This new study reveals the fashion brands with the lowest carbon footprint

If you're trying to build a more sustainable wardrobe, then you'll probably be interested to know which online high-street brands are more environmentally-friendly than others (and if you want to live a more conscious life overall, do check out our sustainability content here).

A new study by USwitch might be able to help you with that. The energy switching website looked at each company's carbon footprint, based on online visits to their websites.

Basically, according to the site, everything we do online uses electricity, from sending emails and streaming content, to internet shopping and posting content on social media. This then produces carbon which negatively affects the environment and can lead to climate change.

Using a website carbon calculator, they worked out the amount of energy that’s used when someone loads a page on a website – this factors in the energy that’s required at the data centre (the cloud), by the telecoms network and by the user’s computer or mobile, as well as things like whether the data centre is using green energy to power it.

These were the winners.

Top 10 Cleanest Fashion Websites:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
 WebsiteAmount of carbon per website visit
1hm.com0.29
2adidas.com0.37
3marksandspencer.com0.45
4louisvuitton.com0.49
5mango.com0.50
6lyst.co.uk0.52
7zara.com0.67
8primark.com0.79
9allsaints.com0.95
10skims.com0.98

Carbon expert, Tom Greenwood from Website Carbon commented: 'Improving energy efficiency and prioritising renewable energy sources are two key ways a website can reduce its carbon emissions. A good place to start is making sure the size of images, fonts and videos are kept to an absolute minimum – this will reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred when someone uses the site, and will in turn reduce the amount of energy used. Reducing website emissions might sound a bit niche, but there’s a stack of other benefits for the customer as well as the company - from improved user experience to better security, better accessibility and faster load times. So, it's a win-win for people and planet.'

Penny Goldstone

Penny Goldstone is the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire, covering everything from catwalk trends to royal fashion and the latest high street and Instagram must-haves.

Penny grew up in France and studied languages and law at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris before moving to the UK for her MA in multimedia journalism at Bournemouth University. She moved to the UK permanently and has never looked back (though she does go back regularly to stock up on cheese and wine).

Although she's always loved fashion - she used to create scrapbooks of her favourite trends and looks, including Sienna Miller and Kate Moss' boho phase - her first job was at MoneySavingExpert.com, sourcing the best deals for everything from restaurants to designer sales.

However she quit after two years to follow her true passion, fashion journalism, and after many years of internships and freelance stints at magazines including Red, Cosmopolitan, Stylist and Good Housekeeping, landed her dream job as the Digital Fashion Editor at Marie Claire UK.

Her favourite part of the job is discovering new brands and meeting designers, and travelling the world to attend events and fashion shows. Seeing her first Chanel runway IRL at Paris Fashion Week was a true pinch-me moment.