Improved Waste Management and Resource Efficiencies

Last Updated: 2024.04.19
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Fast Retailing strives to minimize its environmental impact by reducing resource use, and by reusing and recycling waste generated by our own business activities and across the supply chain.

Policies for Improving Waste Management and Resource Efficiencies

Waste is a valuable resource that can be reused when managed properly. Our goal is to reduce the amount of waste generated from our business activities, including the disposal of products that our customers no longer need. We promote reuse and appropriate management of waste in other ways, engaging proactively in resource recycling. In order to achieve a circular economy and maximize resource efficiency, we also work towards reducing resource usage and promote reuse and recycling. The most important way to improve the efficient use of resources is to make sure that our customers use the apparel they purchase from us for as long as possible. We are committed to using resources efficiently by providing our customers with high-quality long-lasting apparel.

Targets

Fast Retailing is advancing its LifeWear concept-the ultimate in everyday clothing-to make and sell only apparel that customers truly want. We also emphasize care for the environment in all processes when creating LifeWear, from manufacturing to transport and sales, sharply reducing waste to establish a production process with minimal environmental impact. Our priority is to reduce waste and achieve zero landfill disposal through reduce, switch, reuse and recycle materials such as plastic bags, cardboard, hangers, etc. using during shipping, and product packaging. Further, Fast Retailing will develop new reduce, reuse and recycle services and technologies through initiatives such as RE. UNIQLO to ensure LifeWear gets fuller, more-sustainable use from customers, extending both the life and utility of LifeWear post purchase.

Pursuing a business model to eliminate waste

Fast Retailing strives to create simple clothing that is high in quality and functionality, and that customers can and will want to use for a long time.
We analyze customer opinions and reflect that feedback in product development. We are also steadily increasing the accuracy of our estimated production quantities and optimizing our logistics. We believe these efforts will lead to selling only the best possible products to customers at the best timing, helping us to eliminating waste in the production and selling stages of our business.
The clothes we create are based on the ongoing needs of our customers, and we are committed to not destroying or discarding unsold inventory. Accordingly, we take measures such as clearing stock through markdowns or carrying products over to the next season.
Our efforts don't stop at the time of sale. We also collect, reuse and recycle products used by our customers. In addition, we are advancing new ways to use materials with greater efficiency, incorporating recycled materials into product planning and in our sourcing of raw materials.

Creating LifeWear

・Product planning
UNIQLO pursues timeless design and durability in LifeWear apparel. We plan, produce, and sell these products with the goal of having our customers wear them over a long period of time. In this way, UNIQLO helps uses resources more efficiently.

・Materials procurement and manufacturing
Fast Retailing is advancing ways to use materials with greater efficiency. We are incorporating recycled materials in our product planning process and in our sourcing of raw materials. We aim to increase the proportion of recycled materials to approximately 50% by fiscal 2030. We also research new technologies to control the amount of waste generated in production processes and to reuse textile waste.

・Stores, Offices, Logistics and E-Commerce
Appropriate use of plastic
In July 2019, Fast Retailing adopted a group policy to eliminate the use of unnecessary plastic throughout its supply chain and, where plastic is necessary, switch to recycled plastic or alternative materials. Fast Retailing aims to minimize its environmental impact by reducing quantities of plastic materials used for product packaging and shipping, or by switching to recycled plastic or alternative materials.

Appropriate use of paper
We have established our Fast Retailing Group Policy on Responsible Paper Procurement to promote the use of paper from more sustainablly sourced materials, from the perspective of sustainable use of forest-derived materials and preserve biodiversity. In accordance with this policy, we have also switched the paper used for shopping bags and other items to paper from more sustainably sourced materials.

