H&M phasing out plastic bags – phasing in paper bags

HM Fashion bag in paper to replace current plastic bags in Singapore this July 2019.

H&M – Hennes & Mauritz – the global Swedish fashion giant with stores in all the countries in Asia and production in several of them, is gradually phasing out the use of plastic bags and instead offering the customer to buy a paper bag.

In Singapore, the shift takes effect at all H&M stores from next Thursday (July 25, 2019), as part of a packaging strategy to reduce plastic use in the long run, said the Swedish retailer in a press release on Monday (July 15).

A paper bag will cost 10 cents and all proceeds collected from the shopping bags will be donated to WWF Singapore’s Plastic ACTion (PACT) initiative, which is an industry-wide initiative to reduce plastic use by 2030.

Singapore is the latest of a string of countries in which H&M is introducing the new plastic-to-paper shift policy.

H&M in the UK will rolled out the changes from October 29, 2018 and by the start of December 2018, all stores offered the new paper bags. The paper bags cost 5 pence but all proceeds will be donated to charitable causes. Unicef has already received over £1.9 million in donations from H&M UK since it began charging 5p for plastic bags in 2015.

H&M in Japan likewise abolished the use of plastic shopping bags in December 2018. When announcing this move, CEO Lucas Seifert told a news conference in Tokyo that the company has a goal of halving the amount of shopping bags used in 2019 compared with 2018 figures.

H&M Group became in March 2019 a signatory of the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment initiative from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

About Gregers Møller

Editor-in-Chief • ScandAsia Publishing Co., Ltd. • Bangkok, Thailand

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