Back in 2004, H&M teamed up with Karl Lagerfeld on an affordable line that brought the high fashion designer’s work to the high street, arguably setting the trend for similar collaborations that now feature regularly at retail brands across the world. Now, with the impending launch of Kenzo x H&M, we’re about to see the twelfth installment of this tradition. One thing’s for sure - H&M is not a brand to shy away from revolutionising the fashion industry. However, it’s not just doing so through big name collaborations and celebrity launches. Behind the scenes, H&M is trying to kick-start a silent - but no less significant - revolution when it comes to the industry’s sustainability, starting with its own fabric production.
The company’s ultimate goal? To be 100 per cent circular - in other words, to use material from entirely recycled, renewable or sustainable sources. This doesn’t just mean employing cotton that’s been more efficiently produced in an environmentally-conscious manner - something the brand champions by being a part of the Better Cotton Initiative, or BCI, along with other global brands like Levi’s, Ikea and Adidas - but also by funding research into futuristic new ways of producing, recycling and transporting fabrics with its Global Change Award grant (current projects include fabric made from citrus peel, using algae to make textiles underwater, and a developing a microbe to break down man-made polyester).
However, being 'circular' is not just about ploughing money into research for our future clothing, it’s also about finding ways to re-use clothing that’s no longer needed. Recently, we got to see part of this process first hand at the I:CO sorting plant in Wolfen, Germany on a guided tour with H&M’s UK sustainability manager, Catarina Midby - the person who for the past seven years has been charged with changing the perception of what a fast fashion brand's responsibilities should be in a world of increasing demand and declining natural resources.
A journalism graduate of the London College of Fashion, Midby was formerly an editor for the Swedish edition of Elle magazine and became head of PR for H&M in 2003 before switching to the label's sustainability department in 2009. With a CV like that, she's well positioned to see the industry from the internal business as well as from the customer-facing sides. Her challenge: to make sustainability an integral part of both the brand's customers' buying habits and the process of crafting the clothes they're buying from the label. Considering H&M currently operates 3,700 standalone stores worldwide, that's no mean feat.
However, it's something she's keen to prove the Swedish label is in the process of achieving - the side-effect being that this increased communication tends to bring the company's plans under more intense scrutiny.
"The reason we didn't [communicate about our sustainability programmes] at first is because we were afraid that we would be criticised," says Midby. "I think if I was a competitor [brand] and saw how extremely criticised we are in some countries, I would also be a little hesitant about doing the same thing!"
Located about two hours’ drive from Berlin, the I:CO sorting plant is the temporary home for any clothing dropped into the recycling banks at H&M stores across Europe. H&M is not the only label to utilise this service: Levi's, Timberland and Nike all send garments here too. However, with H&M offering a garment collection point in every one of its shops across the world, it is a significant contributor both here and at its other partner sorting plants around the globe. In fact, since the initiative launched in 2013, H&M has collected more than 35,000 tonnes of garments (about 100 million T-shirts).
With that in mind, the plant is just as gargantuan as you would expect. At any one time you'll find three shifts of 50 people per day day sorting through piles of clothing - each of which arrives on a forklift truck carrying a one-tonne yellow wire crate.
With about 350-400 tonnes of clothing arriving at the plant every 24 hours, each person sorts around 2,000kg of garments a day, catagorising the items as they go. Sixty per cent can be re-used, with the remaining 40 per cent divided up into materials that can be recycled in some other form, from being turned back into textile fibres to being repurposed as insulation for cars - some even becomes pulp for the paper industry.
Crucially, none goes to landfill.
Walking through the cathedral-like rooms containing mountains of clothing bundled together in towering, giant squares, it’s immediately noticeable that denim is one of the most popular materials that finds its way to the plant. It’s also one of the easiest to recycle back into a fibre, due to its purity (there’s still no scientific process that can feasibly separate a mixed fibre material back into its original fibres to be spun once again).
Combining both these factors has become the basis for the brand’s Close The Loop collection - a line launched in 2013 which uses recycled textile fibres derived from items collected through the in-store garment collecting initiative, such as the items we were seeing being sorted by the team in Wolfen. Items in the capsule line contain 20 to 30 per cent recycled cotton, the maximum amount that can be used with technology as it stands without compromising the quality (strands of recycled fabric can’t currently be spun to be as long as those of brand new fabric).
Close The Loop wool-blend jacket, £79.99. Available now at hm.com
So how long will it be before we start to see clothing made from wholly recycled cotton?
"[Right now] there wouldn’t be enough recycled material for us to use," says Midby. "Our goal is that 100 per cent of the materials we use should be recycled or sourced sustainably. The only reason we are unable to is because it’s not the norm yet [across the industry]. It’s still something extraordinary and unique - organic cotton [for example] is not something every single cotton farmer is doing. It’s a question of time, really."
However, when we think about the kind of fabrics the clothes hanging in humanity's wardrobe in years to come are made from, it is clear to Midby that improving the way the we farm and utilise cotton is not the only key to future-proofing the industry.
"Cotton is not ideal for the future at all if you really look at it," she says. "We can try and make it as good as we can, but we need to look at other solutions because at the rate our population is growing, there is simply not going to be enough land area to grown cotton. That’s why we need to come up with new materials, such as monocell that’s made from bamboo."
And it certainly seems like Midby is making serious headway. Across the company last year, 1.3 million pieces of H&M clothing were made with “closed loop” material - a 300 per cent increase on 2014 - and Better Cotton sourced via the Better Cotton Initiative now totals 31 per cent of the company’s overall use of the fabric.
These all appear to be encouraging numbers, and all are proudly shared with customers by H&M in many of their correspondences. However, by kickstarting this conversation and opening up a dialogue with its clientele about sustainability and how people consume clothes, this only serves to highlight just how quiet on the subject many other brands throughout the fashion industry are.
Surely it must cost the company a staggering figure to finance all these initiatives?
"Of course it costs a lot, but that’s the beauty of us doing it," says Midby. "We have the size and the scale to really make a difference."
"Also, implementing [new fabrics and processes] to the industry is a way to encourage other brands and even our competitors to demand them too, so that more and more producers will change to sustainable processes. It has to be worthwhile to do it."
When it comes to sustainability, it's clear that H&M is prepared to play the long game - but how long will it take for consumers and competitors alike to join them? We'll have to wait and see.
Shop the full Close The Loop range at hm.com.
