‘Britons expected to send 235 million items of clothing to landfill this spring’

In a modern and supposedly progressive age, we are taught to stop filling landfill sites with our unwanted and discarded products and recycle as much as possible. It is therefore, a rather sad statistic that as much as 235 million clothing items from British households, have been predicted to end up merely thrown out with the rest of the rubbish, destined for the very location they should be avoiding. So why is this? Is it laziness? or simply lack of knowledge? In a survey of 2000 people, almost three quarters of those asked, admitted that they had thrown out old clothing, as they didn’t release there was another option. This was especially true if the clothing was either stained, or worn out.

Many of us have had a good clean out of our wardrobes and put aside clothes that are perfectly wearable but either no longer fit us, or are simply something we don’t want to wear anymore. In this instance, it should be quite obvious that the clothing can be reused and either a selling site, or a charity shop is the natural option to head to. Now while there are many of us that choose those options, there are always those that have had a long week, are too busy to visit the charity shop, or simply can’t be bothered to sort their old clothing from the rest of their household rubbish. Just as attitudes towards other recycling, such as glass and packaging has progressed over the years, our outlook on recycling clothing needs to follow suit and quickly.

Sainsbury’s, who commissioned the survey, are teaming up with Oxfam to try and address this issue, by encouraging people to think about where their old clothing ends up and donating to the designated Sainsbury’s collection points, found alongside other recycling bins in their car parks. In doing this, they are joining another retail giant, Marks and Spencer, who already have an agreement with Oxfam by rewarding customers who donate their brand clothing, with a £5 M&S voucher.

With clothes disposal becoming a major problem, more and more retailers are joining to fight to recycle and reuse old items. TK Maxx and Cancer Research UK have also strongly urged people to help with this and the government have setup their own website, ‘Love Your Clothes’, to offer help and advice on this issue.