H&M Group and Remondis have joined forces to launch Looper Textile Co. a new, standalone joint venture to collect, sort, and sell used and unwanted garments and textiles.
Utilising Remondis’ long-standing reputation as a leader in waste management to provide collection and sorting solutions at scale, H&M Group is ramping up its development of the necessary infrastructure to close the loop in fashion.
“We are excited to announce the launch of Looper Textile Co. Used and unwanted garments must first be collected and sorted into different streams, such as by type of material or garment, in order to be reused or recycled. Today, less than 40% of used clothes are collected in the EU. Consequently, 60% of post-consumer textiles go directly to waste,” said Emily Bolon, ceo of Looper Textile Co.
“By building infrastructure and solutions for collection and sorting, we hope to move one step closer toward enabling circularity, thereby minimising the CO2 impact and improving resource efficiency.”
Looper aims to become a preferred feedstock provider to companies and innovators engaged in textile resale and recycling. It is starting with operations in Europe and aims to extend the highest use of approximately 40 million garments over the course of 2023.
The company plans to innovate within textile collection and sorting, for example, by testing new collection schemes and implementing automated sorting technologies such as near-infrared sorting, as well as buy developing an assortment of partners in the areas of reuse and recycling.
“We are convinced that the textile loop, due to its very high complexity, can only be closed with trusting, innovative, and like-minded partners along the value chain and are pleased to have found the synergy between H&M Group and Remondis,” said Marc Schubert, coo of Looper Textile Co.
H&M Group was the first fashion company to launch a garment collecting initiative worldwide in 2013 and has, through its investment arm H&M CO:LAB, invested in companies that develop technologies to enable textile recycling.
