article scripts

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices of Corporate Environmental Sustainability

Danny C. K. Ho

Abstract This study aims to examine the degree to which a large international fashion company—H&M—has improved corporate environmental sustainability using the principle of eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness. Case study method is employed and data are collected from its corporate annual reports and websites. The strategy and practices relating to product design, purchasing, manufacturing, transportation, retail operation, and product usage and recycling are examined. Based on the data, the study examines the extent to which cradle to cradle approach has been applied to design and manage H&M’s operations. This study also explores the possibility of integrating eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness in improving corporate environmental sustainability.

Keywords Corporate environmental sustainability � Fashion supply chain � Eco-efficiency � Eco-effectiveness

1 Introduction

The pursuit of corporate environmental sustainability is vital to the apparel industry in general and fast fashion retailers in particular for their future devel- opment. According to Sull and Turconi:

Fast fashion describes the retail strategy of adapting merchandise assortments to current and emerging trends as quickly and effectively as possible. Fast fashion retailers have replaced the traditional designer-push model—in which a designer dictates what is ‘‘in’’— with an opportunity pull approach, in which retailers respond to shifts in the market within just a few weeks, versus an industry average of six months (Sull and Turconi 2008 p. 5).

D. C. K. Ho (&) Department of Supply Chain Management, Hang Seng Management College, Hang Shin Link, Siu Lek Yuen, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected]

P. Golinska (ed.), Logistics Operations, Supply Chain Management and Sustainability, EcoProduction, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07287-6_16, � Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

241

The business of fast fashion has been competitive yet profitable and growing rapidly. For example, sales of the Inditex Group (parent company of Zara) increased by 53.2 % from €10,407 million in 2008 to €15,946 million in 2012, while its net profit rose by 87.6 % from €1,262 million in 2008 to €2,367 million in 2012. During the same period, H&M achieved 35.5 % increase in sales, up from SEK1,04,041 to SEK1,40,948 million, while its net profit increased by 10.3 % from SEK15,294 to SEK16,867 million.

The fast fashion trend promoted by retailers such as Zara, TopShop and H&M has brought the trend of disposable fashion that encourages more frequent impulse purchase of cheap, in-season and non-durable garments and the tendency to keep these products for a shorter time than their real useable life (Birtwistle and Moore 2007). In addition, these garments are expected to be used less than ten times (McAfee et al. 2004), and are likely to end up as harmful, non-biodegradable wastes at landfills when they become outdated.

This study seeks to examine the strategy and practices applied by H&M to improve its corporate environmental sustainability in the areas of product design, purchasing, manufacturing, transportation, retail operation, and product usage and recycling. These strategy and practices will be analyzed against the principles of eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness. The possibilities for integrating eco-effi- ciency and eco-effectiveness in improving corporate environmental sustainability will also be discussed.

2 Literature Review

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (2014), an estimated 13.1 million tons of textile wastes were generated in 2011, or 5.2 % of total municipal solid waste generation in the US. In the United Kingdom, an estimated £238 million-worth of textiles was threw out for waste collection and sent to landfill in 2010, according to The Waste and Resources Action Pro- gramme (2012). In 2008 around 14 million tonnes of textile waste were generated in Europe of which only 5 million tonnes were recovered (European Commission 2011). The dumping of textile waste is increasingly becoming a huge urban waste problem in developed countries. This serious environmental threat may stem partly from the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production.

2.1 Unsustainable Patterns of Clothing Consumption and Production

Past studies have shown that some young fashion-hungry consumers, who are the main targets of fast fashion retailers, have inadequate awareness and knowledge of sustainable production and consumption of clothing. For example, young female

242 D. C. K. Ho

consumers in the UK agreed that ‘‘there is a general lack of knowledge of how and where clothing is disposed of, or even how it is made, such as the environmental consequences of artificial fibres and intensive cotton production’’ (Morgan and Birtwistle 2009 p. 196). Hill and Lee (2012) reported the lack of knowledge of the holistic principle of sustainability and specific adverse effects of the apparel industry in their study of US college students. In their study, about one-third of the respondents listed ‘‘garments made of organic materials’’ as a least important sustainable practice. Besides, 30 % of those surveyed considered ‘‘garments made of biodegradable materials’’ as a most important sustainable practice, whereas 28.9 % regarded the same practice as a least important sustainable practice in the apparel industry. Such conflicting perceptions were also reported for practices like ‘‘fiber growth without pesticides’’ (Hill and Lee 2012). These findings highlight the barrier of lacking awareness and knowledge (Bonini and Oppenheim 2008) that companies must remove before consumers will consider eco-friendly clothing.

