MANILA, PHILIPPINES – The adobo Festival of Ideas was held last December 5, 2019 at the Newport Performing Arts Theater, Resorts World Manila, with “The Connectivity Economy” as this year’s festival theme. The talks throughout the day emphasized how the modern economy is fueled by collaboration over competition, how these connections are leading to different possibilities, and the role these have in achieving innovation and sustainability in businesses.
In today’s Connectivity Economy, each sector is connecting in unexpected ways that hold great potential to change the world. To touch up on Sustainability and Business, Dan Mejia, the Head of Communications and Press of H&M Philippines, talked about the steps H&M is taking to make itself more sustainable.
Fashion, Way Beyond Next Season’s
H&M is one of the biggest clothing-retail stores in the Philippines. The size of their stores and their proliferation inside different malls are proof of the brand’s popularity. And although most know H&M as a brand within the fast-fashion industry, they have been attempting to delineate themselves from the rest of the sector by focusing on becoming more climate positive as those in the industry have been called to act on the amount of waste in textile and clothing production as well as the number discarded pieces once a trend or season ends.
Dan Mejia, @hm Philippines Head of Communications and Press, on the brand’s efforts to be “climate positive” (transforming the value chain to be more GREEN) — from design to raw material, production, stores & sales, use and reuse. #adoboFOI2019 pic.twitter.com/RD3H77kS8G
— adobo magazine (@adobomagazine) December 5, 2019
To spread what the company is doing for the betterment of he environment, Mejia shared the life cycle of a pair of jeans, which goes through design, raw material, production, and lastly, stores and sales. In each stage, H&M considers what would be the most sustainable option — making sure to reduce wasteful stages in the process and move towards a more circular model.
For the design stage, H&M predicts the demand to reduce overproduction. As for what raw material to use, the clothing-retail company is aiming to use 100% recycled materials by 2030. For the production stage, they make sure that the textile trade and production is ethical, as this is an important driver for livelihood and economic growth. And lastly, after production there is the last step, which happens in stores and sales. According to Mejia’s talk, 96% of electricity used by H&M comes from renewable sources like solar and wind, and the vehicles used for transport are electricity powered.
While these are already in place, H&M also aims to have a climate positive value chain by 2040. To do this, Mejia said that commitment is needed to help show that the world that we can stop climate change and reduce greenhouse commissions completely. H&M is only 2% of the fashion industry in the whole wide world which is why collaboration is key. It is only when majority of fashion brands try to be sustainable that the industry’s negative impact to the environment would lessen. Change towards a more sustainable future, according to Mejia, needs to happen beyond the industry border. To emphasize this insight from his talk, Mejia ended with a quote from Robert Swan OBE: “The greatest threat on the environment is the expectation that someone else will fix it.”
Watch Dan Mejia’s full session at the adobo Festival of Ideas 2019 here:
