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.”