Clothing store chain, H&M, has joined up with musician M.I.A. to launch the retailer’s latest sustainable campaign, World Recycle Week, which aims to collect and recycle unwanted garments.
As a part of World Recycle Week, taking place from April 18-24, 2016, H&M hopes to collect 1,000 tons of unwanted garments from customers in its more than 3,600 stores worldwide.
The initiative is part of H&M’s goal to ‘close the loop’ in fashion by recycling garments to create reusable textile fibers. To help raise awareness, M.I.A. has filmed an exclusive new music video for H&M highlighting the environmental impact of clothing going into landfills around the world. The video will debut on April 11th at hm.com.
To mark the first ever World Recycle Week, H&M intends to create a viral campaign to generate a global recycling movement. The video, starring M.I.A., features a diverse supporting cast including models, actors, dancers, and social media mavens, who will take to their social channels leading up to World Recycle Week, encouraging everyone to participate in the #HMrehaul video call to action.
The term ‘rehaul’ is being exclusively used as the antithesis to a blogger haul video, which typically show items recently purchased.
Since 2013, customers have been invited to drop off garments from any brand and in any condition, to any H&M store. These garments are recycled into a second life, and customers are ensuring that fewer garments go into landfills. In return, U.S. customers who recycle receive a 15% discount to use towards their next purchase at H&M. During the World Recycle Week period, customers will receive a 30% coupon as a thank you for their participation.
Since first launching the Garment Collecting initiative, H&M has collected over 25,000 tons of clothing, and in 2014, introduced its first collection using recycled fibers from the donated garments to create a “Close the Loop” collection.
Close The Loop is a central commitment to H&M’s Conscious Actions for sustainability. The purpose is to create a closed loop for textiles, so that unwanted clothes can be reused and recycled to create fresh fibers for new products.
Accroding to a statement from H&M: “The long term goal is to have zero garments going to landfills, as well as saving on natural resources. All textiles are welcome including odd socks, old towels, or the dress with a hole as nothing is too torn, worn, or used for a second life. By recycling just one T-shirt, 555 gallons of water can be saved; imagine the impact of 1,000 tons of garments collected during World Recycle Week.”
For more information on Garment Collecting and Close the Loop, please visit www.hm.com/garmentcollecting.
