Scrooge's Clothing Provided by H&M

An article in the New York Times today told a story that beggars belief.  On the back street of H&M’s flagship store on 35th Street, bags of unsold clothing are dumped into trash bags to await pickup by trash haulers.

One curious person, who noticed two people rifling through the clothes on a bitter Monday evening 4th January decided to take a look for herself. She was astounded to find that someone had slashed nearly every item of clothing; ensuring that no-one would ever be able to wear them.

So, as temperatures continue to drop, and as the city’s poor and homeless dig in wherever they can find a warm enough place, H&M believes it can find no better use for these clothes than to purposefully destroy them.

This was not an isolated incident. One lady, Ms Magnus, actually described in great detail the vast amount of clothes that she saw dumped in the back street.  On Dec. 7, during an early cold snap, she saw about 20 bags filled with H & M clothing that had been cut up. The New York Times quotes her explaining that the clothes were destroyed deliberately.

” Gloves with the fingers cut off. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.” The jackets were tagged $59, $79 and $129.

The irony is that directly around the corner from H & M is a big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive. On their website they state – ” Did you know that 90% of homeless adults need a new, warm coat each winter because they have no place to keep one over the summer months? But it’s not just homeless people who need our help; thousands of New Yorkers each year are forced to make a choice between buying a winter coat and putting food on the table, or meeting other basic survival needs.”

How much effort would it take H&M to have delivered the clothing round the corner. Or to pick up the phone and called a New York Cares volunteer to come take the unsold clothing away?!

In fact, H&M doesn’t even need to pick up the phone.

Ms. Magnus volunteered, in a letter, to help H & M connect with a charity or agency in New York that could put the unsold items to better use than simply tossing them in the trash. So far, she said, she has gotten no response.

H&M obviously has not a clue what PR suicide means. Someone needs to put them on round the clock suicide watch.