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How H&M鈥檚 Recycling Machines Make New Clothes From Used Apparel | World Wide Waste - YouTube
Channel: Business Insider
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these fibers are made from old clothes
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it's part of a process that can turn
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nearly any used fabric
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into something brand new
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and fashion retailer h m bets this
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solution
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could eventually recycle some of the
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billions of
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tons of textile waste produced every
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year
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but can a fast fashion company solve the
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problem it helped create
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we went to hong kong and sweden to find
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out
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most recycled textiles are turned into
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mattress stuffing
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or insulation and the original materials
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are scraps from the factory floor
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not used clothing but this facility
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inside a hong kong shopping mall is the
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first in the world
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to turn used clothes into new clothes
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all
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in one place first
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a technician like emily shao examines
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the garment
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so today we will recycle all garments
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this ozone chamber sanitizes the fabric
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in about an
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hour then emily removes the buttons
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labels
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and zippers and cuts the garment so the
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fabric is easy to work with
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the shredder strips the bits of cloth
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down further
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and then i will take off the open
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fabrics
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but this part of the process does
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require some new materials
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so we will add some virgin fibers into
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the yarns to make it
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stronger another machine mixes that
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cotton with the recycled skirt
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emily then rolls the mixed fibers into
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clumps
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and feeds them into a machine that turns
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them into what's called
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a fiber web
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but what happens next makes the assembly
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line in hong kong
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the first of its kind the fiber web
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gets bundled into these snake-like
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slivers
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the slivers are then spun into ply yarn
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the building blocks of a new garment
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finally a machine knits a new sweater
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based on a computer design
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shoppers pay about sixty five dollars to
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recycle clothing here
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how do we help consumers think about
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their clothes differently
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well that's one of the reasons why we
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have a glass box doing research in a
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shopping mall
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the h m foundation partnered with the
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hong kong research institute of textiles
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and apparel
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that investment allowed the company to
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license and install the technology
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at one of their stores in stockholm
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where the company's headquartered
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h m calls it the loop here
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shoppers pay only 18 dollars to see the
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recycling process
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in action that's about the price of a
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new pair of the brand's sweatpants
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how it comes out and then this is the
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only part that has to be removed
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virginia the technician trims the extra
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yarn
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and the garment is ready to go
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it takes three days to recycle one
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garment
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that seems like a lot of time and effort
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to turn a sweater
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into a new sweater that's because
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a factory like this that can recycle
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thousands of tons of clothes a day
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doesn't exist yet but h m says that
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eventually this kind of technology
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could be a global solution for textile
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waste
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the holy grail is a government to
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government recycling and
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that's for me where today
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most our investment going to but the
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fashion retailer continues to grow
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by selling cheap clothes to more and
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more people
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how often do you go and buy you maybe
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one time a week
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how big is your wardrobe it's like maybe
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half of my apartment well retail kings
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and queens
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she needs a walk-in closet yes but
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swedes aren't the biggest contributors
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to textile waste
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the average american spends over 1800 a
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year on new clothes
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and throws away 200 t-shirts worth of
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textiles
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every year people didn't always treat
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clothing as disposable
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fast fashion really took off in the
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1990s thanks to polyester
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the synthetic fiber made from petroleum
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costs half as much as cotton
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i think very few people realize that
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most of the time today
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they're wearing plastic by the year 2000
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polyester overtook cotton as the most
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popular fiber
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in the world that's the same year h m
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opened its first u.s store
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in new york city since then global
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clothing production
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has doubled and if nothing changes it
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will nearly double again
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by 2030
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all that used apparel can end up in
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places like accra
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ghana which has one of the world's
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largest second-hand clothing markets
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every week 15 million garments pass
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through the contamanto market
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and nearly half of that goes to landfill
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is burned
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or gets swept into waterways
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we've completely devalued what clothing
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is clothing is now disposable
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and i don't know how we come back from
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treating it like a plastic bag or like a
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plastic bottle
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liz ricketts has spent over a decade
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documenting how
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used clothes from wealthy countries are
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exported around the world
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the clothing that's going to landfill
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a lot of it is wearable and a lot of the
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waste
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comes from familiar brands it's
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definitely
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the top 10 which are what you would
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expect i mean it's h
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m and zara m s adidas nike
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gap it would take the loop recycling
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machine
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almost 50 000 years to deal with just
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one week's worth of waste from the
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market you can't really convince
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yourself that creating clothing but
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doing it better
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is somehow going to solve this issue
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that there's simply too much clothing
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still h m executives say they're serious
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about scaling up recycling
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the company has set a goal of using only
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recycled polyester by the end of the
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decade
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we have developed together with one
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congreta a machine called the green
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machine
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the h m foundation invested 12 million
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dollars into technologies like this
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machine
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that recycles polyester and plans to
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build a larger factory that can recycle
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over three thousand pounds of clothes
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per day
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but hk rita ceo admits that recycling
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has a long way to go
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before it can make a dent in the
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industry's growing waste
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output the commercial scale useful
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recycling systems have to be in the
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order of magnitude
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of at least thousands of tons a day
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today
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less than one percent of used clothing
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is recycled into new garments
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it is clear to us that we don't have a
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lot of time
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we have this danger of doing too little
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too late
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experts say that recycling can never
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solve the problem of textile waste
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brands have basically convinced citizens
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that
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we have a waste problem because we don't
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have recycling technology
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that is not that is not why we have a
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waste problem
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it's only going to be solvable if we
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confront
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growth and if companies stop over
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producing h
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m has no plans to reduce production of
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new clothing
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we are a gross company our ambition is
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how do we make that growth being
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meaningful
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and consumers can do their part by
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buying less and holding on to their
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current wardrobe longer
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we always recommend that people take a
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year off of buying anything new
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even hk rita's ceo recognizes recycling
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alone
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can't solve the problem the companies
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that manufacture clothes
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will need to change the way they do
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business
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and that is what keeps him up at night
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my nightmare
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my nightmare scenario in the industry is
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that we are satisfied we're happy with
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very modest goals
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but that doesn't really do anything for
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anybody and then we'll be accused of
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greenwashing
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and by and large it'll be true
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[Music]
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