Conscious Actions Highlights 2014

Transcription

1 CONSCIOUS ACTIONS Highlights 2014

2 WELCOME Conscious Actions Highlights 2014 At H&M, we offer fashion at great value but not at any price. We want to make conscious choices easy and accessible for everyone. That s why we keep working hard every day to make our products and the entire fashion industry more sustainable from the cotton field to giving clothes that you no longer want or need a new life. Karl-Johan Persson, CEO, H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, Stockholm 2015

3 About H&M Conscious At H&M, it has been our idea from the very beginning to make fashion and quality accessible to everyone. Today, sustainability is an increasingly impor tant part of this offer. We want to make conscious choices in fashion attractive, available and affordable to as many people as possible. It s not an easy job, but one that we work hard to achieve every day. This is why we have created H&M Conscious. With seven ambitious commitments at its heart, this is the name for everything we do for a more sustain able fashion future. Hundreds of what we call Conscious Actions big and small, short and long term are dedicated to putting these commitments into practice. Our Conscious Exclusive Collection, for example, is one of them yet there are many more. Check out some of the highlights on the following pages and more at hm.com/conscious. OUR SEVEN COMMITMENTS 1. Provide fashion for conscious customers 2. Choose and reward responsible partners 3. Be ethical 4. Be climate smart 5. Reduce, reuse, recycle 6. Use natural resources responsibly 7. Strengthen communities

4 COMMITMENT ONE Provide fashion for conscious customers We want to make conscious fashion choices attractive, available, and affordable. It s not only about looking great, it s also about feeling good. By making conscious choices throughout the life of a garment, together we can make a huge difference to our planet. This dress is sold in around 200 H&M stores for EUR 199 / GBP It s made with 64% organic linen. At clevercare.info you can find inspiration on how to care for it with less impact on our planet, so you can wear it and love it for many years to come. Organic linen is a soft and durable material that comes from flax plants grown without chemical pesticides or fertilisers. When you don t want or need it anymore, take it back to any H&M store and we will give it a new life. We are the number one user of certified organic cotton in the world. 21.2% of our cotton is either certified organic, recycled or grown under the Better Cotton Initiative. Our goal is 100% by 2020 at the latest. We use many other conscious materials, too for example Tencel, organic hemp and recycled wool. These fibres represent 14% of our total material use (2013: 11%, 2012: 9.1%).

5 COMMITMENT TWO Choose and reward responsible partners In a globalised world, it is not a question for a company like ours to have suppliers in emerging markets. It s a matter of how we do it. We set the bar high and regularly check how well they meet our standards. In order to achieve lasting change, we also need to be a good partner ourselves and, for example, reward good sustainability progress with better business. This is Wang Xuefei. We have worked with the factory for the past 8 years. They employ about 300 people, 65% of whom are women. She works at the Suzhou Silk factory, the factory that made the dress you have just seen. They are one of our 160 strategic partners and their sustainability performance is above the norm. Her monthly income is about EUR 425 / USD 530. This is 50% more than the local minimum wage. This is why we systematically place more and bigger orders with them than with less progressive suppliers and we support them in getting even better every day. We have started to implement the Fair Wage Method in selected role model factories, which has resulted in an increase in wages even though overtime has decreased. We are now working to implement similar systems at all of our strategic supplier factories by 2018 at the latest. We have entered a framework agreement with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to work together to strengthen fair negotiations and working conditions in global garment production. We have taken another major step in creating supply chain transparency and have now added the first fabric and yarn suppliers-to-our-suppliers to our public factory list.

6 COMMITMENT THREE Be ethical Every day, we connect with millions of people around the world. We believe every single one of these interactions should be guided by integrity, transparency, honesty, and respect for human rights. We see diversity as an asset that makes us better every day and we want to set a good example wherever we operate. This is Lynsey Buell. She works as a sales advisor at our H&M store on 5th Avenue, New York City. She is part of a global team of over 132,000 people, from various backgrounds and with different personalities. She is one of 215 colleagues here. The H&M Way guides us all in living our corporate values, in fighting corruption and respecting human rights wherever we operate. 78% of our colleagues are women. So are 72% of our managers. 68% of our colleagues who are in regular contact with business partners have received training to help them implement our ethical business standards in their daily work (2013: 60%, 2012: 47%). Our goal is to reach 100% by We have developed a training programme to help colleagues in key functions implement our Human Rights Policy, based on the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.

7 COMMITMENT FOUR Be climate smart Tackling climate change is one of the major challenges of our time. This is why we want to set a good example for example by only using renewable energy wherever possible. This T-shirt has been made with 100% certified organic cotton. That means 46% less climate impact than using conventional cotton. It s been transported to our warehouse from the supplier by ship and train, as around 90% of all our products are. About 26% of the carbon emissions in its life occur when it s washed and cared for at home. Washing at 30 instead of 60 degrees will cut energy use in half and save you money too. 27% of all the electricity we used was renewable. From 2015, our goal is to use only renewable electricity wherever this is feasible. We expect this to cover about 80% of our total electricity use. We have reduced carbon emissions by 14% per store square metre since This brings us close to what climate science tells us we need to do to play our part in limiting global warming to a maximum of 2ºC.

