High Street Clothes Shops

As many clothing brands now operate largely, or even entirely, online we have used the term ‘high-street’ as a catch-all term to signify brands that are bigger, more mainstream, or clearly less ethical than those found in our guide to Ethical Clothing.

The three brands that scored at the top of our score table (Patagonia, Reformation, Nobody’s Child) are notably more ethical than most of the others in this guide, but we felt they were better suited to this guide because they had a wider and more mainstream reach.

A changing landscape

The Covid-19 pandemic brought about some significant changes to the clothing sector, with two major clothing companies, Debenhams and Arcadia Group, unable to survive the economic hit brought about by UK lockdowns. Debenhams and its associated brands were hoovered up by Boohoo in January 2021, while the Arcadia Group was carved up and its numerous brands split between Boohoo Group and ASOS: the former acquiring Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Burton; the latter buying up Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge, and HIIT.

ASOS and Boohoo have been some of the winners throughout the pandemic as online shopping has increased, though recent years have also seen the rise of a number of other online fast-fashion brands, such as: I Saw It First, In the Style, Missguided, Quiz, and Shein.

We included these brands in our guide because, even though some aren’t nearly as well-established as other mainstream brands, they are growing fast, aiming their products almost exclusively at younger consumers, and have been subject to less scrutiny than the likes of Primark and H&M.

There are a vast array of brands in this sector, so it wouldn’t be possible to cover all of them, but we have made sure to cover the biggest players as well as some of the smaller, but rapidly growing online fast-fashion brands.

What’s wrong with the clothing industry?

The clothing sector continues to grow at an extraordinary rate. Garment production has doubled since the early 2000s and is predicted to grow from 62 million tonnes in 2015 to 102 million tonnes by 2030. This increase is only partly explained by population growth, with the average person today buying 60% more clothing than in 2000.

The mass overconsumption of clothing, fuelled by fashion brands, is having enormous environmental impacts. The sector requires huge amounts of resources, every year using 93 billion cubic meters of water, which is enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people.

It is also incredibly polluting and wasteful. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, clothes release half a million tonnes of microfibres into the ocean every year, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles, while less than 1% of used clothing is recycled into new garments.

At present the industry is responsible for up to 10% of total global carbon emissions, and estimated to increase by 50% by 2030.

It’s not just the environmental impact of clothing that blights the sector. For years, brands have ‘chased the cheap needle’ around the world, seeking out countries with the lowest labour standards so that garment workers can be exploited and costs kept low. In recent years, many fast-fashion brands have found the cheap needle closer to home, often in quasi-legal factories in cities such as Leicester where workers have been found to be paid under half the minimum wage.

What’s the fix?

In this guide we take an in-depth look at the many ethical issues of the clothing sector and explore what actions you can take to address them. This includes cotton sourcing, animal rights, workers' rights and greenwashing. We also outline the key environmental and social initiatives, many of which involve a variety of stakeholders, that are working to resolve issues in the sector.

In separate articles we examine the carbon impact of clothing and how it can be reduced, and explore workers’ rights in the context of global supply chains.

We also have a feature article on fabrics and identify the most sustainable and those to avoid.

If our advice on clothing could be summarised in a sentence it would be this:

Buy fewer clothes; preferably buy second-hand; recycle and upcycle; and if you need to buy new, support ethical brands.

You can also read 'Ethical Fashion: 10 consumer actions' in the ethical clothing guide for more advice on making your clothing choices more sustainable, and read our feature article on upcycling, repairing and buying second-hand.

A systemic problem

Whilst it is important to highlight the poor practices of companies such as Boohoo, it is also essential not to lose sight of the bigger picture. When Ethical Consumer first wrote about Primark in 1999 we commented that its low prices were frightening other manufacturers, and it said nothing at all of ethics. But sustained pressure since then from campaigners, journalists, and civil society groups forced it to make improvements – though it is still far from perfect.

The problem was not solved, but rather just shifted, as several years ago we saw the rise of brands such as Boohoo and Missguided. As with Primark, these new fast-fashion brands threatened others with super-low prices, in part facilitated by their lack of ethical practices and poor supply chain governance.

Since we last ranted about Boohoo in our previous high-street clothing guide, sustained pressure has forced the company to make some improvements. But, as this happens, we see the rise of even newer brands such as Shein, following the same pattern as before – offering lower prices and a flagrant disregard for people and environment. Indeed, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce – then dressed in nothing but a £1 bikini.

The need for regulation too

At Ethical Consumer we urge readers to use their money to support ethical businesses and to stay clear of the worst offenders. When we previously looked at high street clothing in 2019, we wrote of the need for formal education in schools about the consequences of buying super-cheap clothing. However, it is important to recognise that the workers’ rights and environmental abuses endemic to the clothing sector will not be solved until we also see adequate regulatory change.

Labour Behind the Label stressed the need for regulatory change in response to Alison Levitt’s independent review of Boohoo's Leicester supply chain, stating: “Abuses in Leicester garment factories must be set within a wider landscape of laws and business practices that are clearly failing to provide adequate protections to garment workers across the UK... The government must take action to curb the abusive business practices of brands that have contributed to this situation and urgently assess the need for mandatory due diligence.”

We explore problems with the global supply chain and workers' rights in a separate feature, including information about some of the campaigns which are aiming to bring about political change in the sector and guidance on how you can best support them.

Supply Chain Management

For every company that produces physical goods we examine its approach to supply chain management of workers’ rights. We asses several key areas: supply chain policy (usually a supplier code of conduct), stakeholder engagement, auditing and reporting, and its approach to difficult issues.

In our last guide to clothing, published in EC180, a significant number of brands received our best rating for Supply Chain Management – which is not the norm in other sectors.