Related Links

• Fast Retailing Group Policy on Responsible Paper Procurement (166KB)

Continuously utilizing LifeWear

At Fast Retailing, we believe we have an important responsibility not only to produce and sell clothes that our customers can wear for a long time, but also to maximize the value of those clothes after customers have finished wearing them. We encourage customers to bring our products they no longer need to our in-store recycling boxes. We can then put this clothing to good use, in a variety of different ways. For example, we provide essential clothing to refugees, internally displaced persons, and others in need of clothing, and aim to donate 10 million items of clothing (including new clothes and clothes collected from customers) in a single fiscal year to people in need by the fiscal year ending August 2025. In October 2023, we conducted a commercial verification of used clothing sales by selling collected clothes after dyeing and other processes. Other efforts to recycle collected clothes into new clothes for sale to customers are also underway, such as our sales of recycled down jacket where the down feathers are extracted and reused from the collected down products Further, we are developing means to make good use of collected clothing unsuitable for such donations, ensuring materials are processed appropriately or converted into resources such as high-energy alternative fuels.

Related link

• UNIQLO PRE-OWNED CLOTHES PROJECT(Japanese Only)

Initiatives on Creating LifeWear

Materials procurement and manufacturing

Fast Retailing is advancing ways to use materials with greater efficiency. We are doing this by incorporating recycled materials in the product planning process and in our sourcing of raw materials. We aim to increase proportion of recycled materials to approximately 50% by the fiscal year ending August 2030.
In the 2023 products plan, the proportion of recycled materials and materials with low greenhouse gas emissions has risen to 8.5%; indicating steady progress towards reaching this target. The proportion of polyester derived from recycled sources out of all polyester used has risen to approximately 30.0%. Switching from synthetic fibers to recycled materials are easier due to the advanced recycling technology. We are currently in transition to switch to use recycled materials, especially polyester. For natural materials such as cotton and wool, we are working with external partners in R&D to develop materials that can achieve the same quality and comfort as products using natural materials.

Related Links

• Recycled Polyester Fibers

Stores, Offices, Logistics and E-Commerce

・Initiatives for appropriate use of plastic
Fast Retailing is promoting the elimination or replacement of plastic materials with recycled plastic or alternative materials. For example, we have introduced paper header-type packages and are switching to in-store materials (packages and hangers) made from recycled plastic. In addition, we cooperate with factories to promote project to reduce and recycle the number of plastic bags used for shipping. In particular, products that used to be individually packaged for shipping are now packaged together. Furthermore, from 2023, we are implementing an initiative to recycle plastic packaging bags at some of our warehouses in Japan.

・Initiatives for appropriate use of paper
We have established our Fast Retailing Group Policy on Responsible Paper Procurement to promote the use of paper from more sustainably sourced materials, from the perspective of sustainable use of forest-derived materials and preserve biodiversity. As of the end of December 2023, we have switched to more sustainably sourced materials of paper procured in Japan to the extent possible. We understand that some regions have difficulties procuring more sustainably sourced products in accordance with the policy, but we will continue to promote this initiative overseas . UNIQLO is also actively promoting paperless procurement by introducing electronic receipts.

Initiatives on Continuously Utilizing LifeWear-To achieve a circular economy

Reduce - Initiative to reduce clothing waste as much as possible - Repair, Remake, Upcycle

• In August 2021, UNIQLO and the German NGO Berliner Stadtmission jointly established a "Second Life Studio" at UNIQLO's flagship store in Tauentzien, Berlin, to host a free workshop. During the workshop, the studio's team of designers remodeled used clothing brought into the store by customers and transformed it into upcycled items such as patchwork denim bags and embroidered T-shirts. In January 2022, a paid repair service was established at UNIQLO's flagship store in Soho, New York, US, and began services such as shirts button replacement, seam repair, hole repair, and zipper replacement. Furthermore, in April 2022, a repair studio has been set up at a UNIQLO store on Regent Street in London, UK to offer a repair service to fix holes in jeans using the stitching technique, and remake service to customize UNIQLO products to customers' own taste by stitching or embroidering. It also sells Japanese stitching tools such as scissors, needles, and threads. In Japan, UNIQLO began a trial repair studio in October 2022, at the UNIQLO Setagaya-Chitosedai and has expanded to 41 stores in 18 countries and regions as of the end of January 2024. UNIQLO plans to expand the service to more than 50 stores globally by the end of December 2024, as a place to evolve UNIQLO's LifeWear concept and provide support for customers to continue wearing their beloved clothes with care.

