Fashion chain promotes recycling scheme
Friday, September 4, 2015 - 12:36:14
H&M is one of the most successful high street fashion outlets in the world, which is why the news that it is setting up an initiative to encourage an increase in recycling is so significant.
Reuters reports that the Swedish giant is not only launching lines of clothes which are manufactured using fabrics derived from recycled sources, but will also be offering an annual prize fund worth almost three quarters of a million pounds to help develop new systems to make it easier to recoup materials in a sustainable way.
Critics have labelled H&M and its contemporaries as being responsible for the disposable nature of modern culture. And this is especially problematic when you consider the sheer number of garments which are produced and sold in the UK and other developed countries each year.
The damage that this does is exacerbated by the fact that retailers and brands are also having to face up to the fact that the raw materials used to make their garments are in short supply and the current approach taken is unsustainable in the long term.
Cotton, in particular, is becoming scarcer, due to a combination of environmental factors and social pressures of the world’s growing population. But at the moment, the means available to firms looking to recycle cotton do not produce especially compelling results.
This means H&M’s funding scheme will ideally incentivise research into this area and perhaps lead to the development of solutions which can meet the recycling needs of the fashion industry.
Of course, H&M is making billions of pounds a year selling clothes worldwide, so in a way the amount it has set aside for this scheme is insignificant. But it shows that companies are starting to take notice of the need to embrace recycling in all its forms.
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