Garment Collecting & Recycling

H&M has recycling boxes in all clothing stores around the world. Bring your clean, previously loved clothing or textiles to one of our stores—they can be from any brand. Drop off your unwanted textiles in a H&M store in the garment-collecting box — usually next to the cash desks, and you’ll be rewarded with a voucher. Find out more here. 

Garment collecting at H&M   
With your help, we've gathered over 172,000 tonnes of preloved clothing and textiles since 2013. Through collecting, sorting, reselling, repurposing and recycling, we can give many of these items a second life.  

  

Looper Textile Co.   
In 2023, H&M Group and REMONDIS (a global leader in waste management) launched an independent company called Looper Textile Co. to participate more directly in sorting unwanted garments and textiles and facilitating reuse and recycling. Looper Textile Co. provides local municipalities and retailers with solutions to extend the useful life of these items. 

 

How does it work?     
1. Bring your clean, previously loved clothing or textiles to one of our stores—they can be from any brand. Find your local store here: H&M (hm.com)    

2. Place garments and textiles in the dedicated garment collecting box. 

3. After the garments and textiles are dropped off, we take over with REMONDIS (as well as Looper Textile Co. in Europe and local partners in China, Japan and India). We empty the boxes, and our partner arranges for the items to be sorted into different categories to enable reuse and recycling.  

What happens to the dropped-off garments and textiles?
Every item is inspected and sorted to determine quality, condition and resale potential. During 2023, REMONDIS classified the collected items as follows:   

   

Resale  
68% of all collected garments and textiles.    
Wearable items that can be marketed as secondhand clothing are sorted into more than 200 categories to maximize the likelihood of each garment reaching an appropriate end customer.  

Repurposing/recycling 
23% of all collected garments and textiles.    
Suitable items that are not fit for resale are turned into a new product, like cleaning cloths or insulation. 

Textile-to-textile recycling   
1,2% of all collected garments and textiles.    
Only a small percentage of collected items can be recycled into new textiles based on current technologies, but there is a lot of innovation happening in this area. We see great potential to increase this percentage in the future.  

Approximately 8% of collected garments and textiles do not fit into any of the above categories and are disposed of, prioritizing energy recovery when possible. 

Electrical and electronic equipment shall not be treated as household waste. The item should be handed in for recycling in accordance with local environmental regulations for waste disposal. By recycling this item you help to minimize any potential negative impact on human health and the environment.