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

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