Your Onward Clothes Become "Blanket for Hope"
Recycled blankets produced from Onward's collected clothing are donated to poor households and boarding schools in Laos

Onward Holdings Co. Ltd. (Head Office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Michinobu Yasumoto) donated 4,000 recycled blankets produced from its collected clothing to the Lao Red Cross Society with the cooperation of the Japanese Red Cross Society. On Wednesday, November 15, a donation ceremony was held in the Lao province of Oudomxay, where our company employees handed recycled blankets directly to local residents.

Based on the Onward Group mission statement of "Enriching and adding color to people's lives while caring for the planet," our company promotes management in harmony with the Earth. As part of this effort, we have been conducting the "Onward Green Campaign" since 2009, in which we collect used Onward garments for reuse and recycling. Recycled blankets produced from some of the collected clothing are donated to disaster-stricken areas in Japan and abroad and developing countries with the cooperation of the Japanese Red Cross Society.

Laos, the 13th recipient of our support activities, is a multi-ethnic country located in the interior of Southeast Asia, with a rich diversity of about 50 ethnic groups and languages. In recent years, while urban areas have experienced rapid economic growth, rural and mountainous areas where most of the population lives have been left behind in development, and the gap between the rich and the poor has become an issue.
Oudomxay Province, one of the recipients of the donation, is located in a mountainous region in northern Laos, where the dry season temperatures are low and many poor households need daily necessities to ward off the cold.

In this donation, 4,000 recycled blankets were distributed to the Lao Red Cross Society. The blankets will be distributed by the Lao Red Cross to poor households in the four provinces of Oudomxay, Houaphanh, Xieng Khouaug and Sekong as well as to boarding schools attended by orphans. The blankets will also be used as emergency supplies through the Lao Red Cross in light of the fact that severe natural disasters such as typhoons and floods occur every year.

In the first half of FY2023, Onward Green Campaign picked up 432,000 items of clothing from 87,000 customers. New recycled blankets will be produced from some of the collected clothing and will be used to support disaster-stricken areas in Japan and abroad in cooperation with the Japanese Red Cross Society.

The official website of "Onward Green Campaign": https://www.onward.co.jp/green_campaign/ (in Japanese)