Regarding the post-sale clothing disposal, despite the recent growing engage- ment of consumers in reuse and recycling clothes, such remedial actions should not be readily considered as an effective means to address the environmental threat of textile waste. Bianchi and Birtwistle (2010 p. 366) in a study of Scotland and Australia female consumers’ disposal behavior of used clothes reported that ‘‘the environmental consequences of production and disposal of fashion textiles were poorly understood concerns among respondents’’. Nevertheless, respondents considered that donating used clothing to charities and giving used clothing to family members or friends made them ‘‘feel good’’ about helping other people in need. Worth noting is that Ha-Brookshire and Hodges (2009) in a study of used clothing donation found that,

social consciousness had little, if any, impact on used clothing donation decision-making for the participants in this study. Instead, used clothing donation was just one part of the entire clothing consumption process, one that created space for future clothing purchases. Indeed, without disposal of used clothing items, new clothing items could not be pur- chased, and, therefore, the consumption cycle could not continue.

Ironically engagement in recycling of used clothing makes consumers feel good to sustain their unsustainable consumption patterns—increasing impulse pur- chasing of low-quality trendy fashion and donation of outdated clothing to someone in need before the end of the intended product lifetime—because this recycling practice involves a small change from consumers and manufacturers (Fletcher 2008). Unfortunately such unsustainable consumption patterns will drive further growth of unsustainable production patterns. To break this vicious cycle, a major change of consumers’ and producers’ mindset is needed from the pursuit of eco-efficiency to eco-effectiveness and from cradle-to-grave to cradle-to-cradle approach to improve sustainability in consumption and production.

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 243

2.2 Eco-efficiency Versus Eco-effectiveness

Eco-efficiency has become an important concept guiding companies to develop their businesses in a sustainable manner. This concept was introduced by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in its 1992 publication, Changing Course. According to WBCSD (1992):

Eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life-cycle to a level at least in line with the Earth’s estimated carrying capacity.

Simply put, eco-efficiency means creating more value with less impact. Cus- tomer requirements should be satisfied with less resource depletion and pollution on a product or value basis. Companies are considered to have achieved sustain- able development if they have used materials and natural resources in production more efficiently and reduced outputs of toxic substances to the environment.

Reduction of negative environmental impacts, which is a key principle of eco- efficiency, represents an initial response of most companies to address sustain- ability. However, eco-efficiency has been criticized as an inadequate approach to sustainability in the long run because eco-efficiency is about being ‘less bad’ and ‘sustainable’ companies can still keep depleting scarce and valuable resources and polluting the environment albeit in smaller increments (McDonough and Braun- gart 2002). Given that eco-efficiency can only bring relative improvements (i.e. reduced energy or resource usage per value added), it should be treated as one part of the corporate sustainability criteria, instead of as the whole (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002). Young and Tilley (2006 p. 404) summarize the flaws in the thinking behind eco-efficiency as:

a linear, one-way, cradle-to-grave manufacturing system in which products are made and eventually discarded into a hole in the ground or a furnace is not only wasteful; it can be poisonous. Neither waste nor poisons are particularly efficient, productive or good for the environment. Making a destructive system less destructive only serves to let industry continue to destroy ecosystems and to contaminate and deplete nature more slowly. Under the influence of eco-efficiency a dystopian future lies ahead; destruction is the end game; the only choice remaining is the rate of destruction.

