Recycling Tips

Here are a few tips that you can implement to help reduce your impact to the environment.

a.) Take old clothes to clothes banks & charity shops

Instead of throwing away your old clothes in the rubbish, you can take them to ‘clothes banks’ or charity shops. The Salvation Army, Scope, and Oxfam use a clothing bank scheme. Scope also runs a national door-to-door textile collection service. There are about 3,000 textile banks nationwide, and only about a quarter of the space in clothes banks is currently used so there is lots of room for more clothes.

The Salvation Army has the largest number of textile banks in the UK – over 2,000. On average, each of these banks collects about six tonnes of textiles per year. These clothes are given to the homeless, sold in charity shops or sold in developing countries in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and parts of Eastern Europe. Nearly 70% of items put into clothing banks are reused as clothes, and any un-wearable items are sold to merchants to be recycled and used as factory wiping cloths

b.) Support fashion brands and businesses which source products ethically

More and more designers and businesses are now making fashion ranges out of recycled clothes, recycled fabrics or fibres.
Some examples are Junky Styling, which makes clothes from old suits, and Patagonia, which uses recycled drinks bottles for some of its fleece products.

TRAID is a charity committed to protecting the environment and reducing world poverty by recycling and campaigning at home. Traid has shops all over London, and as well as selling second-hand clothes, it sells clothes which have been customised by Traid designers and turned into something completely new.

c.) Customise your own clothes or clothes you have bought from charity shops

It is amazing what you can create from something you thought you would never wear again with a little imagination.
Customising your own clothes means that you can create your own unique style, to suit your taste and lifestyle.

22 June 2011 | Back to News and Consumer Guides »