Starting in February 2013, Swedish fashion conglomerate H&M will start a clothing collecting initiative, where by customers will be able to hand in used garments (from any brand and in any condition) in H&M stores in return for vouchers. The collected clothes are then handled by H&M’s partner, I:Collect, which provides the infrastructure in which consumer goods are repeatedly reprocessed and made available for new use.
Every year, tonnes of textiles are thrown out with domestic waste and end up in landfill. As much as 95 percent of these clothes could be used again; re-worn, reused or recycled – depending on the state of the garment. In the long term, H&M wants to reduce the environmental impact of garments throughout the lifecycle and create a closed loop for textile fibres. The aim is to find technical solutions to reuse and recycle textile fibres on a larger scale.