A coat made from recycled materials that costs half as much as it would be if it had been made from virgin wool. That’s the first shwop coat by Marks & Spencer. The limited edition coat, which hit the stores in October 2012, is the first tangible result of Marks & Spencer’s shwopping initiative. With shwopping, the British retailer encourages customers to donate an old item of clothing to charity every time they come into the store to buy something new. In collaboration with Oxfam and Italian fibre manufacturers, Marks & Spencer upcycles these donations into new must-haves.
It turns out that Marks & Spencer receives lots of unwanted clothes that are suitable for recycling: in the first six months of the shwopping initiative, a staggering one million clothes have been donated. That’s no mean feat: in the United Kingdom, approximately 1 billion clothes end up as landfill each year.
Shwopping may sound revolutionary, but there are several other innovative clothing companies embracing recycling. Retailers like Eileen Fisher and Patagonia have been accepting returns of their worn products for quite some time. Fisher resells them in her Green Eileen retail store, while Patagonia recycles theirs into new products.
Patagonia is known for its imaginative approach to sustainability in fashion. It’s famous ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ campaign called upon consumers to think twice before buying something new. Advertising a fleece jacket made from 60% recycled polyester, Patagonia wrote: ‘We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else.’ Now that’s a remarkable challenge posed by a company that’s been among the most sustainable brands in the fashion world for many years. Marks & Spencer still have a long way to go, I’d say.