mariamjachi The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world!
And as the industry grows the environmental damage is increasing. However, there are solutions to solve these problems. The first step is building awareness and willingness to change.
Fast fashion causes a big amount of waste. Meaning all the unsold clothes are misplaced, or thrown away. Which is bad because there are so many ways to be able to recycle it
Which is why people and brands are constantly looking for alternatives. Some brands have even started raising awareness on the topic. One of those brands is H&M.
As companies look to reuse old stock in a way to reduce the environmental impact of a widely renowned wasteful industry, H&M was the first to adopt this idea. It will be opening pop-ups to sell “vintage” items. The items available will be from the brand’s more fashion-forwards line –H&M Studio – rather than the regular stock.
H&M Studio has been the experimental arm, as its collections are aimed more at Paris Fashion Week crowds rather than the high street fashion. It presents two collections of see-now, buy-now a year as part of the Paris Calendar. The reason for this is because the products presented are not to everyone taste, and those that did not sell and were stored away.
Realizing that it is better to reuse the pieces rather than simply storing them and not being in use, H&M is launching two shops to sell past collections. However, the stores will only be in Sweden’s Stockholm and Berlin, Germany, but they hope to be able to expand.
Trying to encourage the reusing of clothes among customers, Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M’s creative advisor, explained: “We need to be circular and we know that a big piece of that is reuse.
“It’s a matter of seeing every garment as if it doesn’t just have one life, but it has maybe nine lives—like a cat,” she told Vogue.
Fast Fashion stores sometimes receive heavy criticism for the pollution they are creating and for encouraging a ‘throw-away’ culture towards clothes, due to the fact that their prices are soo cheap. Thus, employing cheap labor.
All the reasons listed above are why H&M is consistently working on ways to reduce waste, pollution and the use of chemicals.
In October 2020, H&M launched Looop in one of its Stockholm stores.A machine the size of a shipping container enables customers to bring in an old garment and watch the machine turn it into something new. The machine cleans the items, cuts it into mulch and then spins it into new thread. The threads are then woven into a new garment.
Almost a completely closed system, it only needs a fraction of virgin fibers to make the new garment, and uses no water or chemicals.