8 COMMITMENT FIVE Reduce, reuse, recycle Fashion should not end up in landfill. That s why you can drop any clothes you no longer want or need at H&M to give them a new life. Our goal is to create a closed loop in which these kinds of garments are recycled into new creations. You can find boxes like this at almost every H&M store around the world. Here we collect any clothes in any condition and from any brand to give them a new life. We will even give you a small reward. From here, collected garments are sorted and reused or recycled. Nothing goes to landfill. Our goal is to recycle as much as possible into new garments. In 2014, we introduced the first pieces made with 20% recycled cotton from such collected clothes. To increase this share, without losing quality, we need more technological innovation. We are working hard to overcome this challenge and we are investing in the innovation we need to create a closed loop for fashion. We collected more than 7,600 tonnes of garments that were no longer wanted. That s as much fabric as in over 38 million T-shirts. We, together with Kering, entered into a partnership with UK-based innovation company Worn Again, which is developing promising technologies for textile to textile recycling. Recycled polyester is often made of PET bottles. We used the equivalent of almost 40 million bottles.

9 COMMITMENT SIX Use natural resources responsibly Making great fashion can require a lot of resources for example, water and soil. Cotton needs both to grow, and we all use water to wash our clothes. But natural resources aren t endless. We need to consider future generations today and make fashion using less of our planet s resources. This denim is sold for EUR / GBP Making recycled cotton requires zero water, fertilisers or chemicals and even fewer carbon emissions than growing new cotton. It s been made with 20% recycled cotton. This cotton is generated from consumer waste, maybe even those garments that you dropped off at an H&M store. Creating the slightly washedout look could have required a lot of water, but innovative technologies meant that it needed 50% less water than average denim. We launched our first Conscious Denim collection, on average using 56% less water and 58% less energy than comparable denim. To achieve this, we used innovative measurement tools from the sustainable denim experts at Jeanologia, which we will now apply to all our denim products. By the end of 2014, more than one third of all our denim products had already reached the highest green level in the Jeanologia measurement tool.

10 COMMITMENT SEVEN Strengthen Communities The way we do business has an impact on millions of people. We contribute to about 1.6 million jobs at our supplier factories alone. We believe that investing in stronger communities around us is part of our responsibility and is also good for our business. This is Shathi, 26 years old, from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She lives in Shattola Basti, a part of the city where access to sanitation is limited. Together with WaterAid, the H&M Conscious Foundation wanted to change this and invested about 4 million EUR / 5.7 million USD. Within 3 years, this will help Shathi and an estimated 4 million people in Dhaka to have access to safe drinking water and toilets. These toilets are regularly cleaned and guarded, so that women like Shathi can feel safer. The money was generated from H&M s 2013 holiday campaign, where the H&M Conscious Foundation donated money to WaterAid for each 10 EUR / 10 USD gift card sold at H&M. Thank you for your support! We created more than 16,000 new jobs globally in our stores, offices, and warehouses alone. H&M and the H&M Conscious Foundation helped more than 430,000 people gain access to safe drinking water, for example, together with our partner WaterAid. We donated over 4 million garments to charitable causes.

11 We start designing and planning most of our products well over a year before they hit the stores. We were one of the first companies to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh in FACTS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN We do a lot to make H&M and the fashion industry more sustainable. Here are some facts you may not have known. We are not only the world s biggest user of organic cotton, but also one of the biggest users of Tencel, an innovative silk-like material that has a minimal impact on the environment. We do not sell any real fur or angora wool and apply some of the strictest standards for animal welfare. We run one of the world s biggest retail garment collecting programmes, aiming not to let fashion go to waste and to create a closed loop instead. We don t own any factories, but instead work with about 850 suppliers all around the world. These factories usually work for many different brands, and their working conditions and wages are the same, irrespective of the sales price of the garments they make it s a matter of which brands work the hardest to make a difference. We were one of the first fashion brands to publish our list of supplier factories. We actively support fair living wages across the entire textile industry and, for example, have personally met the Prime Ministers of Bangladesh and Cambodia several times to promote higher minimum wages. Child labour is extremely rare in factories that export garments. Still it is unacceptable. So, in case we would encounter child labour, we have stringent procedures in place to resolve this immediately and in the very best interests of the child. The most common challenge these days is overtime hours. This is something we are working on every day at many different levels. We do not allow any products to be sandblasted a practice often used to give denim products a used look which can cause serious harm to workers if it is done without sufficient protection. We initiated the Clevercare symbol, helping you to care for your clothes with less impact on the environment. We were one of the first companies to work with Greenpeace on the goal to achieve zero discharge of hazardous chemicals across our supply chain. We were the first major fashion company to ban Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) from all our products. PFCs are often used in water-repellent products such as raincoats, but they can be harmful to the environment.

12 Companies like H&M are not only setting new trends on the high street, they are also showing the whole fashion industry that when they say they commit to clean up their act, they mean it. Ieva Vilimaviciute, Detox Campaigner at Greenpeace International AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS Here are some of the indices, rankings, and awards that assessed and recognised our sustainability performance during the year. World s biggest user of organic cotton according to the Textile Exchange Organic Cotton Market Report 2013 Dow Jones Sustainability Index FTSE4Good World s Most Ethical Companies Global 100 List Interbrand Global Green Brands CDP s Global 500 Climate Performance Leadership Index GET THE WHOLE PICTURE This is an overview of just some of the many highlights of our Conscious Actions. Read more at hm.com/conscious or download our full Conscious Actions Sustainability Report 2014 at hm.com/consciousactions2014. THANK YOU! We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributes to our continued sustainability mission: our thousands of passionate colleagues, our customers, our partners and the many other stakeholders who help us become better every day. hm.com/whatotherssay en-gen