Recycle Your Old Clothes At H & M, UK - a worldwide firm, worldwide problems and worldwide recycling solutions


What are the new trends in clothing worldwide? 



I just read an article in The Times about H & M. I looked for my nearest branches. In the UK they are in St Anne's in Harrow and in Watford. 

Where else are they? Everywhere. Hong Kong.


Map of H & M shops from Wiki.

Let's look at what is on offer to you and me as consumers.

1 Buying Second hand Clothes 

Ebay pioneered selling your old clothes or buying second hand cheaply online.


2 Buying From Charity Shops and donating to charity 

 In the UK after WW2 with make do and mend, we had jumble sales in church halls, with boy scouts collecting our old clothes and goods. More recently, we have charity shops in most high streets. Oxfam, St Luke's, Barnados, Cancer Researach, and many others. 

The USA has thrift stores, consignment stores. Goodwill.


3 Brands Collecting Their Old Item - Giving Discounted New

At one point you could take an old bra into Oxfam and gave a voucher for Marks & Spencers. 

Some big brands wanted you go give them your old clothes - for discounts on new ones. Then they started saying bring any brand of old clothes to us to receive a discount on something new? 

Why? To enhance their good reputation and get consumer goodwill. To get publicity for their name on any pretext with a surprise story? To stop you from going elsewhere to rivals? Or simply only to get you to walk into the shop where you would probably be tempted to buy something? 

I remember reading about a brand of jeans asking you to bring in your old ones for a discount when buying new ones. Next, it was any brand, not just ours. (In other words, make sure you only have our branded goods in your wardrobe. Americans say closet.)

Now the latest trends are to ask you to give your old garments to a shop in exchange for points or vouchers towards new ones. 


4 Recyle Shops Buying By Weight

A second trend is to recycle your own clothes, by weight.  


5 Another trend is to turn old items into items for yourself.


6 Yet another is to hire instead of buying.

Who is doing what and where?

Now, back to H & M.


H & M UK & Germany

I read that you can drop off your clothes at H & M stores in the UK and Germany to get points towards new products. 


H & M Sweden

In Sweden their H & M flagship store has a machine which recycles your clothes into a new garment using the Looop machine.

I thought that after reading the marketing for H & M, I should look at some factual information from an independent source and put them in context with other companies.

Wiki reports

SHEKOU Vintage, RE/DONE, Vintage Twin and Frankie Collective sell repaired vintage clothing. 

Sustainable textile brands

Some brands that sell themselves as sustainable are listed below;

  • Eastern European prisoners are designing sustainable prison fashion in Latvia and Estonia under the Heavy Eco label,[233] part of a trend called "prison couture".[234]
  • Other sustainable fashion brands include Elena Garcia, Nancy Dee, By Stamo, Outsider Fashion, Beyond Skin, Oliberté, Hetty Rose, DaRousso, KSkye the Label,[235] and Eva Cassis.[165][236][237][238][239][240][241]
  • The brand Boll & Branch make all of their bedding products from organic cotton and have been certified by Fair Trade USA.[242]
  • The Hemp Trading Company is an ethically driven underground clothing label, specializing in environmentally friendly, politically conscious street wear made of hemp, bamboo, organic cotton and other sustainable fabrics.[243]
  • Patagonia, a major retailer in casual wear, has been selling fleece clothing made from post-consumer plastic soda bottles since 1993.[110]
  • Everlane, a brand that offered the customer a full breakdown of how much it would cost to make each product, from the price of the raw materials and transportation to exactly how much of a markup Everlane would take.[244]
  • Pact, a brand that produced Fair Trade Factory Certified™ clothing made out of organic cotton.[245]
  • People Tree is a brand that actively supports farmers, producers and artisans through 14 producer groups, in 6 countries. They are a part of the WFTO community and a representative of Fair Trade.[246]
  • Wrangler, a historic denim brand, launched a sustainable denim collection called Indigood that uses foam instead of water to dye denim, resulting in 100 per cent less water used, and 60 per cent less energy used.[247]
  • Big Frenchies is a French-inspired brand that produces sustainable clothing made in USA with GOTS-certified organic cotton.[248]

Wikipedia has sections H & M on Controversies; and Philanthropy.

