Primark launches denim collection that meets Jeans Redesign criteria

Irish fast-fashion retailer, Primark, has launched a new denim collection designed to demonstrate what circular fashion looks like in practice, featuring 100% circular denim. Primark’s latest denim collection is part of The Jeans Redesign, a Make Fashion Circular initiative led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Denim from the new collection is developed, produced, and created in accordance with the Foundation’s concept of a circular economy for fashion.

The Jeans Redesign was launched in July 2019 with the goal of helping fashion designers and manufacturers transform the way they produce jeans by addressing waste, pollution, and the usage of dangerous techniques. The guidelines, which are based on circular economy concepts, ensure that jeans are used more, made to be created again, and are made from safe, recycled, or renewable materials.

As a participant of the project, Primark has released a new collection of jeans and denim jackets, featuring denim that is made from organic cotton and recycled fibers and has been engineered to be readily recycled so that it can be transformed into new jeans after it is no longer used. The product is metal rivet-free, which is a popular design aspect that makes recycling jeans difficult. To ensure that this product has an environmentally friendly future, the labeling also provides instructions on how to remove buttons and zips before recycling.

The jackets are 80% organic cotton and 20% recycled cotton, while the jeans are made of 70% organic cotton, 29% recycled cotton, and 1% elastane.

Lynne Walker, director of Primark Care, said that they launched their Primark Cares sustainability strategy in September and committed to changing the way they make their clothes, ensuring that they are recyclable by design by 2027, made from more sustainably sourced or recycled materials by 2030, and last longer by 2025.

Walker added that denim is a wardrobe staple for their customers, from denim jeans to denim jackets, and he is proud of this new collection, which embodies their vision and demonstrates how these changes manifest themselves in the real world. Above all, they’re demonstrating that they can do it without sacrificing the style and affordability that their customers expect from them.

Laura Balmond, lead Make Fashion Circular at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, said that the Jeans Redesign proves that it is possible to make garments appropriate for a circular economy today, and this is just the beginning. Organizations like Primark get the courage to research and learn how to put circular economy-aligned products on the market by taking these first steps. They’re encouraged by Primark’s solutions and the growing awareness of the problems that must be overcome in order to realize the aim of a circular economy for fashion. They can no longer put off advancement now that the principle has been validated. Industry and government must continue driving momentum, at pace and scale, towards a circular economy for fashion.

The new circular denim collection follows the announcement of Primark’s sustainability strategy in September, which revealed the retailer’s objectives to eliminate fashion waste, halve carbon emissions across its value chain, and enhance the lives of those who manufacture its products.