Waste Management and Sustainable Development

An empirical case of H&M

Introduction

The main aim of this essay is to conduct critical evaluation on waste management and sustainable development. Through referring to the fashion industry and detailed case of H&M, this essay seeks to illustrate the conceptual framework of WRAP Waste Hierarchy and explains how it could be implemented to H&M’s waste management and sustainable development.

As to the structure of the essay, in the first section the essay would make a detailed introduction on what the sustainable development is.

In the second place, this essay would introduce the conceptual framework of the WRAP Waste Hierarchy and figures out what and how each step of the framework could influence the fashion industry.

In the third place, this essay would describe the current situation of WRAP Waste Hierarchy in the Fashion industry.

In the following place, this essay would make a critical discussion on how H&M could enhance its sustainability reputation through putting the WRAP Waste Hierarchy into practice to improve the operation of the whole company.

Last but not least, a general conclusion would be given. Throughout the whole essay, relevant academic literatures would be referred as supportive evidence.

Brief Introduction on the Sustainable Development

The natural resources on the Earth are finite, such as gasoline, water, forests and petroleum. Sustainable development is a long-term process during which companies aim at achieving their current missions and objectives with protecting the environment and maintaining eco-system for future generations to construct their economy and society.

Developing the economy at the cost of environment would induce serious crisis. For instance, exhaustive exploitation of forests would lead to desertification, which might cause the damage of ecological environment and thus make our posterity live in a bad environment.

In this case, sustainable development is perceived as a global priority (Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien, 2005). However, sustainable development is not only about the environment. The framework also suggests every company to build a healthy, just and prosperous society in order to seek for our common future (Hall, Daneke and Lenox, 2010). That is, strong economy and society would promote the development of innovative technology, which would then educate and help more people to make their contributions to our future generations.

Therefore, our posterity would be able to have better performance and obtain better achievements based on our efforts. Such virtuous cycle would play an important role in the long-term sustainable development process.

Implications of WRAP Waste Hierarchy

According to WRAP (2016), the purpose of WRAP is to promote the sustainable use of resources in the world. In this way, there are three “Re-doing” in the ir vision: Re-inventing, Re-thinking and Re-defining.

The WRAP Waste Hierarchy is shown in the diagram as follows.

The waste prevention promotes companies and people to consume fewer raw materials and produce more durable goods. It also appeals that companies should prevent from using harmful materials. The example comes from the prohibition of use of Freon as the cryogen of the air conditioner. Although Freon could improve the efficiency of the refrigeration plant and create excellent customer experience, it would damage the ozonosphere (Omarali, Groeneweg, Kaart and Pek, 2005).

The step of ‘Preparing for Re-Use’ is mainly about the operating activities of recovery. That is, products or components that are recognized as waste should be repaired or checked for the purpose of reuse or recovery (Aptiz, 2010). This specific stage could reduce the loss induced by companies’ mistakes or errors that lead to waste.

The implication of ‘Recycling’ step is important to the whole waste management. It is quite important that some companies could take advantage of other companies’ waste parts to maximize their values and build a circular economy. Under this situation, waste can even be recognized as a kind of resources. WRAP website has attached much focuses on constructing a searching engine for the purpose of waste collections and reprocessing capacity.

If some waste parts cannot be used to produce final goods, they could be used to generate energy, which is considered as other recovery. For instance, combustion of garbage could bring heat energy to generate electric power (Tyskeng and Finnveden, 2010).

The ‘Disposal step’ refers to the situation that companies dispose the waste parts through landfill or incineration after they realize that the waste parts cannot generate any benefit. The Waste Framework Directive settles specific threshold for companies to make such judgment. Under this condition, waste parts are usually labelled as ‘Recovery Facilities’ and ‘Disposal Facilities’.

WRAP Waste Hierarchy in the Fashion industry

Fashion industry, especially fast fashion brand was often criticized by the public. The fast fashion industry was often regarded as an encouragement of consumption, which has led to waste of resources (Morgan and Birtwistle, 2009).

