A Swedish power plant that aims to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by 2020 has taken to burning recycled wood and garbage—including clothes from H&M;’s central warehouse, as first reported on Swedish public television. 
 
 “For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, which owns and operates the plant in Vasteras, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.” 
 
 According to Bloomberg, the plant has burned about 15 tons of discarded clothing from H&M; so far in 2017, making it a minuscule percentage of the 400,000 tons of trash it has burned to supply power to about 150,000 households. The clothes, according to H&M;’s head of communications, Johanna Dahl, are burned because they’re unsafe for wearing. 
 
 “It is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed,” Dahl told Bloomberg.“H&M; does not burn any clothes that are safe to use.” 
 
 While Sweden is a leader in eliminating the use of fossil fuels, the fast fashion cycle encouraged by brands such as H&M; is far from sustainable, as 15 tons of discarded clothing from a single warehouse would indicate. 
 
 Beyond the staggering resources required to produce H&M;’s hundreds of millions of products globally each year, fast fashion encourages an environmentally catastrophic cycle that sees manufacturers producing ever-increasing quantities to meet rising demands in markets such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Russia. According to a 2016 McKinsey study, clothing production worldwide doubled between 2010 and 2014, and from 2000 to 2011 the average number of annual collections produced by European apparel companies rose from two to five. 
 
 It’s a lot of material for one planet to handle. Plus, when clothes are so cheap, customers value them less, making them even likelier to end up in landfills—if they’re not in an incinerator first. 
 
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 Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg Photographer: Johan Jeppsson/Bloomberg 
 
 Burning discarded clothing from retail chain Hennes & Mauritz AB is helping a Swedish power plant replace coal for good. 
 
 The combined heat and power station in Vasteras, northwest of Stockholm, is converting from oil- and coal-fired generation to become a fossil fuel-free facility by 2020. That means burning recycled wood and trash, including clothes H&M can’t sell. 
 
 “For us it’s a burnable material,” said Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the 54-year-old plant about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Stockholm. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.” 
 
 While Sweden prides itself on an almost entirely emission free-power system thanks to its hydro, nuclear and wind plants, some local municipalities still use coal and oil to heat homes and offices during cold winter days. By converting old plants to burn biofuels and garbage, the biggest Nordic economy is hoping to edge out the last of its fossil fuel units by the end of this decade. 
 
 Malarenergi has a deal with the neighboring city of Eskilstuna to burn their trash, some of which comes from H&M’s central warehouse in the same city. The refuse wasn’t specified as clothing until it was highlighted in a Swedish national television program on Tuesday. 
 
 “H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use,” Johanna Dahl, head of communications for H&M in Sweden, said by email. “However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed.” 
 
 The Vasteras plant burned about 15 tons of discarded clothes from H&M so far in 2017, compared with about 400,000 tons of trash, Neren said. Malarenergi has deals with several nearby cities to receive rubbish and even imports waste from Britain to fuel its main boiler. 
 
 The facility, which supplies power to about 150,000 households, burned as much as 650,000 tons of coal at its peak in 1996. 
 
 On Tuesday, the last coal ship docked in Vasteras to supply the plant’s two remaining fossil-fuel generators from the 1960s with enough supplies to last until 2020. That’s when a new wood-fired boiler will be added to supplement the facility’s existing biofuel and trash burning units. ||||| Shoppers look over merchandise at Hennes & Mauritz (H&M;) store in Peru, at the Jockey Plaza mall in Lima, July 21, 2015. 
 
 STOCKHOLM Hennes & Mauritz, the world's second-biggest fashion retailer, is launching a new effort to promote recycling as it seeks to cut its environmental impact, boost its ethical credentials and address looming shortages of raw materials. 
 
 The move comes as critics point out the damage being caused by a throwaway culture fueled by cheap clothing that has seen a sharp rise in the number of garments sold annually around the world. 
 
 Sweden's H&M;, which is launching a line of jeans containing recycled cotton next week, will offer an annual 1-million-euro ($1.16 million) prize for new techniques to recycle clothes, Chief Executive Karl-Johan Persson told Reuters. 
 
