H&M Group goes to paper. The Swedish retail chain, which owns the H&M ready-to-wear brand as well as seven other brands, plans to move away from plastic in its e-commerce packaging and use a line of certified and recyclable paper packaging.
With this new packaging, the textile giant, which is increasingly oriented towards e-commerce, wants to reduce waste from online purchases. These paper solutions also give the packaging a "cleaner and prettier" to its mailings and allow more regular updates of brand messages, says the group with a turnover of EUR 23 billion (SEK 233).
"We are launching packaging that is better for both the customer and the environment. Of course there is still room for improvement: we need to continue to work on replacing plastic throughout our logistics supply chain, but by introducing this new multi-brand packaging, we are creating a huge impact by replacing the outer plastic with a paper solution. It's one small step on a long journey." says Hanna Lumikero, head of the new packaging system at H&M Group.
This new packaging line has already been tested in distribution centres in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, China, Russia and Australia, from where several million parcels have been sent. The new packaging solution will gradually be used by various brands of the group worldwide from 2021 onwards.
H&M Group aims to reduce its plastic packaging by 25% by 2018, replace single-use plastic packaging with reusable alternatives wherever possible and eliminate any problematic or unnecessary plastic.
The group has removed most of its plastic bags from its stores and replaced them with a certified paper solution. Together with other actions, this change has resulted in a 4.7% reduction in plastic packaging by 2019, representing a reduction of more than 1,000 tonnes of plastic.