McDonough and Braungart (2002) argued that companies need to pursue eco- effectiveness and change the current system that caused the problem in the first place. They proposed that,

Eco-effectiveness means working on the right things—on the right products and services and systems—instead of making the wrong things less bad. Reduction, re-use and recy- cling slow down the rates of contamination and depletion but do not stop these processes. The key is not to make human industries and systems smaller, as efficiency advocates propound, but to design them to get bigger and better in a way that replenishes, restores and nourishes the rest of the world (McDonough and Braungart 2002 p. 76).

244 D. C. K. Ho

2.3 Cradle-to-Cradle Approach to Corporate Sustainability

As a viable alternative to the traditional cradle-to-grave manufacturing model, McDonough and Braungart’s (2002) cradle-to-cradle approach to improve eco- effectiveness and sustainability rests on three tenets including:

1. waste equals food, 2. usage of current solar income, 3. celebrating diversity.

The first tenet challenges the taken-for-granted conception of waste that there is no such a thing called ‘waste’ in nature, as ‘‘one organism’s waste is food for another and nutrients flow indefinitely in cycles of birth, decay, and rebirth’’ (McDonough et al. 2003 p. 436A). As such, materials should be designed as nutrients that flow through biological metabolism and/or technical metabolism in a closed-loop system in which man-made and natural resources circulate in cycles of production, use, recovery and remanufacture. The second tenet emphasizes that both energy (e.g. solar energy and wind power) and material inputs should be renewable rather than depleting. The third tenet celebrates nature’s diversity and stresses that design of products, processes and systems should be integrated and interconnected with available energy and material flows in the local natural systems (McDonough et al. 2003).

In sharp contrast to the eco-efficient cradle-to-grave goal, which stresses con- tinuous reduction in the human footprint of a product and finally achieves ‘zero’ negative impacts, the eco-effective cradle-to-cradle goal combines the progressive reduction of ‘bad’ with the increase in ‘good’, enhancing positive footprint (McDonough and Braungart 2002).

3 Methodology

Data were collected mainly from H&M’s recent sustainability reports during 2010 and 2012, as well as from its corporate website. H&M’s vision and strategy of sustainability were examined first, followed by practices in five main aspects of environmental sustainability in the fashion supply chain (Fulton and Lee 2013) covering product design, process design and supply chain design (Ellram et al. 2008). The practices include:

• Fibers

– No pesticides used in fiber growth, – Garments made of organic, recycled, biodegradable or recyclable materials.

• Manufacturing

– Water usage, – Environmentally friendly dyes, – Fabric waste.

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 245

• Distribution and logistics

– Environmental-friendly shipping containers, – Alternative fuels.

• Store/warehouse building efficiency

– Building energy/efficiency, – Product packaging.

• Post-consumer and beyond

– Customer sustainability program, – Laundering and care.

The social and economic aspects such as company donations and philanthropies as well as fair trade and human rights issues were not studied.

4 Findings

4.1 H&M’s Mindset of Sustainability

H&M’s business operations aim to be run in a way that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. By sustainable, we mean that the needs of both present and future generations must be fulfilled. H&M’s business concept is to offer fashion and quality at the best price. Quality includes ensuring that products are manufactured in a way that is environmentally and socially sustainable. We apply the precautionary principle in our environmental work and have adopted a preventative approach with the substitution of hazardous chemicals. We strive to use resources as efficiently as possible and to minimize waste. By adopting new technologies and methods, we can work preventatively to minimize our environmental footprint through improved production processes and our choice of materials. We must continuously review the company’s goals and strategies to reduce the company’s climate impact.

H&M has adopted the popularized approach to sustainability developed by The World Commission on Environment and Development (1987 p. 43) that refers sustainable development as ‘‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’’. On paper, H&M recognizes the interdependent nature of economy, society and environment and stresses that the pursuit of sustainability is not a balancing act or a playing of one issue against the other. H&M’s approach to sustainability also reflects the precautionary principle of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, i.e., ‘‘where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’’ (United Nations General Assembly 1992).

Most importantly, central to the mindset of H&M’s approach to sustainability is the eco-efficient cradle-to-grave philosophy that permeates its vision and policy, as

246 D. C. K. Ho

revealed by its repeated emphasis on improving resource utilization, minimizing waste and reducing ecological footprint. To grow its business in a sustainable manner, in 2011 H&M together with several leading brands developed a roadmap to continuously eliminate the use of all hazardous chemicals and hence achieve zero discharge in all production procedures associated with the making and using of H&M products, at the latest by 2020.

