste colonialism: we assessed the extent to which brands are implicated in the problem of “waste colonialism” – disused clothing being dumped in poorer countries. Points were deducted if a brand’s products had been found in certain places (such as Accra’s beaches) or if they had been criticised by the Or Foundation.
• Workers: we assessed whether a brand is protecting workers’ rights in its supply chain. Exploitation of workers is endemic to the clothing sector, so it is vital that we examine what brands are doing to ensure supply chain workers are paid well and treated fairly.

2) Date of research
The research was conducted between July-September 2026. Most research was based on information published in the past two years.

3) Engagement with companies
All brands included in this guide were emailed a questionnaire which asked about the ethical issues we assess in our ratings.

If companies didn’t respond then we used publicly available information, such as their website, documents filed with Companies House, and trusted third-party news sources.