 "No company, fast-fashion or not, can continue exactly like today," Persson said. "The (prize's) largest potential lies with finding new technology that means we can recycle the fibers with unchanged quality." 
 
 As population pressure mounts, retailers like H&M; are concerned about potential future shortages of cotton, which is heavily water and pesticide dependent. 
 
 Existing cotton recycling methods make poor-quality fibers, and there is no efficient way to recycle garments of mixed materials, so the vast majority of clothes end up in land fill. 
 
 Johan Rockstrom, environmental science professor at Stockholm University and a jury member for the H&M; prize, said the fashion industry needs to find new business models to respond to global resource shortages. 
 
 "This is a great challenge for H&M; whose trademark is cheap clothes at good quality ... The fact it's cheap means there's a risk people buy and throw away, or buy too much," he said. 
 
 H&M; revenues have more than doubled since 2006, reaching 151 billion Swedish crowns ($18.3 billion) in the year to last November, making it the second biggest fashion retailer after Spain's Inditex. 
 
 The award is being launched by a foundation established by H&M; that is funded by the retailer and the Persson family, its main owners. 
 
 INNOVATION 
 
 Bernstein analyst Anne-Charlotte Windal said the industry's sustainability drive reflected the dilemma facing "fast-fashion" companies that constantly churn out new styles. 
 
 "The model only works if they encourage very frequent purchases, but the consumers are aware of the increasing effect it has on the environment," she said. 
 
 Other companies are coming up with their own solutions. 
 
 Mud Jeans is a Dutch company which leases its garments to consumers and then offers them a replacement each year, repairing and reselling the used ones or recycling the fabric. 
 
 "This is the future: producers that are responsible for their own waste," said Chief Executive Bert van Son. 
 
 "Our company can do this because we are quite small: that it is why we can do these kinds of crazy things because we can keep cotton pure. If you are a big store chain it is very complicated if you mix cotton and polyester." 
 
 H&M; joined forces earlier this year with Puma-owner Kering to support start-up Worn Again which is developing a technology for separating and extracting fibers in mixed-material garments. 
 
 Meanwhile, a company called Re:newcell is developing a method to improve the quality of recycled cotton fibers and hopes to build a first factory in coming years. 
 
 Currently, only about a maximum of 20 percent of recycled cotton can be used in a new pair of jeans because the fiber length is shortened in the shredding process, impacting quality, H&M; says. 
 
 H&M; and Kering are not alone in beating the recycling drum. Like H&M;, Britain's Marks & Spencer and Italy's Calzedonia collects used items in their stores for recycling. 
 
 On a much smaller scale, Finnish entrepreneurs Pure Waste Textiles have managed to produce sweat shirts from 100 percent recycled cotton after improving existing recycling techniques and by recycling offcuts from clothes factories. 
 
 However, others believe that recycling is just a distraction from the real challenge of the fashion industry: persuading customers to keep wearing their clothes for longer. 
 
 To that end, British designer Tom Cridland is offering a 30-year guarantee on a range of T-shirts. 
 
 "I don't believe it is fair on customers to churn out plain white T-shirts that will only last a year or two," he said. "I can't compete on price so I have to do something different." 
 
 (Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson in Berlin; Editing by Pravin Char and Keith Weir) ||||| Burberry announces it will stop the practice of destroying unsaleable products, with immediate effect. 
 
 This commitment builds on the goals that we set last year as part of our five-year responsibility agenda and is supported by our new strategy, which is helping tackle the causes of waste. We already reuse, repair, donate or recycle unsaleable products and we will continue to expand these efforts. 
 
 At Burberry, we are passionate about driving positive change. Our responsibility goals cover the entire footprint of our operations and extend to the communities around us. In May 2018, we became a core partner of the Make Fashion Circular Initiative convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In the past year, we have created a unique partnership with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform 120 tonnes of leather offcuts into new products over the next five years. We have also supported the Burberry Foundation in establishing the Burberry Material Futures Research Group with the Royal College of Art to invent new sustainable materials. We continue to invest in communities, from supporting young people in disadvantaged areas of London and Yorkshire, to developing a more inclusive and sustainable cashmere industry in Afghanistan. These efforts have been recognised by Burberry’s inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the third consecutive year. 
 
