SUSTAINABILITY

H&M are an example of an affordable clothing brand that use sustainable materials in some of their collections. The H&M Conscious Collection aims to work towards a more sustainble fashion future. The range extends across womens, mens and kidswear, and uses sustainable materials like organic cotton, Tencel, and recycled polyester (Karmali, 2013).

The prices of the styles in the conscious range are in line with H&M’s other prices which shows that sustainable materials can be used in comercially to produce apparel that can still be affordable to the consumer.

George already use BCI (Better Cotton Initiative) cotton (Raybould, 2019). This focuses on the social sustainability of the production of cotton, to improve the lives of the workers. However, George use very little recycled or eco friendly materials in their clothing, particularly in womens dresses.

Recycled cotton involves using cotton fabric and converting it back into a cotton fibre to then be re-made into new textile products (CottonWorks, 2019). George could consider using this as an alternative for some of its garments.

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132 Almost 50% of the world’s clothing is made from polyester (Elven, 2018). For mass market and value brands like George it is a popular choice of material as it is cheap and durable. It also washes well and does not wrinkle easily (Textile School, 2019) which are important qualities in clothing for George’s core consumer; a busy mum with several kids.

The production of polyester is, however, unsustainable. If George are going to contine to use such high volumes of this fibre it is important they consider its sustainability. Recycled polyester involves melting down PET (plastic bottles) to re-spin into new polyester fibres. This reduces the negative impact of plastic bottle waste and the production of recycled polyester is more sustainable than that of virgin polyester.