Retail Detail. H&M Caught Destroying Unsold Clothing.

A New York H&M wastes a ton of usable clothing

The fashion media was horrified yesterday when the New York Times broke the news that fast fashion retailer H&M had been caught throwing away perfectly good, unsold clothing. Earlier this week, a graduate student in New York found garbage bags of clothing that had been torn apart near an H&M on west 35th Street, as well as clothes reportedly from Wal-Mart that had holes punched into them. The student allegedly wrote to the retailer's headquarters in Sweden, received no response, and so went to the New York Times with the story.

The NYT was finally able to reach an H&M rep after several attempts who stated, "We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”  The rep, Nicole Christie, said that the company typically takes unsold clothing to charities and that she was unaware as to why the store would be mutilating the clothes in the first place. A rep for Wal-Mart said the same thing. The irony is, H&M JUST made headlines in a much more positive way from announcing their new eco-friendly Garden Collection, which will debut for spring. Sure looks like sustainable practices don't rank high on their list now. "It will not happen again," Christie assured. For the sake of the company, we sure hope not.

Pieces from the new ec-friendly Garden Collection at H&M

Article Source: The New York Times
Photo Source: thefashioninsider.com, Pipeline/Refinery29
-Alia Rajput