Fast fashion, slow fashion - oxymorons. Take your pick. Should we be buying cotton, hemp, or polycotton? Silk?

 Providing clothes for the poor? Providing employment in clothing factories? Encouraging cottage industries?

 Are we benefitting anybody by hoarding clothes if the production of new clothes is still wasting water? Can we stop dyeing cotton white and go back to producing naturally coloured cotton? 

Should clothes all come with spare buttons so they can be kept in circulation? Does it matter what a company did wrongly, in the past, in our opinion, if they are doing what is right, in our opinion, now? Plenty to read and contemplate.

Useful Websites 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/static/conscious-fashion-more-sustainable-clothing-hm/

https://hmgroup.com/our-stories/shifting-to-a-circular-future-through-resell-repair-and-rental/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_fashion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD_Jeans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_fashion

about the Author

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to repair a torn Mark & Spencer slip and make the hem wider, Post 294

Image
What is this? My repair.  I have a lovely shiny, smart black slip, from Marks & Spencers. It has a slit with pretty lace edging.  But it is slightly tight. It tore from the top of the slit, diagonally.  I looked for another slip. The ones I found onlin were twice the price and not in a satiny fabric. I wore it torn. I repaired it several times. It tore again.  I gave up. I wore it torn. Nobody sees. My husband saw. He complained. What could I do? It is useless to keep stitching it. It just tears again. I needed a new solution. I thought of adding a godet, a triangle of black fabric. I did not have anything to match. tht doesn't matter a godet is often a contrasting material. But that's when you have several godets and they look deliberate. I hunted in my sewing box. Boxes. All I had was teeny scraps of cloth in unsuitable fabrics. And ribbons. I thought about what I could do with the ribbons. They were not wide enough. But I could sew one each side of the slit. that would m
Read more

What to wear for a funeral? A black funeral coat from Marks & Spencers Outfit 291

Image
Angela Lansbury, wearing black for the funeral and funeral tea for Stephen Kennard. Photo by Angela Lansbury. This week I went to a funeral. I wore black.  Everybody else wore all black. The invitation said nothing about the dress code.  I know lots of funerals nowadays people were mixed colours. Some specify wearing jolly colours. My friend at the funeral told me, "Always wer black. Unles it specifies otherwise, the rule is, wear black." I had my usual blue anorak with the hood with me. I left it in the car. In the boot of the car, in case anybody broke into the car hoping to find money in the pockets or because they wanted a coat to wear or sell. The safest thing is to leave a completely empty car. At least everything in the boot so the car looks empty. I could have kept the blue anorak in my black tote bag. As soon as we drove into the chapel driveway, I looked at the other guests and their clothes. I saw all black. Off came my blue anorak. Thank goodness I had a black coa
Read more

271 hooded jacket with inside pocket from label Canda C & A

Image
 Inside pocket. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.  271 My vintage hooded jacket with zip off hood. Handy inside pocket. Label Canda, from Dutch company, C & A, which has been in Britain for years. I always found they had small size clothes, and were pracical as well as pretty, and keenly priced. Mine is vintage. Probably from st Luke's in Hatch End in NW London. You can buy from their current range online. Of their current range, in January 2024, i like the reversible gilet in wine and pink. Brand clockhouse. Standup collar. Zip. They call the colour purple. Price 29.99 Euros.Reduced to 19.99 in the sale. Sleeveless. Item number  2203144 The red quilted jacket with hood was 19.99 Euros. Webpage picture. They also have coats with huge pairs of front pockets and hoods. And drawstrings like the one on my jacket which is not as warm nor as brightly coloured as these appear to be. Sale reductions now in January. https://www.c-and-a.com/eu/en/shop Useful Websites https://www.c-and
Read more