H&M to launch global clothes collecting initiative

Customers donating unwated clothing from any brand will receive £5 to spend in store as H&M strive to reduce the environmental impact of clothes on landfill sites.

H&M launch global clothes collecting initiative

Swedish retail giant H&M has today announced plans to offer a global clothes collecting service.

In selected stores from February 2013, customers will be able to discard of unwanted garments into H&M shops - regardless of their origins, in exchange for a £5 discount voucher for each bag donated. The voucher can then be used against a transactional purchase of 200Dhs or more.

The collected clothes are then handled by H&M's partner, I:Collect, which provides the infrastructure in which consumer goods are repeatedly reprocessed and made available for new use.

Zara bans toxic fashion

Just nine days after Greenpeace launched its report 'Toxic Threads: The Big Fashion Stitch-Up', high street giant Zara has gone into detox.

As the party season commences, high street giant Zara is about to embark on the ultimate detox. The 1975-born Spanish clothing label has promised to eradicate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire supply chain and products by 2020, following public pressure in response to Greenpeace's Detox campaign.

Zara's commitment comes just nine days after Greenpeace launched its report: 'Toxic Threads: The Big Fashion Stitch-Up' in Beijing on November 20. Having already named and shamed Victoria's Secret for the levels of phthalates found in the brands lingerie - so high that " if that product was a toy it would not be permitted in the EU " - the environmental activists have spurred more than 315,000 people to join the 2011-launched Detox campaign. Zara have seen over 700 people protesting in front of stores around the world, since last Tuesday.

With the eco stakes hotting up - and, most importantly, Miranda Kerr threatening to denounce her position as a Victoria's Secret 'Angel' due to the brand's toxic nature - will the weeks ahead see the likes of other high street chains succumb to the detox?

Benetton launch ‘Unemployee of the Year’ campaign

Putting the spotlight on the jobless youth, fashion retailer Benetton is inviting unemployed people aged 18-30 to submit creative projects to help aid the situation.

One could never accuse fashion retailer Benetton of being predictable (remember those ads showing world leaders kissing each other - including Pope Benedict in embrace with an Iman?) and its newest campaign is a fine case in point.

The brand's chairman, Alessandro Benetton, is so concerned with youth unemployment (estimated to be at 100 million globally) that he has launched an online contest to sustain 100 creative projects submitted by those aged 18 to 30 years old who are out of work. The projects must lead to concrete social impact in the participants' community and will be submitted to the UN HATE Foundation website and selected by the online community.

The Foundation, whose aim is to "promote a culture of non-hate" and "support youth to become actors of change against indifference and stigma" will award those chosen with €5,000 euros.

Benetton explained how the campaign "presents a realistic portrait of today's society by actively tackling a current problem, that of youth non-employment and the potential conflict between generations, in order to show it in a new light and create value for the immense human capital of young people."

An accompanying global print and video campaign shows determined young people in situation striving to find work and also includes posters and T-shirts.

TAG Heuer uses Time for a Cause

TAG Heuer recently announced Alanoud Badr and Hatem Alakeel as their regional friends of the brand alongside various other representatives from across the globe at the TIME FOR REBELS exhibition in Geneva.

This exhibition was paying tribute to the SMART WATER FOR GREEN SCHOOLS program charity project, which is part of the Green Cross International, the leading environmental organization. The time devoted by all the personalities involved in the exhibition generated an amount of 250,000CHF donated to the organization. At the TIME FOR REBELS exhibition, the Swiss legends whose pioneering spirit has driven it forward for more than 150 years showcased another first of a kind technology breakthrough in watchmaking by launching the Mikrogirder 5/10000th mechanical chronograph.

TAG Heuer Mikrogirder 2000 /510000th of a second Chronograph Watch

The Smart Water for Green Schools (SWGS) project is the flagship on-the-ground activity for providing sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation to tens of thousands of people in Ghana, Bolivia and more countries in the future.

By equipping schools and communities with rainwater harvesting systems, wells and boreholes, plus providing ecological sanitation facilities, SWGS provides concrete solutions to improve the lives of people living in water poverty.

Launched in 2010, the project also works to promote the sharing of water between countries that have access to the same source, in that way reducing tensions over this increasingly scarce resource. SWGS is currently providing safe drinking water to over 40,000 people in Ghana and Bolivia.