H&M just announced their plans for a viral environmental campaign to raise awareness for this year’s World Recycle Week, supported by British-Sri Lankan musician M.I.A.
M.I.A. is well known for her highly political and thematic music videos, her video ‘Bad Girls’ focused heavily on women’s rights in the Middle East, and more recently, her video ‘Borders’ explores the borders at the front line of the current refugee crisis. Her videos are not only politically weighted, but are praised as stylistically beautiful and high-production. It’s no surprise then that when looking for an ambassador for their environmental campaign, H&M have approached M.I.A to create a video.
The video, set to be released on H&M’s website on April 11th, will raise awareness for the campaign which will span the following week – April 18th to the 24th. M.I.A.’s creative talents will be focused on visually representing the impact of fast-fashion and clothing land-fill on the global – particularly third-world – community.
The campaign itself will aim to boost H&M’s garment collection and recycle system which aims to eliminate the need for land-fill by recycling donated clothing of any brand of clothing, in any condition. The brand has invited consumers to drop of unwanted clothing at H&M locations world-wide in exchange for a store voucher.
H&M has been pioneering garment collection and recycling since 2013, with 25,000 tons of clothing having been collected. It is estimated that from one shirt recycled, 555 gallons of water can be saved. In 2014, H&M released their ‘Close The Loop’ collection, which used exclusively recycled fibers. The brand and musician are aiming to collect 1000 tonnes of clothing over the course of the week.
H&M has also announced that they are working with bloggers and ‘characters’ to raise further awareness. The brand released this statement on their website this week,
“Alongside M.I.A’s insanely cool music video (seriously, it’s a must-watch), bloggers and characters from the video will also film rehaul clips, showing the pieces they will recycle during World Recycle Week.”
This is not the only sustainability initiative H&M has successfully campaigned, earlier in the year we reported on the brand dressing Jessica Chastain, Penelope Cruz and more recently, Vanessa Hudgens for the Oscars and Vanity Fair After Party. The stars represented H&M’s Conscious Exclusive collection which features clothing created from recycled fibers, organic silk and wood fibers.
Don’t forget to watch for M.I.A.’s new music video, released in April 11th, and visit hm.com/garmentcollecting for more information of H&M’s World Recycle Week campaign and information on how you can contribute.