‘Fast’ is the basis of all. The core of industries surrounded by the fast fashion business model, like Clothing and furniture, is using cheap raw materials for the production (Ha-Brookshire and Hodges, 2009). Strictly control of production cost, shortening the shelves updating time, marking a competitive price and accelerating the speed of the products selling comprise the concept of the ‘fast’ business model. Therefore, fast fashion market were growing exponentially. Meanwhile, it had been bringing resource wasting. Furthermore,because of improper recycling, waste clothes would also cause environment pollution (Domina and Koch, 1999).In the past few years, waste clothes could not be disposed appropriately. For example, in fashion business districts of Shanghai, there were many vendors collecting used garments. In fact, their existence wasa result of consumers’ casu al behaviours. Every year, many consumers would clean up their wardrobes and purchase a large number of new fashions. However, old clothes cleaned out were not sent to a professional recycling organization.

There have been two main places for those clothes flow into the hands of the vendors to go. Some in good condition would be newly labelled and act as new clothes to be sold again. The others which were not in good condition would be sent to related factory for fuel. According to research of Xu et al (2014), every year in China, old clothes abandoned by consumers were up to about 20 million tons. Among them there is less than 10% could be sent to the professional recovery agency. This is a microcosm of the entire clothing fashion industry.

In this manner, the fashion industry is particularly problematic. Thus WRAP is particularity interested in the textile and clothing industry. There are four major working groups of WRAP:

Re-use and Recycling group, Influencing consumer behaviours group, Metrics group and Design for longevity group.

The Framework of H&M’s Waste Hierarchy

As one of the fast fashion industry leaders, H&M is constantly trying to be a global pioneer and leader in environmental protection. It is creating a sustainable fashion attitude by the concept of “Close the Loop” (Bianchi and Birtwistle, 2012).

Good sustainable reputation would be accumulated if H&M could follow the WRAP Waste Hierarchy and practice it during the daily operating activities. In

this section, this essay would make detailed illustrations on how H&M could prevent, repair, recover or dispose the waste parts through diversified channels.

T he ultimate goal of H&M’s sustainable development is to achieve a fashion “Close the Loop”. Recycled fabric would be collected from discarded clothes to make new clothing. Along these lines, old clothes sent to landfill would be reduced and the natural resources for the production of fabrics would be saved. Finally, the impact of the fashion industry on the environment would be abridged. The f ollowing diagram shows the process of H&M’s recycling plan:

In the process of achieving this system, H&M’s measures mainly includes four following aspects:

1.Re-use and Recycling

From 2011 onwards, H&M's Swedish headquarters took the lead in the implement ing the “old clothes recycling project”. Between 2011 and 2012, old clothing was recovered from 17 H&M stores in Sweden (Joung and Park-Poaps, 2012).Starting in February 2013, more than 1500 ofH&M stores all over the world began recycling old clothes. Local customers could sent old clothes to their stores, regardless of any type, any brand and any colour. H&M Group stated that collected clothes would be handed over to H&M’s partner I: Collect. Daily consumer goods could be processed by the company to achieve waste utilization.

All the old clothes would be processed and recycled. I: Collect would carry out the processing, in order to meet the new purpose of use. The remained would be decomposed through advanced technical means and be used to produce raw materials of new products. AS many as 95% old clothes could be re-used. According to the situation, they could be re-wearing, reuse or recycling (Lang et al, 2013).

By its leadership in the global clothing recycling activities, H&M has got a good reputation from the public. People praise H&M for its conscientiousness. It provides customers with old clothes recycling channels and effectively

disposes the old clothes. Through these efforts, H&M has played an important role for the protection of the environment.

2.Influencing consumer behaviours

In recent years, fast fashion industry has revolutionized consumer’s spending habits. In the past they used to be more inclined to choose those high quality durable clothing. With the emergence of brands like H&M, consumers turn to choose those cheap fashion clothes. Then the rate of clothing updating has accelerated (Sheng, 2014). The result of this would be more abandoned old clothes. This is also the point where the fast fashion industry has been criticized.

