H&M Working to Reduce Textiles in Landfills

If you go to your dresser right now and look through all the drawers, what will you find? It seems like the majority of us wear the same few items of clothing every day, and ignore the cardigan our grandma knitted for us for Christmas that one year, or the pair of moccasins we wore religiously in third grade. Statistically, the average American will toss out 81 tons of clothing this year and as much as 95% of clothes thrown in the trash could have been re-worn or recycled.

Thankfully, the retailer H&M has realized this problem, and they’ve come to the rescue of our overflowing closets. They’re now offering a promotion that allows people to bring in their secondhand clothing in exchange for a 15% discount on all H&M purchases. The campaign is called “Long Live Fashion,” and its main focus is to recycle clothing that would otherwise be end up in landfills. H&M’s website says, “We believe fashion is far too precious to end up in landfills…you can drop off your unwanted garments – no matter what brand and what condition – in all our H&M stores across the globe.”

H&M claims that by recycling our clothes, we can help reduce the amount of natural resources used to to produce new garments and textiles. “We are committed to changing the way we make, use, and dispose of clothes. Far too much fashion ends up in landfills as every year thousands of tons of textiles are thrown away with household waste,” H&M said.

Customers are limited to 2 bags of clothing per visit, and they will be given one 15% discount voucher per visit. Collected items are then shipped to the nearest processing plant for sorting, and the ones that cannot be reused are recycled into other items. Every H&M store in the world participates in “Long Live Fashion.”