4.2 H&M’s Practices of Sustainability

4.2.1 Fibers

H&M has started to reduce the use of traditionally-grown cotton which involves intense use of water and pesticides, and at the same time to increase the use of organic cotton, the Better Cotton (with significantly reduction in the use of chemical fertilizer or pesticides through the program provided by the Better Cotton Initiative) and recycled cotton, aiming to reduce their environmental impact. Importantly, H&M has set a target to use only cotton coming from these sources by 2020 at the latest.

It appears that H&M is on the right track in using more sustainable cotton, as organic cotton accounted for 7.6 and 7.8 % of its total cotton use in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Such a practice has made H&M to be the number one user of organic cotton in the world, despite the slight increase in its annual use. Besides, stated in 2012, Better Cotton was used and accounted for 3.6 % of its total cotton use. The use of cotton from these two sources led to a reduced use of over 140,000 kg pesticides. H&M also used 1,450 tonnes of recycled wool and recycled polyester (equivalent to 7.9 million PET bottles) in 2012.

However, there is no data showing that recycled cotton is used currently, nor is there any specific target set for its use in the future. It is obvious that H&M’s current policy on cotton use rests largely on reducing environmental footprint, instead of on closing the textile loop. The same applies to other natural and man- made fibers.

4.2.2 Manufacturing

Water Usage

H&M has developed new production processes that can save about 30 % of the water used to produce denim, and introduced a water-efficient-denim program to its suppliers to cut water use in washing processes in 2009. These new practices saved about 50, 300 and 450 million liters of water compared to traditional pro- duction processes in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively. Currently, about 50 % of H&M’s denim is made with these techniques.

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 247

Environmentally Friendly Dyes and Fabric Waste

Given that H&M has no direct business relations with fabric mills who are only second-tier suppliers, it lacks direct control of water and chemicals use in the production of fabrics. Nevertheless, H&M encourages fabric mills to engage in its Mill Development Program voluntarily to follow good practices to improve their environmental performance. In 2012, H&M conducted a total of 58 audits on some selected mills. Currently, H&M requires all its first-tier suppliers to submit information on the fabric mill for each order. Since 2009 H&M demanded all suppliers to prove that the dyes and other chemicals they use do not contain any APEs (Alkylphenol ethoxylates) which are harmful to the environment. However, through regular tests of its products, H&M still found that some dyes and similar chemicals did actually contain APEs, even though the dyes and chemicals were certified by their producers to be APE-free. Regarding the fabric waste, H&M has not reported any action or target of improvement.

4.2.3 Distribution and Logistics

H&M uses reusable transport boxes instead of cartons to ship garments from its distribution centers to stores, making savings of more than 400,000 trees each year compared with using traditionally made cardboard boxes. By 2011, H&M man- aged to minimize the use of single garment packaging to almost zero when transporting products from its suppliers to distribution centers.

Since H&M does not own any transport facilities, it has to rely on third-party transport companies to minimize its transport-related climate impact. In 2012, around 90 % of H&M goods were transported by sea or rail from the production country to its distribution centers. H&M reported that emissions of carbon dioxide equivalent resulting from transport grew from 195,948 tonnes in 2010 to 203,294 tonnes in 2012, or by 3.7 %, while sales increased by 11 % during that period. There is no specific plan or target H&M developed concerning the use of alter- native fuels for transport of its products.

4.2.4 Store/Warehouse Building Efficiency

Building Energy/Efficiency

H&M has set a target reducing carbon emissions by 5 % relative to sales each year covering 2010 to 2012, and uplifted the goal to absolute reductions in its opera- tions’ total emissions by 2015. Past records show that H&M by and large achieved this 5 % drop in emissions annually from 3.33 tonnes/million SEK sales in 2010 to 3 tonnes/million SEK sales in 2012. Despite the achievement of this annual target, its absolute total emissions increased from 497,264 tonnes in 2010 to 574,611 tonnes in 2012, or by 15.6 %.