 Burberry also confirms it will no longer use real fur. There will be no real fur in Riccardo Tisci’s debut collection for Burberry later this month, and we will phase out existing real fur products. 
 
 Marco Gobbetti, Chief Executive Officer, commented: 
 
 “Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible. This belief is core to us at Burberry and key to our long-term success. We are committed to applying the same creativity to all parts of Burberry as we do to our products.” 
 
 Contacts: 
 
 Media 
 
 Andrew Roberts, VP Corporate Relations +44(0)7976971881 
 
 Investor Relations 
 
 Charlotte Cowley, VP Investor Relations +44(0)2033673234 
 
 Notes to editors: 
 
 To respect regulatory constraints, in exceptional circumstances, we may dispose of damaged, defective or expired beauty products where recycling is not an option. We will continue to explore methods of recycling or reusing such products within the regulatory constraints. 
 
 
 
 The use of real fur by Burberry has been restricted for many years to rabbit, fox, mink and Asiatic racoon. Going forward, these and Angora will be banned. 
 
 
 
 Launched in 2017, Burberry’s Responsibility agenda to 2022, focuses on three goals: 
 
 Drive positive change through 100% of Burberry’s products 
 
 Become carbon neutral, revalue waste 
 
 Positively impact one million people 
 
 Burberry made progress against each of these in 2017/18, including: 
 
 We procured 21 percent of our cotton through the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), which focuses on reducing the environmental impact of cotton production and improving economic development in cotton producing areas. Our goal is to procure 100 percent of our cotton through the BCI by 2022 
 
 We are more than a third of the way to our goal of becoming carbon neutral in our own operations. We are also helping our supply-chain partners cut their water and energy consumption, with a third of those participating in a programme we developed achieving a reduction in 2017 
 
 Through the Burberry Foundation, we are working with Teach First and the Careers and Enterprise company to support young people in disadvantaged communities in London and Yorkshire 
 
 The Foundation also partnered with Oxfam in Italy to support community cohesion and in Afghanistan to develop a more inclusive and sustainable cashmere industry 
 
 Burberry has also established ground-breaking partnerships to support and accelerate innovation and sustainable business practices 
 
 Through the Burberry Foundation, we are working with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform at least 120 tonnes of leather off-cuts from the production of Burberry products into a range of accessories and homeware over the next five years. Half of the profits from this will be donated to charitable causes focused on renewable energy 
 
 The Burberry Material Futures Research Group at the Royal College of Art is focused on inventing new sustainable materials, transforming the customer experience and advancing manufacturing 
 
 We are a core partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Make Fashion Circular Initiative to champion the vision for a circular economy and phase out negative impacts of the fashion and textile industry 
 
 Find out more about our agenda at https://www.burberryplc.com/en/responsibility
– H&M's fashions are on fire—literally, that is, in Vasteras, Sweden. A heat and power station that powers 150,000 homes there has a mandate to stop burning fossil fuels like coal and oil by 2020. Its path to achieving that involves burning "only renewable and recycled fuels," which in its case, includes recycled wood and "trash" from an H&M warehouse in the neighboring city of Eskilstuna. Bloomberg reports it was only last week that the trash was specified as clothing, and a rep for H&M in Sweden explains the company "does not burn any clothes that are safe to use." What's being torched—year to date, about 30,000 pounds' worth—are ones that may "contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals." The alternative would seemingly be a landfill, which is where a staggering amount of our clothing ends up. The Atlantic in 2014 reported that Americans toss about 10.5 million tons of clothing a year. That's about 85% of what we get rid of, with the other 15% recycled—either ultimately worn by someone else, turned into industrial rags, or "ground down" and repurposed as items ranging from insulation and furniture stuffing to pet bedding, per the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association. The Sourcing Journal cites the Environmental Protection Agency's concern over the situation: The agency recorded a 38% jump in textile waste between 2000 and 2011. Quartz points to a 2016 McKinsey study that found that over that same period, European clothing companies increased their number of annual collections from two to five.