Shwopping Good or bad ?

[lugg]

Marks and Spencer has recently launched its “shwopping “ campaign in Uk aiming to reduce the staggering amount of clothes that go into landfill. Quoting figures such as

• 9,513 garments are thrown into landfill every 5 minutes in the UK - some 1 billion per year
• This is the equivalent of 1 in 4 garments sold
• 500,000 tonnes of clothes are sent to landfill each year
• This is the equivalent weight of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Kalifa
• 2,739,726 items of clothing sent to landfill every day
• 114,155 items of clothing sent to landfill every hour

M&S are guaranteeing they will re-cycle all clothing and are working with Oxfam. It has met with a mixed reaction here with one journalist describing “ Shwopping as an ugly word for a dubious enterprise.”

I take all my unwanted clothes to the clothes bank already and I am not sure that I would cart all my clothes to M&S if I was going shopping.

Do other countries have a similar scheme?

[auntieannie]

um... I haven't really looked into it, but am surprised as there really is a "charity shop" culture here. People give their unwanted clothes to charity shops and others are avid customers.

After my exams, I'll look into it more closely, but are they surfing on the current success of events where people swap clothes (there's another name for it that evokes less sleazy images in people's heads here, but I don't remember it just now... aaah! swishing!) I don't know how but some people are trying to make a business of swishing.
Also, they keep trying to get greenies to shop in their shops... but they aren't exactly pristine when it comes to environment. it's all greenwash and if shwopping doesn't take... it'll disappear for another thing. like Plan A (because there is no Plan B) evaporated... and many other green pledges.
The plastic bags are back for free if I am not mistaken.

[Deleted]

I take my unwanted clothing to the charity bins that one can find here next to many churches. I do know that quite a few of these items wind up being recycled to make luxury paper pulp rather than clothing the needy but I cannot control everything that is done, so I just try to forget such details.

[rikita]

i'd bring my clothes to the charity bins too, except i usually tend to wear them till they fall to pieces anyway... well i could bring all those trousers there, that i don't have a chance of fitting into anymore, but somehow i keep hoping...

[Deleted]

I wish they also had a rag bin, because I too sometimes wear clothes until they fall apart. I don't like putting worn out clothing in with the normal rubbish.

[lagatta]

Yes, as rags are very recyclable. Nothing wrong with making them into paper. A contemporary problem is the strange mixes of fabric content. It is much easier to recycle something that is 100% cotton or woollen, or polyester for that matter (polar fleece) than stuff with some spandex and Gord-knows-what mixed in.

I hate throwing out rags, stained garments etc. One only needs so many stained or bleach-spotted t-shirts to do the housework and gardening, after all.

It is such an ugly word. If I lived in the UK, I certainly would do some shopping at M&S, because some of their clothing is still very solid and sturdy. I still have some items bought before they shut down here, and that was certainly 20 years ago. But they are certainly not perfect in environmental terms, and I'm sure they are no longer sweatshop-free.

I take almost everything I don't wear to charity bins or bazaars; I really don't have much control over what happens to the stuff afterwards.

Almost because I do confess to a few "faint hope" items like rikita's. Usually that is just a waste of wardrobe space, but I have lost some weight so there are garments I'm wearing again after a few years in purgatory.

"shwopping" sounds like a speech defect. Yecch. Beurrrkkk.

[Deleted]

I have deluded myself into believing that I will automatically start losing weight when I stop working in a month and a half, because I will be out walking around all day instead of sitting at a desk. Plenty of clothes are weighting ( ) for the new me.

[lugg]

I too am hopeful that some clothes I have stashed away will one day fit me again, when I have finally lost a few pounds.

Some of the UK clothes banks and charity shops do take rags/ ripped clothing as long as it is clean.I am not sure of the methods used to recycle textiles but I guess keeping them out of the landfill cannot be bad.

The talk of rags prompted a recollection of the rag and bone man that was a common sight in the NW of England when I was a child. His cart was pulled by a horse and if the horse happened to poop there was a rush to get to it to put on gardens. "Green " on a number of levels ( as long as I forget the plastic balloon he used to give to the kids in exchange for the rag and bone.

[lagatta]

Kerouac, you are thus one of those lucky Frenchpeople who will be able to retire before you are ready for the rag and bone man? I can't possibly contemplate retiring.

[imec]

I need to retire very soon - the back one has nearly no tread left at all.

[bixaorellana]

Lugg, that's a real nugget about there still being a rag & bone man going around when you were a kid. I'm pretty sure you're at least a decade younger than I, & there was no such thing in the US when I was little. Actually, I don't think there were any -- or at least very few -- horse-drawn enterprises in residential areas of the US in the 50s.

[joanne28]

In the late 50s and (I think) very early 60s, the small grocery store by my grandmother's still delivered groceries by horse and cart. They managed to hang on until a supermarket opened up one street over from them.