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Recycling and Reducing Waste - Primark Cares

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Recycling and Reducing Waste

Primark is working to reduce and recycle waste

We’re committed to reducing fashion waste across all areas of our business. From the raw materials we source, to the cardboard boxes we transport our goods in and the unsold clothes in our stores, we’re stepping up and doing more to manage our waste and working to recycle as much as possible.

Minimising packaging

As a global retailer with hundreds of stores across Europe and the United States, we’re working to reduce the environmental impact of our stores as much as possible. This ranges from making them more energy efficient to managing the amount of waste they produce or recycle. To keep costs down and reduce our environmental impact, we’ve devised a new approach to getting products to stores. It’s designed to minimise packaging and waste at every stage of the process – from packing in factories through to sales in-store. For example, we ask factories to use just one plastic bag for a whole set of t-shirts, instead of having every product individually wrapped.

We’re committed to increasing the levels of recycling within our stores, particularly for cardboards, plastics and hangers.

Our iconic brown paper bags have been spotted on high streets since 2001 and is one of the best examples of reducing plastic use. Last Christmas we encouraged people reuse that bag for wrapping paper.

To reduce the number of trucks on the road and the amount of onsite waste collections at our stores, for many years we have used the same trucks that deliver our products to collect waste and take it back to our distribution centers.

As part of this process, we’ve established Resource Recovery Units in our UK and German depots. From here the cardboard, plastic and hangers that are collected at our UK and Northern European stores are reprocessed and sent for onward recycling or energy recovery. This ‘backhauling’ arrangement allows us to be actively involved in the recycling process and has significantly reduced the volume of third-party waste collections from our stores.

In store we’re seeking to reduce single use plastics. In late 2019, cardboard hangers and tags on soft accessories such as hats, scarves and gloves were trialed. After a successful roll-out, the hangers and tags for jewellery, hair products and belts were also changed from plastic to cardboard. Where possible, we are aiming to move to 100% recycled materials for all hangers. We will also aim to reuse or recycle as many remaining hangers as possible so that all hangers can be part of a circular system.

As one of our main sources of non-clothing waste, product packaging is one of our priority focus areas. We have established a Packaging Centre of Excellence to look closely at our packaging and explore ways to reduce it. Since 2019, we estimate to have removed and/or avoided over 1 billion units of single-use plastic components from our business.

Furthermore, our carton optimisation programme provides guidance to suppliers on how to optimise shipping packaging. The programme has so far saved 2.26 million square meters of corrugated material from being produced, shipped and recycled (4% reduction in overall volume). The programme has also reduced the cubic metre volume of cargo shipped by the equivalent of 1,400 standard high cube containers (2.5% reduction).

To support our more circular business model, we’re continuing to explore ways to reduce our use of single use plastics to move to more sustainable packaging materials.

WE CARE ABOUT CLOTHES WASTE

Reducing clothing waste

We’re committed to becoming a circular and more sustainable business over the next seven years. As part of our commitment to give clothes a longer life and to help protect life on the planet, we are working hard to reduce clothing waste.

Donating clothing and textiles in store

Clothes should be worn again and again. However, if our customers want to give their pre-loved clothes a new life, we offer a textile takeback scheme in our stores. Established in conjunction with recycling specialist Yellow Octopus, our scheme allows customers to donate any brand of pre-loved clothing, textiles, footwear and bags at collection boxes in any one of our stores across the UK, Ireland, Austria, Germany and The Netherlands.

Each donated item is sorted and graded by Yellow Octopus to be re-loved by someone else. If it can’t be given a second life, the clothes or textiles will be recycled into materials such as mattress filler or insulation. In the UK, we’ve also partnered with Yellow Octopus to trial their ‘Upcycle Labs’ technology, which uses textile waste to create new home products such a soap dishes, vases, and candle holders.

The funds raised through our textile takeback scheme will support UNICEF in providing better access to education, health, water, and hygiene as well as life-saving aid to children in need.

We’re keen to extend our Textile Takeback scheme across other markets but will only do so when we can be confident our programme complies with local regulations and works for the infrastructure and customers in that country.

We also have our UK Take Back Textiles locations available in WRAP’s recycling locator tool. This makes it easier for our customers to donate in our stores.

You can also contact your local council to check what services they offer.

Ever wonder what happens to stock we don’t sell?

We have an efficient business model, so we try to minimise excess stock. Where we do have leftover stock, we work with partners to ensure any unsold stock is donated, resold or recycled if it can no longer be worn.

In the USA, we partner with Delivering Good, a non-profit organisation that takes donations of new fashion, home and children’s products and redistributes these to support people affected by poverty and tragedy.

In UK and ROI, we partner with Newlife who sell and recycle the clothes to raise funds to buy equipment and pay specially trained nurses to support disabled and terminally ill children and their families.

In Europe, our in-store recycling scheme partner Yellow Octopus manages any leftover stock. Stock received is sorted and sent for reuse or recycle. Items in good condition are resold in four European countries approved by Primark: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Lithuania through resale partners – independent clothing stores and retailers trading second-hand garments known and authorised by Yellow Octopus.

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