248 D. C. K. Ho

Given that electricity use in H&M’s stores accounted for the biggest share of its absolute emissions (e.g. 50 % in 2012), H&M has established a target to improve energy efficiency by reducing electricity use per square meter in its stores by 20 %, as compared to a 2007 baseline, by 2020. To achieve this new target, H&M has been implementing energy saving practices and installing energy monitoring devices in all stores. In 2012, H&M generated 784,200 kWh of solar energy through its own solar photovoltaic panels. In the long run, H&M seeks to source all electricity from renewable sources, although no specific target has been set.

H&M has also applied water-saving techniques such as low-flow taps to reduce water use in its stores, offices and distribution centers, and harvested about 3 million liters of rainwater for reuse through rainwater-harvesting facilities installed in its distribution centers in Europe and a store in the UK.

Product Packaging

In 2010 H&M developed Environmental Guidelines for Packaging that aims to use fewer resources and cause less waste by using recycled materials, materials from certified sources, such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified paper and board, and single materials, which avoid mixing materials such as stickers or laminates to improve recyclability, as well as designing packaging to optimize space-use making it more efficient to transport and making packaging easy to separate for higher recyclability.

In 2011, H&M reported that 90 % of the paper used for making its mail order packages was recycled cardboard. All of H&M’s standard plastic consumer bags are made of recycled material (50 % post-consumer and 50 % pre-consumer recycled polyethylene) and consumer paper bags are made of paper originated from well-managed forests certified by FSC. Thus, all of H&M’s bags are recy- clable. Almost all hangers are reused in stores. When they become unusable, they are sent for recycling. H&M achieved 85 % recycling rate in 2010, up from 79 % in 2009.

H&M reported that in 2012, 92 % of the wastes handled in its distribution centers were recycled, while the target of recycling rate was uplifted to be 95 % in 2013.

4.2.5 Post-consumer and Beyond

H&M claims itself as the first fashion company in the world to provide customers with the chance to bring unwanted clothes to its stores in all 48 markets for reuse as second hand clothes or recycling as cleaning cloth or insulation material, for example. However, there is no figure reported by H&M about the amount of used clothes collected and recycled.

In 2011, H&M started discussions with Ginetex, which is the owner of the current global standard care labeling system, aiming to develop a globally-

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 249

applicable care label that promotes conscious garment wash and care instructions, reducing water and energy use in the ‘user phase’ of the product lifecycle. H&M planned to launch the new care label in summer 2013.

5 Discussion

The above findings show that the central principle guiding H&M’s approach to sustainability is the eco-efficient cradle-to-grave philosophy. Based on this mindset, H&M’s sustainability vision is to send zero waste from its operations to landfill. The long-term goal set by H&M toward sustainability is the pursuit of zero discharge of hazardous chemicals by 2020. In fact, this goal applies not only to H&M but also to other leading brands in the apparel industry that have joined the initiative of Roadmap to Zero.

It is clear that eco-effective cradle-to-cradle philosophy does not form the core of H&M’s current sustainability policy, despite its commitment to becoming cli- mate smart, aiming for zero waste to landfill, and using natural resources responsibly. Most of H&M’s operations do not reflect the three tenets of the cradle-to-cradle philosophy.

5.1 Waste Equals Food

To turn sustainability vision into reality, H&M has started to replace traditionally- grown cotton largely by organic cotton and to a lesser extent by the Better Cotton gradually. Although this choice of materials has resulted in significantly less use of chemical fertilizer or pesticides, there is little sign that the principle ‘waste equals food’ has been applied. As McDonough et al. (2003 p.437A) put, ‘‘a material should not only be nonhazardous but also provide nourishment for something after its useful life—either ‘‘food’’ for biological systems or high-quality materials for subsequent generations of high-tech products’’. For H&M, it is about closing the textile loop by using recycled materials, be they natural or man-made fibers, as main inputs of its production system. However, no measurable target or specific plan has been established by H&M in this regard.

