Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
H&M is coming out with 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, bottoms with adjustable waistbands and cuffs, jackets, hats and blankets.
Abigail Kammerzell, H&M's US head of sustainability, said all items are 100% biodegradable, including the pigments used to print designs on the clothing. She said the pieces are also deliberately absent of buttons or any metal trim.
This is to ensure that each piece can be composted when it's at its end of use, even by just putting them in an at-home compost pile.
Kammerzell said the collection is certified by the environmental group Cradle to Cradle for using materials free of chemicals that are harmful to humans and the environment and producing the items with 100% recycled water and renewable energy.
"This is the first of any of our clothing collections that is compostable," Kammerzell said.
Given H&M's global scale, with over 4,000 stores worldwide, she said the company is in a position to "enable big changes in the fashion industry and we hope to be a leader in sustainability and keep clothes out of landfills."
This latest effort from the Swedish fashion retailer comes amid rising volumes of global clothing waste and growing concern over fast fashion's contribution to it.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 17 million tons of textile waste — with discarded clothing being the main source — was generated in the United States in 2018, the latest data available. The recycling rate was just 14.7%, with 2.5 million tons recycled.
The EPA said landfills received 11.3 million tons of that 2018 textile waste, which represented 7.7% of all municipal waste that ended up in landfills.
H&M and other fast fashion sellers including Zara have recently taken steps to curtail clothing waste.
In 2013, H&M launched a global garment collecting program and has set a goal of having all clothing sold in its stores be made from recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030. That figure currently stands at 80%, according to the company.
The retailer collected more than 29,000 tons of garment for 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 (which is owned by Inditex) announced that all of the cotton, linen and polyester used by the company will be organic, sustainably sourced or recycled by 2025.
Kammerzell said H&M has tripled the share of recycled materials used in its garments from 5.8% to 17.9%, with the goal of reaching 30% by 2025.
But she acknowledged that challenges remain for the industry to more fully embrace sustainability efforts. "We're not on board with new suppliers who have coal boilers on their premises," she said. "There are lots of factories in the industry that still use them."
Jessica Schreiber is the founder and CEO of FABSCRAP, a nonprofit initiative that provides pickup and recycling services for fabric scraps from businesses in New York City and Philadelphia.
Schreiber said she's excited too see a big industry name like H&M continuing to push for innovation in sustainability. But she's cautious that these are incremental solutions to combat a much bigger problem.
"It's always a step forward for a company as big as H&M to show it is making an effort. But fast fashion retailers also put out so much clothing regularly," Schreiber said. "To really turn the tide and slow down the volume of garments that's ending up in the waste stream will consistently require much bigger moves."
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
A photographer who worked for Megan Thee Stallion said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to watch her have sex, was unfairly fired soon after and was abused as her employee.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would force TikTok's China-based parent company to sell the social media platform under the threat of a ban, a contentious move by U.S. lawmakers that's expected to face legal challenges.
People living near a wildfire burning about 15 kilometres southwest of Peace River are being told to evacuate their homes.
The U.S. Senate has passed US$95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.