H&M releases new Sustainability Report

09 Apr '15

3 min read

Fashion major H&M says it is in the forefront of sustainability which has been highlighted in its Conscious Actions Sustainability Report 2014. Some of the highlights of the report are the expansion of the public supplier factory list, the ambition to only use renewable electricity and the increase of the quantity of products made of recycled cotton from collected garments by 300 per cent. In addition, H&M sees positive development in the continuous work towards fair living wages.

“We started to test the so called Fair Wage Method, developed by the independent Fair Wage Network, in three role model factories. Although it’s still early in the process, the initial results from the first factory that’s been evaluated are promising. Based on these learnings, we aim to scale this up to all our strategic suppliers by 2018 at the latest,” says Karl-Johan Persson, CEO at H&M.

The report says H&M has expanded its public supplier list to include 2nd tier suppliers and has taken another major step for increased transparency across the entire value chain. “The most important mills that provide our suppliers with fabrics and yarns have been added to the public supplier list,” reads the report.

According to the report, H&M wants to reduce its impact on the climate by only using renewable energy wherever possible by the end of 2015 which means about 80 per cent of all electricity. Today, the same number is 27 per cent.

The sustainability report says since last year, H&M has more than doubled the amount of collected garments within the garment collective initiative. In total, more than 13,000 tonnes of textiles have been collected – that is as much fabric as in 65 million T-shirts. Now, the new goal is to increase the amount of products made of recycled fibres by at least 300 per cent by the end of 2015.

But H&M’s Sustainability Report hasn’t impressed everyone. Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), an alliance of organisations in 16 European countries has called on H&M to show evidence to back up its ‘fair living wage’ claims. The campaign says that making marketing capital from workers’ poverty with little evidence of change is unethical and stands to slow down progress in the industry.

Carin Leffler from the Clean Clothes Campaign said: “H&M has so far presented disappointingly few concrete results that show progress towards a living wage. H&M is working hard on gaining a reputation in sustainability, but the results for workers on the ground are yet to be seen.”

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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