H&M Says It Will Stop Destroying Unworn Clothing

By JIM DWYER

The clothing retailer H&M promised on Wednesday that it will stop the practice of destroying new, unworn clothing that it cannot sell at its store in Herald Square, and will instead donate the garments to charities.

The practice was discovered by Cynthia Magnus, a graduate student at the City University of New York, who found bags of unworn but mutilated clothing that had been disposed of by H&M on West 35th Street. She also found bags of new Wal-Mart garments with holes punched through them.
After Ms. Magnus wrote to H&M’s headquarters in Sweden and got no response, she contacted The New York Times. More slashed clothing was found Monday evening on 35th Street and reported in the About New York column on Wednesday.

“It will not happen again,” said Nicole Christie, a spokeswoman for H&M in New York. “We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”

Ms. Christie said that H&M’s standard practice was to donate unworn clothing to aid organizations. She said that she did not know why the store on 34th Street was slashing the clothes, and that the company was checking to make sure that none of its other stores were doing it.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Melissa Hill, said that she had been unable to learn why new clothing with the store’s tags had been destroyed, but added that the company typically donated or recycled such items.

Among the alternatives to destroying unsold garments is The New York Clothing Bank, which was set up by the city during the mayoralty of Edward I. Koch to accept unworn clothing and to protect the retailers from people who might use the donations to get store credit or undercut sales.

“I would welcome H&M, Wal-Mart and every enterprise that presently is destroying new clothing to call me immediately,” said Mary Lanning, chairwoman of the Clothing Bank. “We use a method of ‘defacing’ each garment that does not impair its wearability, but does remove any potential street value in the underground market. We operate a full clothing warehouse and distribution center right under their noses.”

According to Twitter.com, on Jan. 6, H&M was the No. 2 trending topic among tweeters, most of whom were discussing the retailer’s garment destruction practice.