H&M and Sustainability

Fashion Revolution are a global movement who want to unite people and organisations to work together towards radically changing the way clothes are sourced, produced and consumed, so that clothing is made in a safe, clean and fair way. They believe that collaborating across the whole value chain (from farmer to consumer) is the only way to transform the industry. The main mission is to bring everyone together to make that happen.

In celebration of Earth Day, Fashion Revolution signed the charter declaring a climate emergency. This has also been signed by Burberry, H&M, Levi’s and Gap who have all committed to a target of reducing 30% greenhouse gas emission by 2030. These brands are now finding new innovative materials to make their clothes more environmentally friendly.

For example, I believe H&M have to be one of the leading fashion brands in terms of spreading awareness and being sustainable. For example, in their "Conscious Collection" range they have included a leather jacket and leather shoes that are both produced with leather-like material, usually made from the leaves that are disregarded during the production of pineapples!

Other brands are focusing on repurposing already existing materials, i.e Patagonia is producing fleeces and jackets made from recycled plastic bottles and clothing scraps, whilst Adidas is designing a material from ocean plastic for their trainers. If big brands all began following in these footsteps, so much change would be underway.

Back to H&M, they have an actual sustainability section featured on their website:

I love this as it brings down a drop down box expanding on all their 'conscious' products, the events and campaigns they're involved with, and what the customer themselves can do. On the HMGroup website there is also an in-depth look at how they are dealing with sustainability: https://hmgroup.com/sustainability.html.

Something I've taken part in myself is recycling with H&M. You simply bag up any unwanted clothing - any fabric and any brand - then drop it off in store and receive a 25% off voucher in return. I think it's a great incentive to recycle as you're technically rewarded to do so. Furthermore, why I choose to specifically take old clothes to H&M is also because of the process behind the clothes drop off: In 2018 alone, the brand collected 20,649 tonnes of textiles to be reused and recycled through the garment collecting initiative. That’s 16% more than the previous year and represents the equivalent of 103 million T-shirts. Clearly this percentage will continue to increase too.

When you have drop off the unwanted garments in the store boxes, business partner I:CO takes over. They collect them, and then sort the contents into three categories:

1. Rewear — clothing that can be worn again will be sold as second-hand clothes. 2· Reuse — old clothes and textiles will be turned into other products, e.g cleaning cloths. 3· Recycle — everything left is turned into textile fibres and used for things like insulation.

They also have their 'Take Care' section. This is another amazing idea, one which I've never noticed any other brand do! The amount of detail which has gone into the page is amazing. The layout looks like this:

The specific sections enable the customer to navigate the website at ease, and refine what they're after quickly and efficiently. I think this feature should 100% be promoted more as I didn't realise how helpful, especially to students, it is until I was researching more of their strategies. Below are just a small selection of articles they're created to help us, their customer, make our own conscious changes...

There are many other brands also reinventing their image and focusing sustainability, such as Monki plus And Other Stories, however H&M has really stood out to me for he past few years and they're only getting better and better.

Mia

xo