H&M Releases A New Sustainability Report

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Apr 09, 2015, 09:55 ET

NEW YORK, April 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, H&M publishes its Conscious Actions Sustainability Report 2014. The progress made shows that H&M is at the forefront of sustainability. Some of the highlights are the expansion of the public supplier factory list, the ambition to only use renewable electricity and the increase of the amount of products made of recycled cotton from collected garments by 300 percent. 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.

This is the 13th report published by H&M, outlining the progress of over more than 80 important Conscious Actions covering every stage of H&M's products lifecycle – all the way from the cotton field to giving clothes that you no longer need a new life. Amongst these are several ambitious goals, including:

H&M expands its public supplier list to include 2nd tier suppliers
H&M has now taken yet 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. The fact that transparency and mutual trust with suppliers is crucial and the starting point for all change, makes H&M convinced that this will promote transparency and drive further positive change in the textile industry.

H&M goes all in for renewable electricity
Tackling climate change is one of the major challenges of our time. H&M wants to lead the way by only using renewable energy wherever possible already by the end of 2015; meaning about 80% of all electricity. Today, the same number is 27%. By doing this, H&M will reduce its climate impacts – way below what climate science tells us to do.

H&M increases the amount of products made from collected garments by 300 percent
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% by the end of 2015.

The entire report and a summary of its highlights are available to read and download at www.hm.com/consciousactions2014

H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ) was founded in Sweden in 1947 and is quoted on NASDAQ Stockholm. The company's business concept is to offer fashion and quality at the best price. In addition to H&M, the group includes the brands & Other Stories, Cheap Monday, COS, Monki and Weekday as well as H&M Home. The H&M Group has approximately 3,500 stores in 57 markets, including franchise markets. In 2014, sales including VAT were SEK 176,620 million and the number of employees is more than 132,000. For further information, visit hm.com.

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SOURCE H&M