Over the years the clothing sector has received sustained criticism following numerous reports of workers’ rights abuses in company supply chains. As a result, most brands have developed seemingly comprehensive supplier codes of conduct and audit schedules, and joined various industry initiatives. Taken at face value, these developments are intended to improve the conditions of workers in company supply chains. However, report after report has shown that low pay, excessive working hours, and a host of other issues are still endemic.

The cynic might argue that the purpose of these codes of conduct and audits is not primarily to do something about these problems, but rather to give the impression of doing something.

Indeed, an extensive report in 2019 by Clean Clothes Campaign, titled ‘Fig Leaf for Fashion’ argued just this: “Overseen by business-led or business-dominated social compliance initiatives, these have become the central tools through which brands seek to demonstrate to their customers that they are addressing workers’ rights in their supply chains. The actual supplier assessments are carried out by corporate-controlled, for-profit auditing firms whose priority is mitigating reputation risk.”

For the reasons stated above, we have raised the bar for clothing companies in these guides, making it more difficult for companies to receive our best or middle rating for Supply Chain Management, and by the same logic making it easier for them to receive our worst rating.

The brands that received our best rating were considered to have a thorough and robust approach to upholding workers’ rights in their supply chains. The likes of Boohoo and Missguided had made improvements since the last time we examined the sector in 2019, but were not considered to be doing enough to move beyond our worst rating.

Shein is worthy of note for its distinct lack of effort in this area. The company had almost nothing on its website about upholding workers’ rights in its supply chain, bar a couple of statements such as, “We never. EVER. engage in child or forced labor.” If the age of the child is not defined, such a statement is essentially meaningless and therefore offers little assurance that they are ensuring child labour isn’t used. On the other hand,
they have written the word ‘EVER’ in fully capitalised letters, which is always an indication that a statement is indisputably true! Or rather: TRUE!

Pollution & Toxics

As well as a workers’ rights problem, the clothing sector has an environmental problem. Cotton production uses 6% of the world’s pesticides and 16% of insecticides. The sector is also awash with plastic with fabrics such as acrylic, elastane, nylon, and polyester, which are made using fossil fuels, discussed in our fabrics article. According to a recent report by the RSA, titled ‘Fast Fashion’s Plastic Problem’, the use of these synthetic fibres in clothing has doubled between 2000 and 2020.

The problem is particularly pronounced in the fast-fashion sector. When the RSA looked across the websites of ASOS, Boohoo, Missguided, and Pretty Little Thing, it found that the “average item is at least half plastic, and that as many as 88% of the items listed on some websites contain ‘virgin’ plastics.”

As the problems of pollution and toxics are so widespread across the sector we expected each brand to take adequate measures to address these issues. To receive our best rating, a brand had to be using 100% sustainably sourced materials.

Whether a material is sustainable depends not just on what it is, but also how it was made. Such materials include organic or recycled materials, and cellulose fibres such as lyocell, Tencel and Monocel. For more on sustainable fabrics see our feature article.

ZDHC Roadmap to Zero

A brand could receive our middle rating if it was a signatory to the ZDHC Roadmap to Zero, an initiative which works with brands and retailers in the textile, apparel and footwear industries to implement “sustainable chemical management best practice across the value chain.” The goal of the initiative, which started in 2011 and now has over 160 contributors, is to advance towards “zero discharge of hazardous chemicals” in the sector.

Pollution & Toxics ratings

No brand received our best rating in this category. Many of the well-established brands (as opposed to the newer, faster-fashion brands) were signatories to the ZDHC. Nobody’s Child received our middle rating because over 50% of its materials were considered to be sustainable (only about 10% were not considered sustainable). Reformation and Patagonia also received our middle rating for using over 50% sustainable materials.

* Brands that sold household and personal care products were also rated for their pollution and toxics policies for these products, and a mark in the Pollution & Toxics column on the score table may relate to this.

Product Sustainability

In recent years, campaign groups and consumers have pressured clothing brands to become more sustainable and environmentally conscious, but this is yet to have led to substantial change. Many brands now offer limited ranges of clothing that are organic, or recycled, or Fairtrade, but when the vast majority of a company’s output is clothing produced unsustainably, such a paltry offering is maybe little more than an exercise in greenwashing.

For this reason, we have only awarded Product Sustainability marks to brands that are sourcing all their cotton sustainably.

• A whole Product Sustainability mark was awarded to brands that sourced 100% sustainable cotton defined as organic, recycled or Fairtrade.
• Half a Product Sustainability mark was awarded to brands that sourced 100% sustainable cotton, defined as organic, recycled, Fairtrade or Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

While the BCI cotton is not as sustainable as organic or Fairtrade cotton, it is better than uncertified, conventional cotton. It is also important to acknowledge that it is far easier for smaller brands to source 100% organic cotton than it is for larger brands due to a lack of supply of organic cotton on the global market. In 2018/19 organic cotton only made up 0.93% of global cotton production.

Rankings for companies involved in multiple sectors

When we rate brands for their ethics we ‘follow the money’ and examine what other sectors they or their parent companies are involved with. We believe such an approach is important to fully understand how ethical a brand is, but it can result in brands that are involved in numerous markets scoring badly in our rankings.

There are three brands that are notable for their involvement in sectors other than clothing: Amazon, Marks & Spencer, and Primark (which is owned by Associated British Foods). If we were to only consider policies and practices applicable to clothing, they would score the following:

• Marks & Spencer: 8.5
• Primark: 7
• Amazon: 4.5

It should be noted that most of these initiatives are primarily aimed at larger brands. It is therefore unsurprising that larger brands dominate the table, while some smaller brands are only engaged in few, if any, of these initiatives.