Retailers, brands see green for back-to-school shopping
NEW YORK — For the back-to-school season, many parents and their kids are thinking green.
Concerns about the environment have them looking for secondhand clothing or fashions made from reused material — but price still rules. Shoppers want quality and style in backpacks, jeans and the like without spending a lot more money.
Retailers like H&M, Target and J.C. Penney are coming out with more clothes that use waste from all sorts of sources, like recycled denim or leather, nylon waste, remnants of old garments or even plastic bottles.
J.C. Penney is delivering three styles of jeans this fall made from 20 percent polyester created from bottles under its Arizona brand, after seeing what it believes to be teen customers searching for “recycled jeans” on its site, the company said. Target started offering fashions made of polyester created from recycled plastic bottles with last year’s launch of its children’s brand Cat & Jack after focus groups of parents and children expressed interest in eco-friendly products.
James Reinhart, CEO and founder of the online used clothing marketplace Thredup, says he’s finding that many of the site’s shoppers aren’t motivated just by price the way they used to be, but also because of environmental concerns.
“If I was deciding between two items, I would pick up something more eco-friendly,” said Ellen Abramson, the mother of an 11-year-old girl and 16-year-old twin boys. “But the price has to be comparable, and it has to be done in a fun, cool way.”
Many retailers are recycling. At Nike, 71 percent of its footwear and clothing contains recycled materials, and it says more than 31 million pairs of used shoes and 36,000 tons of rubber and foam have been reborn into high-performance products since 2010.
H&M, which is offering jeans this fall made from recycled fabric, says more than 26 percent of its clothing comes from sustainable sources like organic cotton or recycled materials like leather and denim. By 2030, the goal is for all its products to be ecofriendly, the company said.
Deborah Weinswig, managing director at research firm Fung Global Retail & Technology, says she expects to see more major names introduce more sustainable products. However, she says the trend must be kept in context.
“Back-to-school shopping remains driven, in large part, by frugality,” she says. “So, retailers must continue to offer low prices alongside more sustainable product.”
People’s style and quality expectations put pressure on retailers to keep prices the same, even though manufacturing through the recycling process can be more costly.
Penney says the recycled Arizona jeans cost from $36 to $42, comparable to other jeans in that collection.
“Value is important to the J.C. Penney customer, especially during the backto-school shopping season, so we knew the jeans had to be affordable,” spokeswoman Sarah Holland said.
In cases when companies use remnants of old garments, keeping prices down is easier.
“Using old garments and textile leftovers, when making new clothes, means we can both save on raw materials and stop old clothes from going to waste,” said Pernilla Wohlfahrt, head of design and creative director at H&M.
But recycling plastic bottles into fiber is more costly. Unifi’s Repreve business, which works with 250 companies including Target, Roxy and Fossil, says the recycled fiber sells at a 25 percent to 30 percent premium to non-recycled fiber.
A pair of men’s dress pants or jeans can use up to six plastic bottles, says Jay Hertwig, vice president of global brand sales, marketing and product development.
Carry Gear Solutions produces backpacks and lunch bags made of recycled water bottles for store brands and most recently for Lego. After testing some bags and backpacks for Lego last year, it expanded the collection for fall and did focus groups with children and adults. The end result: a tag featuring an illustration of eight water bottles that add up to a backpack.