Meet the most powerful man in ethical fashion – M&S’s Krishan Hundal

Greenmystyle.com reporter Amy Sims gets quality time with Krishan Hundal, head of general merchandise technology at Marks & Spencer, or in other words the chap who’s making the UK’s largest fashion retailer, M&S, green its style. Responsible for driving through the Plan A programme, Krishan had plenty of insider info to share with us. On the agenda; greenwash, innovation, affordability of ethical garments, design, availability and the retailer’s biggest carbon villain (you’ll be surprised). It’s an unmissable read.

Amy writes: Mass-produced clothing made in foreign factories and sold to thousands of customers expecting a bargain — doesn’t really sound like a successful recipe for sustainable fashion, does it?

But the man who oversees the greenness of garments at Marks & Spencer is calm and confident. So much so that he says he sleeps well at night, knowing that the high street giant is taking well-placed baby steps to lower the carbon footprint of its clothing.

Krishan Hundal, M&S’s head of general merchandise technology, does not come off as a typical eco-enthusiast. Suited, booted and down to business, he greets me at the company’s headquarters with a firm corporate handshake, then, transfixed by his Blackberry as we ascend in a lift, blurts out: “What is this for again?”

His secretary has him booked up all day and he can’t remember who’s who. It’s clear there will be no messing about; I’ve got a half-hour slot and odds are he won’t spend any of it getting teary about the plight of polar bears.

Yet it turns out he spends nearly an hour talking with me, clearly excited about the retailer’s commitment to sustainable style and proud of their innovative attitude.

Amy: You have a BSc in materials engineering and an MSc in polymer technology, but are the ethically sourced fabrics and production techniques new areas for you?
Krishan: The green thing has taken a different perspective over the last few years, but we were the first retailer to introduce an environmental code of practice for how chemicals and dyes would be used in the M&S supply chain – and that’s over 15-years-old now.

The newer areas such as carbon and water and animal welfare have just gone into a different dimension with the recent focus of all of these concerns from the general public. It’s taken greater focus and a slightly different perspective on certain aspects of what we’ve already done.

From an innovation view, there are some very new areas that we’ve been looking at, like recycled polyester, it wasn’t around before, and Fairtrade cotton we’ve never been involved in until about two years ago.

In terms of my degree and academic qualifications, it allows me to talk the right language. Without that it would be quite difficult to understand fully what Fairtrade is about, to understand how we might use it, and some of the challenges we might face. But as long as you understand the language and can understand the terminology then you can have a meaningful discussion about what that new innovation is about, how it might be useful or not useful to M&S and how it interacts with the consumer, and more importantly, how it impacts on the environment.

But the basic principles of what we’ve been doing at M&S are the general management skills that you apply to everything; so, probing and understanding what it’s about, that could be anything. The green agenda has come to the surface now, but it’s the same skills and questions. Why are we doing it? What’s in it for the customer? What’s in it for the environment? Is it right? Is it smoke and mirrors? Is it really, really a benefit or is it some bit of hype that a lot of people are pushing?

So many companies around the world are pushing and promoting recycled polyester, but some of it is smoke and mirrors. They are producing polyester and they are just picking it up off the floor and putting it back into the hopper. Well, they’ve always done that. And that for me is not recycling, and our customers would be horrified if we were trying to promote that as something new, they’d see it as greenwash.

Next page: Can Marks & Spencer provide ethically produced clothing that we can afford?