The fashion industry is the second biggest industry in the world. I done some research into H&M, the brand I shop at the most to see how they're helping to protect the environment.

H&M probably talks about sustainability more than any other fast-fashion brand. It produces a conscious collection made using sustainable and recycled materials, and encourages garment recycling to all its consumers, they don't test on animals and they have a voucher programme offering discounts to those who donate their old clothes at its stores. The brand states that it wants to only use recycled or other sustainably sourced materials.
On April 18, H&M kicked off a major project, intended to collect 1,000 tons of used clothes, called world cycle week, that its promoting heavily. However, Kristen Brodde, the project leader of Greenspeace Fashion, wrote in a press release "H&M's recycling week is in reality a week of illusions since only one percent of collected clothing can be used a recycled fibres", she suggests that offering garment repair services would have done more good than inviting customers to recycle their old clothes and buy new ones.

They have even made a music video promoting this cause in collaboration with rapper M.I.A. Businesse's can become more sustainable both environmentally and economically by collaborating. Big brand collaborations such as H&M and Alexander Wang, Apple and Burberry have been success's due to the fact they offer a sense of exclusivity to draw the customer in and the fact that each brand sits of opposing ends of the market allows them to tap into each other's audiences. The collaborations create something new and innovative, allowing the success of the brand to be sustained in their own market as well as being generated in a new one.

But is H&M really as ethical as it portrays to be? with the irony that H&M has been given the international ethics award, despite being the biggest buyer of clothes made in Bangladesh manufacturing about 25 percent of its clothing, where the minimum wage is the lowest in the world. Its been named one of the best companies to work for despite 850,000 of its textile workers are not being paid a fair wage, which they cant even live on, only 36 dollars a month!!! Some labor groups have even said that H&M put workers in unsafe conditions, by looking for the cheapest work possible.
Although H&M is one of the biggest buyers of organic cotton, it still only accounts for 13.7 percent of its total garment production. Fabrics like cotton are sustainable and easy to produce however others have a much more damaging effect on the environment. For instance the fur industry is thriving currently and struggling to reach the demand, especially since regulations of what fur is permitted to be used, produced and sold where.
H&M manufactures at least 600 million items each year and operates more than 3,200 stores in 55 countries, and if you include its subsidiary brands, such as COS, that number jumps above 3,500 stores, and the company is expanding its locations by 15 percent each year. To operate those stores, not to mention manufacture and ship the clothes requires hell of a lot of resources including, electricity, oil and water. Even if the brand manages to help the environment slightly from one year to the next, its business continues to grow, which remains enormous and far from sustainable.