This represents a 40% year-on-year increase in clothing taken back. The milestone, revealed in the high-street fashion giant’s latest Sustainability Performance Report, comes four years after the firm first began collecting garments. The service was first introduced in selected H&M stores, before being rolled out across the brand and, more recently, across several of the Group’s other brands such as ARKET.
The majority of the remainder is downcycled into things like insulation or, where recycling solutions exist, recycled into new textile fibres. Mechanical and chemical recycling processes for textiles are currently available at scale for 100% cotton or polyester, but for textile blends, which account for the vast majority of fashion items sold globally each year, solutions have not yet been commercialised and scaled up. To that end, H&M’s charitable arm, H&M Foundation, is investing in a hydrothermal recycling process for textile blends.
H&M Group’s garment take-back scheme forms part of its pledge to become a “fully circular” business by 2030. When this commitment was first set, the company defined “fully circular” as sourcing only materials from sustainable sources or recycled feedstocks and collecting at least 25,000 tonnes of used clothing annually by 2020.
Source: Edie
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