H&M has recently started to collect used clothes through its retail stores and then reuse and recycle them. Although this practice may help to create awareness of recycling among its customers, the recycling process H&M has engaged is down-cycling in nature because the used clothes are transformed into products of lesser value, such as cleaning cloth, which will likely be dumped to landfill finally. This recycling system is the cradle-to-grave approach to sustainability and will only prolong the life of used clothes before they become waste. H&M has not engaged in up-cycling process aggressively. Despite its efforts in using recycled

250 D. C. K. Ho

polyester to produce clothes, it has not transformed the used clothes into higher quality materials, serving as inputs of the production of higher value products.

Due to the lack of information disclosure about H&M’s program of recycling used clothes, consumers may have created a misconception that all used clothes are either donated to someone in need or used as materials for production of new garments. This may make consumers feel good and justify their unsustainable consumption patterns because consumers have now found an easy and proper way to deal with their unwanted clothes. However, the recycled clothes will likely become waste in landfills and not food for producing higher quality products.

5.2 Use Current Solar Income and Celebrate Diversity

H&M is on the right track in sourcing 100 % of electricity from renewable sources such as solar energy so as to reduce its scope 2 carbon emissions. The increasing use of solar energy is feasible and expected when H&M will invest in the nec- essary installations in new building projects or refurbishment projects of its current facilities such as distribution centers. However, H&M has not set specific deadline for achieving the target of using only renewable energy.

Regarding the tenet ‘celebrating diversity’, H&M has taken an initial step to harvest rainwater through its facilities, addressing the need to design its facilities that integrate with the local natural systems, using available energy and material flows in a closed loop. Despite these efforts, there is lack of evidence showing this principle has been applied in fabric and garment production by H&M and its suppliers.

The case findings also show that H&M faces major challenges in improving the sustainability performance of its second-tier suppliers. Harmful materials can still be found through H&M’s regular testing of its products, despite the suppliers have provided H&M with evidence certified by an independent third party that the materials are not hazardous. Second-tier suppliers are encouraged to participate in sustainability improvement program by H&M mostly on a voluntary basis. It is unknown to what extent good practices will be adopted by these suppliers under the current arrangement.

6 Conclusion

Based on the information disclosed by H&M in its recent sustainability reports and corporate website, this study found that H&M has framed corporate environmental sustainability as reduction of negative impact through improving resource utili- zation, minimizing waste and reducing ecological footprint. Thus, it is plausible for H&M to develop the target of achieving zero discharge of hazardous sub- stances in its supply chain at the latest by 2020.

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 251

To improve its environmental performance, H&M has started to:

1. use environmental-friendly materials that have less soil pollution and water consumption,

2. introduce innovative wet production processes that save water and energy use to its first-tier suppliers,

3. demand its first-tier suppliers to submit information on the fabric mill for each order,

4. use reusable transport boxes, 5. implement energy saving practices and installing energy monitoring devices in

all stores, 6. source electricity from renewable sources, 7. apply water-saving techniques to reduce water use in its stores, offices and

distribution centers, and harvest rainwater for reuse, 8. reuse packaging materials, 9. collect used clothes from customers for reuse or recycling,

10. develop care label that promotes reduced water and energy use in the ‘user phase’ of the product lifecycle.

Despite these efforts, H&M remains silent on:

1. setting a target for usage of recycled cotton as well as other natural and man- made fibers,

2. reducing fabric waste at its suppliers’ factories, 3. using alternative fuels for transport of its products, 4. setting a target for sourcing all electricity from renewable sources, 5. disclosing the amount of used clothes it collected and recycled.

It is likely that H&M will reduce its negative environmental impact in the areas of reusable containers for transport, building energy efficiency and product packaging, if it further strengthens its internal environmental management prac- tices. However, the real challenges H&M facing come mainly from its immediate suppliers and multi-tier suppliers. How to ensure that its suppliers, in particular those connected loosely to H&M, will comply with higher environmental requirements and follow good environmental practices closely in their operations is a pressing issue to be addressed by H&M, if it has to build a sustainable fashion supply chain.

