Features

Let's get down to EARTH this Earth Month

Every action we take has an impact. Let’s make sure it’s the right one. 

This Earth Month, we’re spotlighting the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes to reduce our impact on people and our planet.

From working towards closing the loop on single-use plastic to making use of more recycled materials, scroll on to find out about our commitments and achievements so far courtesy of our EARTH acronym.

Psst! We’ve also picked out our favourite lower-impact styles* for you to shop below…

*Compared to previous years and calculated using the Textiles 2030 Footprint Tool. Find out more at www.newlook.com/kind

E is for… ENVIRONMENT. 

To kick things off, we’re proud to share that 62% of our spring/summer ‘23 clothing is made with lower-impact materials. This includes ECOVERO™ viscose which produces fewer carbon emissions, and uses less water, compared to standard viscose. Impressively, 72% of our viscose is ECOVERO™ versus 18% in 2019/2020. We’ve also scaled up our use of recycled synthetics to 36%, as opposed to 5% in 2019/2020. 

On top of this, 91% of our cotton is now lower impact and our more responsible linen preserves biodiversity by using natural farming techniques and no chemical pesticides or fertilizers.  

We also invest in Better Cotton, an incredible initiative that helps cotton farmers and communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. 

Learn more about our materials here: https://www.newlook.com/uk/sustainability/materials  

R is for… RECYCLING.

Now let’s talk recycling! We’ve adopted a closed-loop system where our carriers, mailers and hangers are made using our own recycled plastic and are 100% recyclable. Fun fact: we’ve reduced the weight of our packaging too, cutting our carbon use by 95 tonnes which is equivalent to flying around the world 12 times. 

We’ve also teamed up with Newlife, Hospice UK and Re-Fashion to champion recycling and circular fashion (think donating your clothes to give them a second life or buying pre-loved). Our Re-Fashion partnership now includes second-hand clothing pop-ups in six New Look stores, which we’re really excited about!  

Our next steps are to continue looking at where we can cut unnecessary packaging from products and review where we can switch to more sustainable alternatives. We’ll also further our work with Textiles 2030 to transform the way we supply, use and dispose of clothing and textiles, helping to accelerate this change across the UK fashion industry as a whole. 

T is for… TRANSPARENCY.

We realise how important it is for you to know where your clothes come from. So we made a commitment to provide full transparency (aka visibility and accessibility to data) of our tier 1 and tier 2 supply chains – for anyone confused, these tiers represent product finishing (stitching and assembling) and fabric manufacturing (dying and printing).  

Not only have we achieved this with tier 1, and reached 81% for tier 2, but we’ve gone one step further and published our tier 3 (raw material processing – think spinning yarns) producers as well. By brands like ours providing better transparency, this will help the fight for decent work, fair pay and help grow the number of women in leadership positions within the fashion and textiles industries. 

On another note, 50% of our supply chain provide sustainability data via Higg Facilities Environmental Module which is an industry leading platform for manufacturers to measure and improve environmental impacts.   

All our factories are required to complete the assessment annually, allowing us to calculate the environmental impact of our products, provide accountability for our factories and workers and co-ordinate with factories on improving sustainability practices. 

H is for… HEROES.

Finally we’re shouting out our heroes, including our Kind representatives who are the reason we’ve achieved all the above and our inclusivity teams – aka the people pivotal in extending our core womenswear collection to size 22 and having us work with national charity partners like LGBT Foundation.  

There’s also our amazing store teams raising lots and lots of money for our local charities which are nominated by store colleagues in every region. Last year’s total? £633,000! Thank you for supporting us along the way – this year we hope to go even bigger and raise £1 million for our local communities.  

Stay tuned to see if we achieve it and have a happy Earth Month!