HSE and H&M to Organize Clothes Donation

This event marks the Russian national Students’ Day and will take place on January 25 and 26 in three HSE buildings: in Myasnitskaya, Tryokhsvyatitelsky and Maly Gnezdnikovsky. Clothing donation points will be located in the first floor lobbies.

H&M (Hennes and Mauritz) company is an international clothes retail network, founded in Sweden in 1947. Today, the company has over 171,000 employees and more than 4,800 stores in 71 countries.

Garment Collecting – an unwanted clothes and textiles collection event – has been organized by H&M since 2013. It has collected over 60,000 tons of clothes. The money raised from this project is invested into research on textile recycling, as well as social projects across the globe. In Russia, this is VERA, a hospice charity fund. For each kilo of donated clothes, the fund gets two eurocents, and in 2018, the fund received EUR 22,841.

The donated clothes are transferred to an H&M logistics centre in the Moscow Region, from where they go to the company’s partner plant I:COLLECT in Wolfen, Germany. Clothes in good condition go for sale in second hand stores in about 70 countries. Textiles that can’t be worn are reused as cleaning or heat sealing materials. The rest of it is used to manufacture textile fibres, which will later become new clothes.

The event at HSE marks the Russian Students’ Day and will help HSE students and staff learn more about clothing collection practices and discover new opportunities for an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Containers for clothes will be installed on January 25 and 26 in the first floor lobbies in HSE buildings located at: 11 Myasnitskaya Ulitsa; 8/2 Maly Tryokhsvyatitelsky Pereulok, Building 1; and 4 Maly Gnezdnikovsky Pereulok. H&M staff will be on hand to receive clothes from 10am to 7 pm and answer any questions you may have about the event.

More information about the event rules is available in a VK group (in Russian). A promotional video is available here.

January 21, 2019