As neither unsustainable production nor consumption of clothing will end in short run, H&M and other fashion companies need to rethink the viability of current cradle-to-grave, fast fashion model as a truly sustainable business model. The pursuit of eco-efficiency is inadequate to build a sustainable business. Instead, fast fashion companies should base their management philosophy upon eco- effectiveness, and influence and collaborate with supply chain partners and other stakeholders to build cradle-to-cradle, closed loop supply chain systems, leaving positive impacts to nature. As a full-scale change from eco-efficient to eco- effective operations throughout a supply chain will not happen overnight, fashion companies can start conducting pilot projects testing the applicability of cradle-to-

252 D. C. K. Ho

cradle concept and practices on new product lines. The successful cases can then serve as role models for others to follow.

Further study is expected to examine how other leading fashion companies have framed corporate environmental sustainability and to what degree they have implemented environmental management practices in their supply chains to improve sustainability from the eco-effective perspective.

Acknowledgments The author thanks Hang Seng Management College for the funding sup- porting the attendance of The 9th International Congress on Logistics and SCM Systems ICLS 2014.

References

Bianchi C, Birtwistle G (2010) Sell, give away, or donate: an exploratory study of fashion clothing disposal behaviour in two countries. Int Rev Retail, Distrib Consum Res 20(3):353–368

Birtwistle G, Moore CM (2007) Fashion clothing–where does it all end up? Int J Retail & Distrib Manage 35(3):210–216

Bonini SM, Oppenheim JM (2008) Helping ‘green’ products grow, The McKinsey quarterly. 1–8 Oct

Dyllick T, Hockerts K (2002) Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Bus Strategy Environ 11(2):130–141

Ellram LM, Tate WL, Carter CR (2008) Applying 3DCE to environmentally responsible manufacturing practices. J Clean Prod 16(15):1620–1631

European Commission (2011) Green public procurement textiles technical background report. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/gpp/pdf/tbr/textiles_tbr.pdf. Accessed 28 Jan 2014

Fletcher K (2008) Sustainable fashion and textiles: design journeys. Earthscan, London Fulton K, Lee SE (2013) Assessing sustainable initiatives of apparel retailers on the Internet.

JFMM 17(3):353–366 Ha-Brookshire J, Hodges Nancy N (2009) Socially responsible consumer behavior? Exploring

used clothing donation behavior. Cloth Text Res J 27(3):179–196 Hill J, Lee H-H (2012) Young generation Y consumers’ perceptions of sustainability in the

apparel industry. JFMM 16(4):477–491 McAfee A, Dessain V, Sjoeman A (2004) Zara: IT for fast fashion. Harvard Business School

Publishing, Cambridge McDonough W, Braungart M (2002) From cradle to cradle. North Point Press, New York McDonough W, Braungart M, Anastas PT, Zimmerman JB (2003) Applying the principles of

green engineering to cradle-to-cradle design. Environ Sci Technol 37(23):434A–441A Morgan LR, Birtwistle G (2009) An investigation of young fashion consumers’ disposal habits.

Int J Consum Stud 33:190–198 Sull D, Turconi S (2008) Fast fashion lessons. Bus Strategy Rev 19(2):4–11 United Nations General Assembly (1992) Report of the United Nations conference on

environment and development. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1anne x1.htm. Assessed 28 Jan 2014

United States Environmental Protection Agency (2014), Wastes—resource conservation— common wastes & materials. http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/textiles.htm. Accessed 28 Jan 2014

Waste and Resources Action Programme (2012) Time to unlock the value of household textile waste, says WRAP. http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/time-unlock-value-household-textile- waste-says-wrap. Accessed 28 Jan 2014

A Case Study of H&M’s Strategy and Practices 253

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (1992) Eco-efficiency learning module. http://www.wbcsd.org/pages/EDocument/EDocumentDetails.aspx?ID= 13593&NoSearchContextKey=true. Accessed 28 Jan 2014

World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) Our common future. Oxford University Press, Oxford

Young W, Tilley F (2006) Can businesses move beyond efficiency? The shift toward effectiveness and equity in the corporate sustainability debate. Bus Strategy Environ 15(6):402–415

254 D. C. K. Ho