We've launched an anti-landfill page
What motivated us to launch our anti-landfill page?
Around £140 million worth of used but still wearable clothes go to landfill in the UK every year. EVERY YEAR! That's around 350,000 tones, scary right? And it doesn't make sense financially either. We could save around £3 billion per year if we changed the way we supply, shop and look after our clothes.
Do you recycled the clothes you are finished with? Many of us donate our unwanted clothes to charity or to other friends or family, and many of us resell through car boot sales or online via reselling channels. However, there's still a lot of us that don't, and more than 30% of our unwanted clothing goes to landfill when people take it to the tip.
We send scary amounts of clothing to recycling centres and charities each year. It's actually around 700,000 tonnes which is enough to fill 459 Olympic sized swimming pools. This is all including what we still hold onto too. With more than 60% of households in the UK saying they have unwanted clothes at home.
Valuing Our Clothes: the cost of UK fashion’ – WRAP 2017
It's happening in America too. According to a BBC article, 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US – roughly 13 million tonnes in 2017 – are either dumped into landfill or burned. The average American has been estimated to throw away around 37kg of clothes every year.
One report stated in recent years, UK shoppers have been buying more clothes than Europe, a shocking two tonnes of clothing purchased every minute. These statistics show an increase in a consumerism mindset within the last couple of years.
How we at Chief and Turtle want to do our bit
We've all got to work individually on improving how we shop, look after our clothes, and what we do with them once we're finished with them, but businesses in the industry have their part to play too.
There are always clothes within a clothing business that can't be sold as stock products. Whether they were approval samples, photoshoot samples, got marked or damaged on display, or faulty in some way, there will always be some clothing that can't be sold at full price. Brands have many different ways of moving these clothing items on, and due to cost and time, sadly for a lot of businesses these are simply disposed of.
At Chief and Turtle, we wanted to give these products a good home, and we felt offering these at a discounted price via our anti-landfill page also meant new accessibility to more sustainable clothing for customers that might not have the budget to support us through purchasing our stock products.
How does the anti-landfill page work?
The anti-landfill page is like an online sample sale. All products are one offs that we had in either as samples, or used on photoshoots etc. They've often never been worn or been worn and washed once at most.
If a product does have a mark or any slight damage this will be explained in the product description along with supporting imagery.
All products are offered at 50% the normal retail price. Limited styles, sizes and colours are available depending on what we've had or used as a sample. Some products are products we stock, some are completely different.
To avoid contributing to landfill, what should I do with clothing I no longer want in my wardrobe?
Here's some ideas:
* If an item has a hole or missing button, patch it up! A little TLC and it is back in the outfit rotation.
* Offer the item to friend or family, they may fall in love with something you have fallen out of love with. At the Chief and Turtle HQ, we've actually set up a rail for clothing swap within the break room, it's like shopping for free!
* See if there's a charity that is in need of clothing, be that a shop or a refuge for homeless etc.
* Lastly but not least, use the materials for something else. Becky in the team used an old shirt to make a pillow case. There are a lot of tips on Pinterest or Youtube for this. Otherwise, cut into small rags useful for cleaning or polishing.
Facts sourced from clothesaid.co.uk
