Power plant burning H&M clothing instead of coal

November 26, 2017 |

In Sweden, clothing retailer H&M is sending overstock or unsellable clothing to burn in a power plant to replace coal-sourced energy. The discarded clothing is being used as fuel in a facility that is aiming to be fossil fuel free by 2020 and is now burning recycled wood and trash including the discarded H&M clothing. Sweden is hoping to convert the last remaining coal and oil power plants into garbage burning power plants by the end of this decade.

“For us it’s a burnable material,” Jens Neren, head of fuel supplies at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the 54-year-old facility told Bloomberg. “Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels.”

“H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use,” Johanna Dahl, head of communications for H&M in Sweden, told Bloomberg. “However, it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed.” The Vasteras plant burned about 15 tons of discarded clothes from H&M so far in 2017, compared with about 400,000 tons of trash.

Category: Fuels

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