New York H&M & Walmart Will No Longer Destroy Unsold Clothes

by amyellensoden | January 8, 2010 at 10:11 am
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In the last week, both H&M and Walmart clothing retailers have been under scrutiny for the bags of discarded and destroyed clothes that have been found in New York. H&M, in particular, has been destroying their unsold clothes and dumping them outside of their store rendering the clothing items completely useless to the homeless people in the city. It seems that only the 34th Street H&M store was dumping the destroyed clothes, but the company is continuing to check their stories to make sure that this practice is not occurring elsewhere.

H&M finally made a statement on Wednesday promising that they would no longer destroy and discard their unsold clothing items. In the future, the company will be donating their unsold items to charity. H&M spokesperson Nicole Christie claimed that this was not the standard practice of H&M in terms of unsold clothing and confirmed that it will no longer be happening.

Cynthia Magnus, a graduate student at the City University of New York, found many garbage bags full of brand new but destroyed clothes from H&M. She discovered they were from the 34th Street H&M store, located in the centre of Manhattan. Magnus was shocked to find that the clothes were in brand new condition but had been destroyed in various ways. Shirts and jackets had been slashed, gloves had their fingers cut off, and shoes even had the in-steps cut out.

Shocked by what she had found, she took some of the bags home to Brooklyn and tried to salvage the clothes. She contacted H&M's Swedish headquarters complaining about the dumping, and when she received no reply took the story to the New York Times. She also exposed an alleged dumping exercise carried out by a contractor of America's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, on the neighbouring block.

After approaching the H&M store and receiving no response on the issue, the story has now gone public after Magnus alerted the New York Times to the news of what was going on. Many people are in uproar over this because of the many homeless people who are in critical need of warm clothing items in the cold winter months. The unsold clothes of H&M and Walmart needn't be destroyed when they could be donated to numerous charities.

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

Manhattan fashion world is sooo decadent, out of touch and willfully clueless.  remember the "hobo chic" trend started there in response to our economic recession/depression; and "heroin chic" back in the 80's when anorexic, death-pale models were photographed sprawled on dirty bathroom floors in designer cocktail dresses?  Get a conscience!

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Karen Hatter
First Flagged at 4:10 PM, Jan 8, 2010 by Karen Hatter
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