Working to prevent and reduce our overall impact on the biodiversity and natural ecosystems touched by our value chain
Supporting the protection and restoration of biodiversity and natural ecosystems in line with scientific advice
Through our partnership with WWF, we started a project in the Satpura-Pench wildlife corridor in central India, supporting smallholder cotton farmers to adopt regenerative farming practices. The project aims to directly improve soil and pollinator biodiversity and help farmers build sustainable incomes, while also improving the local landscape to support larger species such as tigers
We started a project with WWF in South Africa, in the location where the newest National Park in the country is being established. The project aims to engage 70 communal smallholders and 10 large commercial sheep farmers in working towards regenerative wool production that improves biodiversity and social development
We continued our work with WWF to set context-specific (contextual) water targets and develop our new 2030 Water Strategy. Together, we identified the contextual water conditions for over 1,100 of our suppliers, including issues such as external governance, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), quality, water scarcity, flooding and extreme climate-induced events. We are using the findings to develop targets for each supplier site that align water performance with relevant water challenges
Achieved a 10.3% reduction in production water use from a 2017 baseline and a 6.6% reduction compared to last year
21% of water recycled out of total production water consumption by 2021
43% of factories in the H&M Group supply chain have rainwater harvesting system by 2021
We continued to share guidance on wastewater treatment care, from the German development agency GIZ, with all our business partners
In 2021, 88% of supplier factories with on-site effluent treatment plant (ETP) functionality assessments achieved green grade and 98% had discharge water quality that is Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals wastewater compliant
We initiated a phase-out of high priority endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) — substances that interfere with the hormonal system. We will continue phasing out all EDCs over the coming years
We used safer alternatives to potassium permanganate (used to distress denim) for 79% of our denim products, with the goal to achieve 100% by 2023
