Let’s clean up | Chemicals | H&M
Pesky pesticides and other bad stuff don’t belong in fashion.
Everything you can see, breathe, eat, drink or touch is — essentially — chemicals. Even you are made from chemicals! However, there are good ones and bad ones, and we want to make sure that none of the nasty kind end up harming you or the environment. So, what are hazardous chemicals? They’re persistent, bio-accumulative, toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disruptive or toxic to reproduction. Yeah, that’s a long list of things we don’t want near our clothes!
Chemical checklist
When washing, dyeing and printing our clothes, our suppliers must meet our chemical requirements. These are often stricter than the regulations set by the industry, and our bottom line is that hazardous chemicals shouldn’t be used by us or found in any of our products. We were one of the first fashion companies to establish a Chemical Restrictions List in 1995. Since then, this list has been continuously updated. We perform regular tests (like, thousands per year) to ensure our suppliers comply.
To make sure we choose the best possible chemicals, we’ve adopted a method called Screened Chemistry. With this method we aim to limit hazardous substances at the design stage.