H&M and Sustainability

When reading about fashion, I found out that H&M is the global fast fashion leader, and I also learned everything they are doing to become more ethical and more sustainable. Learning this really made an impact on me. In an article by Leon Kaye called, “H&M, The Ethical Fast Fashion Leader?”, he states “H&M… has ramped up its sustainability and corporate social responsibility 9CSR) efforts in recent years.” This is something that I was never aware of before. H&M used to be one of my favorite places to shop. But I have not been there as often in recent years. However after reading about this and reading some other articles, it has changed the way I look at fashion. I am definitely more likely to choose H&M over some other stores. I like the fact that they are consciously trying to be sustainable and ethical. This is not something that companies have to do, so I think it shows a lot that H&M is making sustainability one of their priorities.

After thinking about this, one main question came to my mind… What makes H&M different? Do they really care about being sustainable or do they just want to market themselves that way to gain more customers? I did some research to help me figure this out.

In an article by Annamma Joy, John F. Sherry, Jr, Alladi Venkatesh, Jeff Wang and Ricky Chan they  explain, “Fast fashion—low-cost clothing collections based on current, high-cost  luxury fashion trends—is, by its very nature, a fast-response system that encourages disposability”. These fast fashion companies are producing quickly disposable products with short lifecycles. People will buy these clothes when they are in style and then soon swap them out for something else. H&M wants to change this idea of fast fashion, and make it known that it can be sustainable.

I found another article by Lindia Dishman where she talks about H&M’s new “Concious Collection” which is made using recycled and organic cotton varieties. She also states, “The world’s second largest apparel company also publicly released a list of its suppliers, something many retailers keep tightly under wraps.” I think that this is really important because it proves that H&M is truly ethical and sustainable. This proves that they are not just marketing as sustainable but that they really are.

I found one last article that talks about mixing fast fashion with sustainability by Talancia Pea. In the article, she mentions H&M, and she discusses  “customers’ acceptance of recycled textiles created into new garments are ‘small’ and more technological advances in the fiber recycling field could be the missing link needed to lessen the now 21 billion pounds of post-consumer waste collected in landfills each year.” I think that not only will there be “customer acceptance” of recycled textiles, I think that they will gain many new customers because of this. I think that even if H&M’s first concern is to just help the environment and not to market well, I think that either way it will still draw in many new environmentally friendly customers.

   

Sources:

http://www3.nd.edu/~jsherry/pdf/2012/FastFashionSustainability.pdf
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lydiadishman/2013/04/09/inside-hms-quest-for-sustainability-in-fast-fashion/
http://about.hm.com/en/About/Sustainability/Commitments/Responsible-Partners/Supply-Chain/SupplierList.html
http://www.dudesustainable.com/2013/06/mixing-fast-fashion-and-sustainability.html#.UmhZqZR-x4J
http://www.weardonaterecycle.org/about/issue.html