The Swedish clothing group has published its annual sustainability report. In it, the company presents its progress in the areas of materials, climate goals, circular economy, packaging and working conditions.
One of the highlights when it comes to materials is that 80 percent of the materials used by H&M are either recycled or sourced in a more sustainable way. “We have tripled the amount of recycled content in our clothing from 5.8 percent to 17.9 percent and remain on target to reach 30 percent by 2025,” the company said in a press release.
In terms of climate targets, the Group has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2040 and reducing its absolute emissions by 56 percent by 2030. “A key step in this journey is our decision not to add new suppliers or supplier factories to our supply chain if they have coal boilers in their factories, working towards our long-term goal of excluding coal from our supply chain,” explains H&M.
A new target was introduced to double sales while halving the carbon footprint by 2030, with 2021 as the base year for the sales target and 2019 for the emissions target.
The Group has launched its new circular design tool “Circulator” to achieve the goal of making all products circular by 2025. “The tool is intended to enable H&M Group teams to design products that are suitable for a circular economy and, in the long term, will inspire others to do the same,” says H&M.
As far as packaging is concerned, the company was able to reduce its consumption of plastic packaging by 27.8 percent last year. It aims to reduce the use of packaging by 25 percent across the value chain by 2025.
The report concludes with data on wages and workers in H&M’s manufacturing countries Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Turkey and comments on supply chain management.
The full report can be viewed on the H&M Group website.