Packaging,Marketing Polyethylene

Cardboard

Packaging men’s shirtIt will be folded and per size range packed in one big polybag from recycled polyethyleen. Then a couple of big polybags are packed together in a carton box. The left space in the carton box is filled with air pockets, so the goods can not move and damage. The maximum weight of the carton box included goods = 20 KG. The carton boxes are put together on a pallet and put in a container. When customers order goods at the webshop: The goods are packed per piece in a polybag and put in a bigger sealed bag for sending by post. (small customers order). Or the per piece packed goods are put together in carton box. (big customers order)Use shipping documents & Packing slip & Invoice & Return form (on paper)

Packaging

Polyethylene

H&M reported that 90% of the paper used for making its mail order packages was recycled cardboard. All of H&M's standard plastic consumer bags are made of recycled material (50% post-consumer and 50% pre-consumer recycled polyethylene) and consumer paper bags are made of paper originated from well-managed forests certified by FSC. Thus, all of H&M's bags are recyclable. Almost all hangers are reused in stores. When they become unusable, they are sent for recycling.

Retail & store

Retail & store

TransportationCotton

PolyesterPolyamide

Polyethylene

For every kilo of cotton there is a CO2 emission of 10 kilo to transport it. If you look at ECOTOOl you see that transportation scores high on both CO2 emmision (1,7/7,3) and energy use. (26,5/121,7)

Transportation

ConsumeCottonpolyamide

According to the enquete, respondents indicate to wear a men’s shirt for more than three months this is 17,4%. Most of the respondents, 34,8%, who filled in the enquete choose the answer that said that is depends on the quality and if it still looks good or not. Most respondents, 56,5%, indicate to think the quality of the garment is decreasing after 10 times of washing. One respondent said that is depends on

Consumewhere you buy it and where you use it for. He gives as an example that the men’s shirts he uses for work the quality decreases after one year and otherwise for four years. Another respondent said that the quality almost doesn’t decreases so he buys a new one if he wants a new one. 88% of the respondents wears their men’s shirt 1 or 2 times before they wash it.

According to the enquete, 23,1% of the respondents will throw the garment away if they got a new one. 61,5% will give it to charity and 38,5% of the respondents will use it for old clothing. These results are based on 24 respondents.

Dyeing, washing,

rinsingCotton

Polyamide

Yarn dyeing typically produces much higher color quality than printing and is preferred by consumers for higher quality products. The cotton yarns are dyed on a package machine. The packages are wound on perforated dye tubes that are placed on perforated spindles in the machine. Yarn tension control during the package winding process and consistency of the package density are key variables that must be accurately controlled to obtain reproduc-ible, high quality dyeing results. The machine is designed to allow flow of the dyebath through the yarn package in

Cotton yarn dyeing Polyamide fiber dyeingDyeing polyamide fibres with an acid dye. Initially the amino groups at molecular chain ends get protonated. Positive site are being in the fibre created as a result. After which anions of acid dyes is attracted and retained in vicinity of positive sites to maintain electrical neutrality. These ions are held by different bonds as well (electrostatic, Van der waals, and hydrogen). The bigger the size of dye anion also slows desorption. As a result their desorption become more difficult and dye gets adhered on nylon.

both directions, that is, from the inside of the package to the outside of the package or from the outside to the inside. This results in complete penetration of the fibers in the yarn. Warp yarns can also be dyed while wound on a warp beam in a process similar to package dyeing. The drying process is one of the most important and crucial operation in several industrial applications. In the textile industry, drying is the stage between dyeing process and the last finishing treatments and requires high

amounts of energy. In particular, it uses up to 80% of all the energy consumed in the production of textile materials and represents one of the major cost issues among the textile finishing operations. For these reasons, the drying time and the energy consumed must be taken into consideration in order to produce a dried product at minimum cost.

ReduseReuse

RecycleCotton

Polyethylene

Once the old garments have been dropped off in a store, H&M’s partner I:CO collects and sort them into three categories: Rewear – clothing that can be worn again will be sold as second hand clothes., Reuse – old clothes and textiles will be turned into other products, such as cleaning cloths, Recycle – everything else is turned into textile fibres, and used for things like insulation. Currently, one single garment can contain up to 20% recycled fibres without any loss of quality or durability. To recycle the cotton yarn waste will go into a recycling machine which will be added to a mixing machine. In the

Reduse reuse recyclemixing machine the waste will be combined by virgin cotton that has been opened, cleaned, prepared to be mixed. The next steps are carding and drawing to create the sliver. the last step will be open end spinning. Now we have a new cotton yarn. When using other recycled material (blended or pure) such as recycled polyester, a garment can already now be made of 100% recycled material.

A university in Japan, successfully developed a hydrothermal (chemical) process to fully separate and recycle cotton and polyester blends. The recovered polyester material can be reused directly,

without any quality loss. The hydrother-mal process uses only heat, water and less than 5% biodegradable green chemical, to self-separate cotton and polyester blends. This fibre-to-fibre recycling method is cost effective, and there’s no secondary pollution to the environment, ensuring the life of the recycled material is prolonged in a sustainable way. The technology will be licensed widely to ensure broad market access and maximum impact.

Almost all packaging of H&M is either reused or recycled material.

Tailoring CottonPolyamidePolyester

Cotton & Polyamide PolyesterFirst the fabric goes to the ‘cutting section’. The fabric rolls are inspected and divided into the quality pass and fail. After this a spreader will spread the fabric and makes it ready to cut and the fabric is put in the cutting audit where they check it. The second step is the sewing section. First the preparatory section, in which they make the individu-al garment parts, and then the assembly section, in which they make the full

garment. In preparatory section, the individual garment parts are divided in four sub groups; cuff, collar, front and sleeve. All of the groups have different steps to make that part. In the end, the parts are checked and if the parts pass the check they go to the assembly section. in the assembly section the workers are making the full garment.

