The clothing retailer H & M promised on Wednesday to stop destroying new, unworn clothing that it cannot sell at its store in Herald Square, and would instead donate the garments to charities.
The practice was discovered by Cynthia Magnus, a graduate student at the City University of New York, who found bags of unworn but mutilated clothing that had been thrown away by H & M on West 35th Street. She also found bags of new Wal-Mart garments with holes punched through them.
After Ms. Magnus wrote to H & M’s headquarters in Sweden and got no response, she contacted The New York Times. More slashed clothing was found Monday night on 35th Street and reported in the About New York column on Wednesday.
“It will not happen again,” said Nicole Christie, a spokeswoman for H & M in New York. “We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”
Ms. Christie said it was H & M’s policy to donate unworn clothing to charitable groups. She said that she did not know why the store on 34th Street was slashing the clothes, and that the company was checking to make sure that none of its other stores were doing so.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Melissa Hill, said she had been unable to learn why new clothing with the store’s tags had been destroyed, but added that the company typically donated or recycled such items.
One charitable program, the New York Clothing Bank, was set up by the city when Edward I. Koch was mayor to accept unworn clothing and to protect the retailers from people who might use the donations to get store credit or undercut sales.
“I would welcome H & M, Wal-Mart and every enterprise that presently is destroying new clothing to call me immediately,” said Mary Lanning, chairwoman of the Clothing Bank.