On this point, H&M’s reply measure is to provide a place for consumers to recycle their old clothes. At the same time, some relevant programs were introduced to stimulate consumers to hand in their old clothes. If a customer gives his old clothes to H&M, in China he could get 15% off discount coupons, in Europe he would be provided 5 euros off when purchasing more than 30 euros. In the US, customer could get a 15% discount coupon if he hands in a bag with old shorts or pyjamas (Li et al, 2014).

In this way, H&M has increased the willingness of consumers recycling old clothes. This movement really help consumers to solve the problem of reusing old clothes under fast fashion industry. According to the research of Goodwill Industry, 600 Americans and Canadians were investigated as a sample. They

found that the respondent are not willing to walk more than 10 minutes to donate clothes. They prefer choosing to discard in the community or leave in the garbage station nearby. Activities carried out by H&M provided recycling channels to customers, also increased the opportunity for customers to visit H&M stores.

Therefore, H&M influenced consumer’s behaviours and changed their consuming habits. A good reputation was gained, at the same time, H&M was also received increasing patronage.

3.Development of recycled cotton technology

In September2013, H&M introduced the new products of cowboy series. These products were made of recycled cotton. These recycled cotton were collected from textiles of H&M recycling program. The series of products are the latest steps for H&M to complete its “Close the Loop” o f fast fashion (Shen, 2015).

In the latest of H&M‘s recycled cotton technology, recycled materials could be separated and extracted from old clothes, and then be spun into a new yarn. Every year, H&M would invest a large amounts of money into renewable product development. It would launch a new series of annual renewable products, like “Conscious Collection”, “Waste” series and so on.

Recently, fast fashion brand leader H&M and luxury giant Kering Group jointly announced that they are joint British innovation of textile enterprises Worn Again to test a ground-breaking fibre recycling technology. The goal is to meet the growing demand of cotton and chemical fibre products all over the world. The “Newsweek” names the 2014 gl obal environmental protection top 500 list. H&M ranked ninety-fifth and KeringGroup ranked fourth position by virtue of their contribution to the environment. Kering ranked the first place in the “Non-Essential consumer goods” category. Worn Again is a Bri tish start-up company. They developed the fibre recycling technology which could extract chemical fibre and cotton fibre from those old clothes. It effectively solves the problem of mixed fibre clothing separation and fibre decolouration.

4.Future initiatives

The concept of H&M’s environmental protection is committed to strengthening the recycling and reuse of sources. To strengthen the renewable energy utilization rate and reduce the burden on the planet. H&M is keeping launching a new concept of environmental protection. In the future, more initiatives would be provided (Jia et al, 2015).

Firstly, H&M would focus on the design compromises environmental protection and fashion. It is expected that by the year of 2020, all of clothes in H&M would be made of environmental fabric. Secondly, H&M would promote the use of

environmental fabric in fashion industry. At present, clothes made by environmental fabric have a high cost. If more fashion brands choose environmental fabric, the increasing amount of orders would help to reduce the average cost (Wang, 2014). Additionally, famers would be more willing to plant sustainable cotton. Thirdly, H&M announced the list of its suppliers. H&M discloses the list, in the hope that the media and public could supervise these suppliers. In addition, they also announces the list of sub-suppliers. In other words, H&M also has a corresponding standard for their suppliers. In this way, H&M hopes to promote the progress of the industry through the transparent supervision. Last but not least, H&M would continue to strengthen use of renewable energy, including solar power, hydroelectric power and so on. In the future, the proportion of renewable energy is expected to reach 80%.

Conclusion

Waste management and sustainable development has become more and more important in modern society. Through the above analysis, a critical evaluation could be conducted.

The natural resources on earth are limited. Such as gasoline, coal and oil they are non-renewable resources. It would be a long process for the sustainable development. In the future, companies should be committed to protecting the environment and build a social-ecological system for the next generations.

WRAP waste Hierarchy is trying to make the sustainable development more efficient, especially in the fast fashion. It provides a framework of conducting the process of sustainable development. The concept of “re-use”, “recycle”and “renewable material” is now spilling over into every industry.

In the past, fast fashion was criticized by the excessive consumption. By using cheap raw materials, the cost of each clothe was reduced. Every year people could purchase new fashion clothes and throw the old ones. In this way, consumption was encouraged and resources was wasted.