Processing,Carding, weavingspinning

CottonPolyamidePolyester

Fibers are plucked from bales anddelivered to opening machinery which separates the fibers, removes heavier trash particles, and provides blending opportunities. Carding convertsfibers into a continuous strand called sliver. Multiple card slivers then feed into one or more drawing processes which improve sliver quality.Drawing sliver is then converted into roving which is a pencil-sized strand

Yarn production Weavingof lightly twisted fibers. The roving is fed into ring spinning machineswhere the yarn is formed, placed onto small bobbins, and transported to winding machines. At winding, the yarn is wound onto cones or tubes toform a large yarn package to be used in weaving or knitting of fabrics.

To spin the polyamide yarn, the granules are melted in a spinning bath (extruder) and pressed through a

spinneret. The newly sprayed 'wires' become hard because of the cold air under the spinning head: they are now 'filaments'. To make them stronger, they are stretched and fixed with heat. By using different spinnerets, the properties of the fibre can be adjusted, for example to get a better moisture transport.HarvestingCotton

Cotton is harvested by a cotton pickers or cotton strippers. The picker heads contain a series of spindles covered with barbs that remove the cotton fibers from the boll. With The cotton stripper the plants are killed by frost or chemical defoliant before harvesting, and the stripper removes the boll and fibers by two counter-ro-tating rolls. Only the dry stalks remain in the field. Augers and pneumatic conveyors transfer the seed cotton to the collection baskets. The trash content, which refers primarily to residual pieces of the cotton plant, of the seed cotton is higher for cotton strippers than for cotton pickers. The baskets of seed cotton are transferred to a module

Harvesting Cotton

builder, a metal box that allows the packing of an eight- to twelve-bale module in the field. The ginning process separates the seeds from the cotton fibers, cleans the fibers, and allows for the recovery and sale of both commodities. The seeds can be used for cattle feed, production of cottonseed oil, or for planting next year’s cotton crop. The fibers from the gin are pressed into 500-pound bales for textile produc-tion. Ideally, the gin will cause minimal damage to the cotton fibers. Water is becoming the most limiting resource for future global agricultural development. It is expected that under the conditions of climate

change, increasing global food demand and increasing water demand from other sectors global water scarcity is going to intensify in the coming decades. Especially in arid regions of the world severe water scarcity is going to affect a growing share of the population. In many arid and semiarid regions irrigated agriculture is an important economic activity. It generates substantial shares of regional domestic products and constitutes an essential source of rural employment and income. Not only agricultural production but also overall economic development is going to be negative-ly affected under aggravating water scarcity.

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H&M

Cotton Men’s Shirt

LCAInfographic

cultivation,productionCotton

PolyamidePolyester

Cotton is a seed hair fiber. One boll of cotton produces from 24 to 45 seeds, with each seed producing 10,000 to 20,000 fibers. A bale of cotton, which weighs about 500 pounds, contains approximately 145,000 bolls. As the fiber develops before opening of the boll, it first forms an outer, primary wall, followed by development of an inner, secondary wall that is composed of cellulose. In a mature cotton fiber, the secondary wall should be well-developed.

Cotton cultivationAfter the boll opens, the fibers die and dry out. The round cross section becomes flatter and kidney shaped, and the fiber twists into its characteristic convoluted shape. Immature fibers are caused by drying of the fiber before the secondary wall is fully developed. Immature fibers have very flat cross-sections and appear ribbon-like.

Cotton is worldwide the most important natural fiber. Because of its indeterminate

growing habit, cotton makes a variation within its environment. This means for example that the structure of cotton can change as a reaction on changing the sowing date. Some techniques, like shorten the growing period and planting cotton seeds in high density, are practiced to reduce costs without sacrificing income. Changing the sowing date has disadvantages and advantages and this also applies to the planting density.

The button will be attached by a button attaching machine.

Improvement 1 DyeingOur first improvement will be in the dyeing area. The dyeing process is essential and critical in textile industry. Conventional hydrous chemical processes generally involve demanding conditions such as strong alkaline solution and elevated temperature for baking. Moreover, water-based methods and subse-quent aqueous washing process produce large amount of colored effluents which are regarded as environment unfriendly, due to the difficulty of post-treatment and the high content of suspended matters, salts, detergents, surfactants, etc.

To reduse the chemicals that are used during the dyeing process we would like to use natural products, such as fruits, flowers, plants or algae to create our desired colour.

Improvement 2 Consume

To keep the wrinkles out of the fabric we are planning to use a certain type of polyester in the cotton garment. It will eliminate the use of a coating and the need to iron the shirt. Because H&M has found a solution for recycling a cotton poly blend it will not make the recycling process more difficult

Improvement 3 Packaging

To reduce the waste that is produced by the two layers of packaging that is used to ship an ordinary garment to a custo-mer we want to change the inner layer of polyethylene to a more durable solution.

The first step is shedding. It means the separation of the warp yarns forming the lower shed and the upper shed. This separation is made possible by the up and down movement of the harness frames. The next step is filling insertion. Through the open shed of warp yarns, the filling yarn is inserted so that it interlaces with the warp yarns to produce a particular weave design. Beat-up is the third

step. It is done with the aid of a reed as it moves forward beating the filling yarn into the fabric. As these first three weaving motions are taking place in a timed sequence, the warp yarns are simultaneously let-off or unwound (the fourth step) as the produced fabric passes to a take-up system (the fifth step) to form a cloth roll. These motions are required on all weaving machines, whether they are hand looms or automatic looms.