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They are everywhere, and most are discarded after one use. Many material hangers are now touted as a substitute for the billions of plastic hangers thrown away every year.
They are everywhere, and most are discarded after one use. Many material hangers are now touted as a substitute for the billions of plastic hangers thrown away every year.
New York, USA-In a world already flooded with plastic, disposable hangers are of no avail. Experts estimate that billions of plastic hangers are discarded every year around the world, most of which are used and discarded before clothes hang in stores, let alone placed in shoppers’ wardrobes.
But according to French designer Roland Mouret, it doesn’t have to be this way. At London Fashion Week in September, he teamed up with the Amsterdam-based startup Arch & Hook to launch Blue, a hanger made of 80% plastic waste collected from the river.
Mouret will exclusively use the Blue hanger, which is designed to be recycled and reused, and he is actively urging his designer colleagues to also replace it. Although disposable plastic hangers are only a small part of the plastic waste problem, it is a symbol of the fashion industry that can unite. “Disposable plastic is not a luxury,” he said. “That’s why we need to change.”
According to the United Nations Environment Programme, the earth produces 300 million tons of plastic every year. The fashion industry itself is flooded with plastic garment covers, wrapping paper and other forms of disposable packaging.
Most hangers are designed to keep the clothes wrinkle-free from the factory to the distribution center to the store. This mode of fulfillment is called “hanging clothes” because the clerk can hang clothes directly from the box, saving time. It’s not just low-margin high-street shops that use them; luxury retailers may replace factory hangers with higher-end hangers—usually wooden—before the clothes are shown to consumers.
Temporary hangers are made of lightweight plastics such as polystyrene and are inexpensive to produce. Therefore, making new hangers is usually more cost-effective than building a recycling system. According to Arch & Hook, about 85% of waste ends up in landfills, where it may take centuries to decompose. If the hanger escapes, the plastic may eventually pollute waterways and poison marine life. According to estimates by the World Economic Forum, 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year.
Mouret is not the first to find a solution for plastic hangers. Many retailers are also solving this problem.
Target is an early adopter of the reuse concept. Since 1994, it has recycled plastic hangers from clothes, towels and curtains for recycling, repair or recycling. A spokesperson said that the hangers that the retailer used repeatedly in 2018 were enough to go around the earth five times. Similarly, Marks and Spencer has reused or recycled more than 1 billion plastic hangers in the past 12 years.
Zara is launching a “single hanger project” that replaces temporary hangers with branded alternatives made from recycled plastic. The hangers are then transported back to the retailer’s supplier to be equipped with new clothes and redeployed. “Our Zara hangers will be reused in good condition. If one is broken, it will be recycled to make [a] new Zara hanger,” a company spokesperson said.
According to Zara’s estimates, by the end of 2020, the system will be “fully implemented” globally-considering that the company produces approximately 450 million new products each year, this is not a trivial matter.
Other retailers are seeking to reduce the number of disposable plastic hangers. H&M stated that it is studying reusable hanger models as part of its goal to reduce overall packaging materials by 2025. Burberry is testing compostable hangers made of bioplastics, and Stella McCartney is exploring alternatives to paper and cardboard.
Consumers are increasingly troubled by the environmental footprint of fashion. A recent Boston Consulting Group survey of consumers in five countries (Brazil, China, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) found that 75% of consumers believe sustainability is “extremely” or “very” important. More than one-third of people said that due to environmental or social practices, they have shifted their loyalty from one brand to another.
Plastic pollution is a particular source of troubling. A study conducted by the Sheldon Group in June found that 65% of Americans are “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about plastics in the ocean—more than 58% have this view of climate change.
“Consumers, especially millennials and Generation Z, are becoming more aware of the issue of single-use plastics,” said Luna Atamian Hahn-Petersen, senior manager of PricewaterhouseCoopers. For fashion companies, the message is clear: either keep pace or lose customers.
First Mile, a London-based recycling company, has begun accepting broken and unwanted plastic and metal hangers from retail businesses, crushed and reused by its partner in Wales, Endurmeta.
Braiform supplies more than 2 billion hangers to retailers such as JC Penney, Kohl’s, Primark and Walmart each year, and operates multiple distribution centers in the United Kingdom and the United States for sorting used hangers and re-delivering them to clothing suppliers. It reuses 1 billion hangers every year, grinds, composites and transforms damaged hangers into new hangers.
In October, retail solutions provider SML Group launched EcoHanger, which combines recycled fiberboard arms and polypropylene hooks. The plastic parts will pop open and can be shipped back to the clothing supplier for reuse. If it breaks, polypropylene—the kind you find in yogurt buckets—is widely accepted for recycling.
Other hanger manufacturers avoid using plastic altogether. They said that the collection and reuse system only works when the hanger is not going home with the customer. They do it often.
Caroline Hughes, Senior Product Line Manager of Avery Dennison Sustainable Packaging, said: “We have noticed the shift to a circulatory system, but the hanger will eventually be accepted by the end consumer.” Into a hanger. glue. It is reusable, but it can also be easily recycled with other paper products at the end of its useful life.
The British brand Normn uses sturdy cardboard to make hangers, but will soon launch a version with metal hooks to better complement factory-to-store transportation. “This is where we can have a big impact in terms of quantity and disposable hangers,” said Carine Middeldorp, the company’s business development manager. Normn mainly works with retailers, brands and hotels, but also negotiates with dry cleaners.
The company’s founder and CEO Gary Barker said that the upfront cost of paper hangers may be higher-the cost of the American manufacturer Ditto is about 60% because “nothing is cheaper than plastic.” .
Nevertheless, their return on investment can be reflected in other ways. Ditto’s recycled paper hangers are suitable for most garment hanger solutions. They are 20% thinner and lighter than plastic hangers, which means that suppliers can pack more garments in each carton. Although plastic hangers require expensive molds, paper is easy to cut into various shapes.
Because paper is highly compressed—”almost like asbestos,” according to Buck—they are just as strong. Ditto has 100 designs that can support clothing from fragile underwear to hockey equipment weighing up to 40 pounds. In addition, you can print on them, and Ditto often uses soy-based inks for printing. “We can bronzing, we can print logos and patterns, and we can print QR codes,” he said.
Arch & Hook also offers two other hangers: one is made of wood certified by the Forestry Management Committee, and the other is made of higher grade 100% recyclable thermoplastic. Rick Gartner, chief financial officer of Arch & Hook, said that different retailers have different needs, and hanger manufacturers must customize their products accordingly.
But the scope and scale of the plastic problem in the fashion industry is so large that no single company—or a single effort—can solve it alone.
“When you think of fashion, everything has to do with clothing, factories, and labor; we tend to ignore things like hangers,” Hahn-Petersen said. “But sustainability is such a big problem, and cumulative actions and solutions are needed to solve it.”
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