H&M says you can compost its new line of baby clothes

Eco-friendly alternative to traditional bricks developed 0:48 (CNN Business) — H&M is launching a new line of baby clothes that can be recycled in an unexpected way once they’re worn out: composting. The 12-piece organic cotton collection for newborns (priced from $4.99 to $17.99) launches in May and includes tops, pants with adjustable waists and cuffs, jackets, hats and blankets. Abigail Kammerzell, H&M’s US director of sustainability, said all items are 100% biodegradable, including pigments used to print designs on clothing. She added that the garments are also deliberately devoid of buttons or any metal embellishments. This is to ensure that each piece can be composted when its use is finished, even by placing them in a home compost bin. H&M will launch a new collection of baby clothes in May made with 100% organic cotton that can be composted once it is no longer used. Kammerzell said the collection is certified by the environmental group Cradle to Cradle for using materials that are free of chemicals that are harmful to humans and the environment, and for producing the items with renewable energy and 100% recycled water. “This is the first of our clothing collections that is compostable,” said Kammerzell. Given H&M’s global scale, with more than 4,000 stores worldwide, he said the company is in a position to “enable big changes in the fashion industry and we look forward to being leaders in sustainability and keeping clothes out of landfills.” . This latest effort by the Swedish fashion retailer comes amid rising volumes of clothing waste globally and growing concern about the contribution of fast fashion to it. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2018, 17 million tons of textile waste were generated in the United States, and discarded clothing is the main source, according to the latest available data. The recycling rate was only 14.7%, with 2.5 million tons recycled. The EPA said that landfills received 11.3 million tons of that textile waste from 2018, which represented 7.7% of all municipal waste that ended up in landfills. The clothing has no buttons or metal trim and is biodegradable. H&M and other fast fashion retailers, including Zara, have recently taken steps to reduce clothing waste. In 2013, H&M launched a global clothing collection program and has set a goal that all clothing sold in its stores be made from recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030. According to the company, that figure is currently around 80%. The retailer collected more than 29,000 tons of garments in its recycling program in 2019, but said the pandemic slowed the effort in 2020 and 2021, with nearly 16,000 tons collected last year. Similarly, customers can drop off used clothing, footwear and accessories at more than 1,300 Zara stores. In 2019, the Spanish fast fashion chain (owned by Inditex) announced that by 2025 all cotton, linen and polyester used by the company will be organic, sustainably sourced or recycled. Kammerzell said H&M has tripled the proportion of recycled materials used in its garments from 5.8% to 17.9%, with a goal of reaching 30% by 2025. But he acknowledged challenges remain for the industry to more fully embrace sustainability efforts. “We don’t agree with new suppliers that have coal-fired boilers on their premises,” she noted. “There are many factories in the industry that still use them.” Jessica Schreiber is the founder and CEO of FABSCRAP, a nonprofit initiative that provides scrap fabric collection and recycling services to businesses in New York City and Philadelphia. Schreiber said she, too, is excited to see a big industry name like H&M continue to drive innovation in sustainability. But she is cautious that these are piecemeal solutions to combat a much larger problem. “It’s always a step forward for a company as big as H&M to show that it’s making an effort. But fast-fashion retailers also put out a lot of clothes on a regular basis,” Schreiber said. “To really turn the tide and reduce the volume of garments ending up in the waste stream, much bigger changes are going to be required.”