However, H&M is now starting to change the situation. H&M incorporate advanced information technology into the manufacturing activities to prevent defective goods that do not meet standards (Illge and Preuss, 2012). Also it adjusts its design and reuse the leftover cloth. Furthermore, H&M cooperates with other partners to send them waste cloth for the purpose of producing goods such as dishcloth, pillows and masks (Birtwistle and Moore, 2007).All these practices mentioned above would help H&M earn people’s awaren ess of its brand equity, since H&M attempts to maximize the value of each piece of cloth. During the operating activities, H&M tries to ensure that the waste and related losses are minimized.

References

Apitz, S. E. (2010). Waste or resource? Classifying and scoring dredged material management strategies in terms of the waste hierarchy. Journal of Soils and Sediments, 10(8), 1657-1668.

Birtwistle, G., & Moore, C. M. (2007). Fashion clothing-where does it all end up?. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 35(3), 210-216.

Bianchi, C., &Birtwistle, G. (2012). Consumer clothing disposal behaviour: A comparative study. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 36(3), 335-341.

Domina, T., & Koch, K. (1999). Consumer reuse and recycling of post-consumer textile waste. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 3(4), 346-359.

Hall, J. K., Daneke, G. A., & Lenox, M. J. (2010). Sustainable development and entrepreneurship: Past contributions and future directions. Journal of Business Venturing, 25(5), 439-448.

Ha-Brookshire, J. E., & Hodges, N. N. (2009). Socially responsible consumer behavior? Exploring used clothing donation behavior. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 27(3), 179-196.

Hopwood, B., Mellor, M., & O'Brien, G. (2005). Sustainable development: mapping different approaches. Sustainable development, 13(1), 38-52.

Illge, L., &Preuss, L. (2012). Strategies for sustainable cotton: comparing niche with mainstream markets. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 19(2), 102-113.

Jia, P., Govindan, K., Choi, T. M., &Rajendran, S. (2015). Supplier selection problems in fashion business operations with sustainability considerations.Sustainability, 7(2), 1603-1619.

Joung, H. M., & Park‐Poaps, H. (2013). Factors motivating and influencing clothing disposal behaviours. International Journal of consumer studies,37(1), 105-111.

Lang, C., Armstrong, C. M., & Brannon, L. A. (2013). Drivers of clothing disposal in the US: An exploration of the role of personal attributes and

behaviours in frequent disposal. International Journal of Consumer Studies,37(6), 706-714.

Li, Y., Zhao, X., Shi, D., & Li, X. (2014). Governance of sustainable supply chains in the fast fashion industry. European Management Journal, 32(5), 823-836.

Morgan, L. R., &Birtwistle, G. (2009). An investigation of young fashion consumers' disposal habits. International journal of consumer studies, 33(2), 190-198.

Omarali, A., Groeneweg, P., Kaart, S., &Pek, B. J. J. (2005, January). Main Cryogenic Heat Exchanger Replacement at Brunei LNG. In International Petroleum Technology Conference. International Petroleum Technology Conference.

Shen, B. (2014). Sustainable fashion supply chain: Lessons from H&M.Sustainability, 6(9), 6236-6249.

Shen, B., & Li, Q. (2015). Impacts of returning unsold products in retail outsourcing fashion supply chain: A sustainability analysis. Sustainability,7(2), 1172-118

Tyskeng, S., &Finnveden, G. (2010). Comparing energy use and environmental impacts of recycling and waste incineration. Journal of environmental engineering, 136(8), 744-748.

WRAP (2016), “Our vision”, [available online]:

Wang, K., Zhao, Y., Cheng, Y., & Choi, T. M. (2014). Cooperation or competition? Channel choice for a remanufacturing fashion supply chain with government subsidy. Sustainability, 6(10), 7292-7310.

Xu, Y., Chen, Y., Burman, R., & Zhao, H. (2014). Second‐hand clothing consumption: a cross‐cultural comparison between American and Chinese young consumers. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 38(6), 670-677.

Zorpas, A. A., &Lasaridi, K. (2013). Measuring waste prevention. Waste management, 33(5), 1047-1056.