H&M are estimated to produce about 195,000 metric tonnes (430 million pounds) of waste in 2026, and almost three quarters of it never reaches a shop. The total covers the waste created making their clothes plus the waste their own stores and distribution centres throw away.
How much waste does H&M produce beyond their own bins? That part never enters their waste total, but the two weights they publish for the same clothes make it countable.
H&M tell their investors they generate relatively low absolute volumes of waste, and for their own stores and warehouses that is fair. Counting the material that never leaves a factory as a garment lifts the real total to roughly 195,000 tonnes in 2026.
H&M's annual waste totals (2022-2026)
The table below pulls the two halves of the picture together, the waste made in production and the waste from H&M's own sites, for every year back to 2022.
| Year | Total waste (tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 195,000 | -2,000 (-1.0%) |
| 2025 | 197,000 | -16,000 (-7.5%) |
| 2024 | 213,000 | +17,000 (+8.7%) |
| 2023 | 196,000 | -23,000 (-10.5%) |
| 2022 | 219,000 | baseline |
Note: H&M published no total waste figure before 2025, so the series is built from their own reported weights, the material that never becomes a garment plus 54,766 tonnes of waste from their stores and distribution centres. That gives roughly 197,000 tonnes in 2025 and about 195,000 in 2026.
The 2026 row leans on H&M's own guidance rather than a trend. Their six-month report has sales down 1% in local currencies, June expected to match last year, and around 90 store openings set against 170 closures.
Why 2024 looks like a jump
The rise in 2024 is not a real rise. H&M moved the period they measure to line up with their financial year, which added 33,008 tonnes of material and packaging to 2024 on its own.
They also updated the per-material factors behind these weights in the same year. Years up to 2023 therefore sit on the old basis and 2024 onwards on the new one, which is where the step comes from.
Strip the counting change out and the direction is downwards. H&M are selling through fewer stores, buying less material and buying less packaging than they did four years ago.
Who are H&M?
H&M is short for Hennes & Mauritz. Erling Persson opened the first shop, called Hennes, in Västerås in Sweden in 1947, added menswear and the fuller name in 1968, and his family still holds every one of the group's class A shares.
The group is more than the red logo on the high street. It also runs COS, Weekday, & Other Stories, ARKET, H&M HOME and the second-hand platform Sellpy.
- Sales. SEK 228,285 million in the year to 30 November 2025, down 3% in Swedish kronor and up 2% in local currencies.
- Stores. 4,101 at the end of 2025, down from 4,465 in 2022. By 31 May 2026 the count was 4,038.
- Reach. The H&M brand alone trades in 81 store markets and sells online in 61.
- People. 132,403 employees, or 94,744 converted to full-time positions.
- Material. 506,015 tonnes of material bought for clothes in 2025, plus 89,165 tonnes of packaging.
Where the waste happens before a shirt reaches a shop
H&M publish two different weights for the same clothes, and the distance between them is where most of the waste sits.
The first is what they call material weight, the fabric and fibre bought to make a season's clothing. In 2025 that came to 506,015 tonnes. The second is product weight, what those clothes weigh once they are finished and packed. In 2025 that was 364,093 tonnes.
The gap is 141,922 tonnes, and H&M's own footnotes explain what it is. Material weight includes the waste generated during production, and product weight excludes it.
So 28% of everything H&M buy to make clothes with never leaves production as part of a garment. It is lost somewhere between the raw fibre and the finished piece, which makes it waste created inside a factory rather than anything a shopper sees.
Why the production figure is a floor and not a ceiling
The two weights are not measured on quite the same boundary. Material weight counts the main shell fabric only and leaves out linings, trims and fillings, while product weight adds those back in.
That means part of the gap is cancelled out by material that did end up sewn into a garment. The production waste itself is therefore larger than the gap, so 141,922 tonnes is a floor rather than an estimate of the true figure.
None of this is waste H&M own. The factories belong to suppliers, so the offcuts stay with them, which is exactly why the tonnage never appears in H&M's own reported total.
The packaging that travels with every order
Separately from the clothes, H&M buy packaging by the tonne. Bags, hangers, cardboard boxes, pallets and the plastic that protects garments in transit all pass through their books before ending up as somebody's waste.
| Year | Packaging bought (tonnes) | Recycled or sustainably sourced |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 89,165 | 86% |
| 2024 | 92,038 | 84% |
| 2023 | 96,319 | 79% |
| 2022 | 112,769 | 71% |
Note: From H&M's own reported packaging weights. The 2022 and 2023 figures were published before textile labels were taken out of scope, so the fall from 2022 is slightly overstated.
Paper and cardboard make up 81% of that weight, plastic 12% and wood 6%. Just over half of the whole pile is recycled material rather than new, a share that has not moved since 2024 even as the sustainably sourced total climbed.
H&M buy 21% less packaging than they did in 2022, and the recycled or sustainably sourced share has climbed from 71% to 86% over the same four years. Their target is 100% by 2030, so unlike waste this is a stream with a dated goal attached.
What H&M count as their own waste
The 54,766 tonnes H&M reported for 2025 is the waste from their stores and distribution centres. It is the first year they have published a total at all, which is why the earlier years in the table above had to be derived.