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  *Sashiko, traditional Japanese embroidery

Reuse - Reusing clothes initiative - Donation activities and used clothes sales

Since 2006, Fast Retailing has been collecting and reusing clothing no longer needed by customers at its stores around the world. With the cooperation of our customers, we collected approximately 15 million items* in the fiscal year ending August 2023.
We donate clothes that can still be worn to people in need. Through partnership with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR), our brand, UNIQLO, GU, Theory, PLST, Comptoir des Cotonniers, and Princesse Tam.Tam, donate the clothes to refugees and internally displaced people around the world, supporting livelihood of women and youth in becoming self-reliant, and providing clothes in times of emergency or disaster. We aim to donate 10 million items of clothing (including new clothes and clothes collected from customers) in a single fiscal year to people in need by the fiscal year ending August 2025. In the fiscal year ending August 2023, we responded to requests for donations of approximately 4.16 million items. The total number of items donated since the start of the program has reached approximately 54.63 million (from 2006 to the end of August 2023). In October 2023, we conducted a commercial verification of used clothing resale by selling the collected clothes after dyeing and processing them.

*The amount collected is estimated at 200 grams/item. Donations are sorted into 18 categories according to need, and the average number of items in each category is set, then compressed and packed (packed in bales) and donated by the bale. The amount donated is calculated based on the average number of bales per category, consequently the calculation method differs between the amount collected and the amount donated.

Related link

• Initiatives on Continuously Utilizing LifeWear
• Clothing Donations
• UNIQLO reuse and recycle program "RE.UNIQLO"
• GU recycling activities (Japanese only)
• Theory : Closet for Needs Program (Japanese Only)
• UNIQLO PRE-OWNED CLOTHES PROJECT(Japanese Only)

Recycle - Initiatives to recycle clothes

UNIQLO is promoting initiatives to recycle collected clothes into new clothes and deliver them to customers again. For example, UNIQLO extracts down and feathers from collected down jackets and uses them as raw materials for new down jackets. GU also separates polyester materials when it collects products and recycles them into materials for new products.

Materials that cannot be recycled into clothing are used as materials for insulation and soundproofing. For example, at the UNIQLO Maebashi Minami Interchange store, which opened in April 2023, it has achieved various innovations to reduce energy consumption, approximately to 30%.The exterior wall insulation is made from recycled materials of collected UNIQLO clothes which were cut into small pieces. In addition, about 22 T-shirts (about 4.3 kg of used clothing) ^*1 is cut and warped before being recycled into soundproofing material used for one car, which serves to reduce the sound of car engines and the high frequencies of electric vehicles.
Furthermore, when the clothing cannot be utilized as a material, it will be converted into solid fuel (RPF^*2) RPF is made from clothes, waste plastic, paper, and wood scraps, and is used as an alternative to coal and other fossil fuels in dedicated boilers at paper companies and other facilities.

*1 In the case of 1 T-shirt weighing 200g (information source: Japan Specialty Coatings Co., Ltd.)
*2 RPF: Refuse Paper and Plastic Fuel

Related link

• Initiatives on Continuously Utilizing LifeWear
• UNIQLO reuse and recycle program "RE.UNIQLO"
• GU recycling activities (Japanese only)

Waste

Own operations

*1 Includes combustibles and mixed wastes
*2 Percentage of the waste plastics sold as valuables. The scope of calculated is only for stores where actual results can be identified.
*3 Percentage of the waste plastics sold as valuables.
*4 The waste scope or the data calculation has been revised to improve accuracy

Supply chain

*1 Partially estimated and calculated based on figures reported by each factory to the Higg Facility Environmental Module (Higg FEM), an industry environmental impact assessment standard tool for factories

*2 Data collected has been reviewed and retroactively revised to improve accuracy.

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