Where it ends up is broken down in full, because the EU sustainability reporting rules H&M now write to require it.
| Where it goes | Tonnes | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Recycling | 47,296 | 86.4% |
| Preparation for reuse | 2,594 | 4.7% |
| Burned for energy | 2,710 | 4.9% |
| Burned without energy recovery | 606 | 1.1% |
| Landfill | 1,297 | 2.4% |
| Other recovery or disposal | 263 | 0.5% |
| Total | 54,766 | 100% |
Note: From H&M's 2025 report, combining their hazardous and non-hazardous tables. Only 122 tonnes of the total is classed as hazardous waste, and 56 tonnes of that was recycled.
Packaging is 85% of this pile, other operational waste 10% and unsold or damaged product the remaining 5%. Very little of it is buried in landfill, and about a twentieth is burned to make heat and power.
H&M put the non-recycled part of that pile at 7,470 tonnes, which they describe as 14% of their total operational waste.
Three things sit outside it.
- Office and shop bin waste. H&M say most of this is handled collectively through their landlords, so they cannot track it and it is excluded from the count.
- Anything generated at a supplier. The 141,922 tonnes of production waste happens in factories H&M do not own, so none of it is in this figure.
- The clothes themselves. Once a jumper is sold, what happens to it is not on H&M's books, and clothing is the single biggest stream they put into the world.
Clothes taken back against clothes sent out
H&M run an in-store take-back scheme called Garment Collect. Customers drop old clothes into a box in the shop, and a partner sorts them for resale, for recycling or, failing both, for disposal.
| Year | Clothes collected (tonnes) | Share sent to reuse |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 17,808 | 60% |
| 2024 | 17,100 | 66% |
| 2023 | 16,855 | 68% |
| 2022 | 14,768 | 55% |
Note: From H&M's Garment Collect reporting. The scheme ran in 54 selling markets in 2025, two thirds of the markets where H&M trade, and Iceland is left out of the 2025 figures.
H&M produced 364,093 tonnes of finished clothing in the same year. For every hundred tonnes of clothes they make, just under five tonnes come back.
Of what does come back, H&M report that 60% goes to reuse, 29% to recycling and 11% to disposal. The recycling share covers everything from turning old clothes into new fabric down to shredding them into insulation, and H&M do not split it further.
The waste target H&M have not set
H&M set targets on almost everything they buy, and they hit most of them. In 2025, 91% of the material in their clothes was recycled or sustainably sourced, 32% was recycled outright, and their polyester reached 100% recycled content.
For what they throw away, there is no target at all, and they say so themselves. Their 2025 report states that "for 2025, we have not set any time-bound or action-oriented targets related to resource outflows and waste".
So the two halves of the same report are built differently. Dated, numbered goals cover the material coming in, and a single sentence covers the material going out.
Resale is the closest thing to an answer, and it is small. Second-hand sales through Sellpy and the group's own brands reached 0.8% of turnover in 2025, up from 0.6%.
What changes when the EU rules land
The EU has just made textile waste somebody's legal responsibility. Directive (EU) 2025/1892, which amends the Waste Framework Directive, entered into force on 16 October 2025.
It requires every member state to run an extended producer responsibility scheme for textiles, textile-related products and footwear. National laws are due by 17 June 2027 and the schemes themselves by 17 April 2028.
Under those schemes a producer pays a fee for every garment they put on the market, and the money covers collection, sorting and recycling. For a group producing 364,093 tonnes of clothing a year, that turns a reporting line into a cost line.
How the fee is worked out will differ from country to country across Europe's textile EPR rules, starting at home under Sweden's own producer responsibility rules.
Frequently asked questions about H&M's waste
Below are the questions people most often ask about how much H&M throw away and what they report.
How much waste does H&M produce each year?
About 195,000 tonnes in 2026 and roughly 197,000 tonnes in 2025. That combines the material lost making their clothes with the 54,766 tonnes of waste from their own stores and distribution centres.
Does H&M publish a single total waste figure?
Only since 2025, and only for part of the picture. Their 54,766 tonne figure covers stores and distribution centres, and it excludes office bins, supplier factories and the clothes themselves once sold.
What kind of waste does H&M produce most of?
Textile production waste, by a wide margin. The 141,922 tonnes of material that never becomes a garment is about two and a half times the size of everything their own stores and warehouses throw away.
Is H&M's waste actually recycled?
Most of the waste they report is. Of the 54,766 tonnes from their own operations, 86.4% went to recycling and 4.7% to reuse, with 7,470 tonnes, or 14%, not recycled at all.
How much of H&M's packaging is recycled?
Recycled material made up 51% of the 89,165 tonnes of packaging H&M bought in 2025, unchanged from 2024. Counting certified virgin paper as well, 86% was recycled or sustainably sourced.
Does H&M have a target for cutting waste?
No. Their 2025 report says plainly that no time-bound or action-oriented targets have been set for resource outflows and waste, in contrast to the dated material targets they publish alongside.
How much of the clothing H&M sell comes back to them?
Around 5%. Customers returned 17,808 tonnes through Garment Collect in 2025 against 364,093 tonnes of clothing produced, and 60% of what came back was resold rather than recycled.
Will H&M have to pay for the clothes they put on the market?
Yes, across the EU. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 requires member states to run textile producer responsibility schemes by 17 April 2028, funded by fees producers pay on every garment sold.
Images: Eweht, Harrison Keely
