Shwopping: Recycling your wardrobe

Your wardrobe says a lot about your style, your personality and your mood… Are you more into greys and blacks or do you add colour? Do you usually opt for jeans or are you more girly and enjoy wearing dresses and skirts?

Women tend to be more conscious of their clothing. Marks & Spencer conducted a study that reveals half of UK women change their partner’s style so they become the ultimate fashion accessory. There is a growing trend for couples morphing into relationship lookalikes, with 47% following in the footsteps of David and Victoria Beckham.

21% of women admitted to modifying their own fashion taste to fit their partner’s style.

68% confessed to raiding their boyfriend’s wardrobe for a fashion fix. From the women polled, a percentage confessed to throwing away their partner’s fashion faux pas without them knowing, putting them in the wrong wash on purpose, or even ‘accidentally’ ruining them.

60% of women throw the unwanted clothes into the bin, and only 19% ever send them to a charity shop to have a future life. 

With so many men having their wardrobes raided, no wonder they resort to wearing their partner’s clothes. 20% of men disclosed that they have worn an item of their partner’s clothing. Fetish or experimentation?

The study, in collaboration with Oxfam, promotes their Shwopping initiative which was launched in April 2012. The proposal is to guarantee no clothing ends up in landfill by shwopping – not binning – these unloved items of clothing in their stores nationwide. 

With over 1 billion items sent to landfill each year in the UK, the retailer is calling on the UK to adopt a ‘buy one, give one back’ culture when they shop. M&S and Oxfam’s Shwopping partnership, along with Plan A ambassador Joanna Lumley, urges shoppers to donate – or ‘shwop’ – an unwanted item of clothing that will go on to be re-sold, re-used or recycled by Oxfam, cutting waste while also raising much-needed funds for the charity.

Since its commencement, Oxfam has received over 3.8 million items of clothing thanks to Shwopping, worth over £2.3 million for the charity. All money raised by Shwopping is used to support Oxfam’s projects around the world working to alleviate poverty.

Plan A is Marks & Spencer’s eco and ethical programme aspiring to make M&S the world’s most sustainable major retailer by 2015. Launched in 2007 and extended in March 2010, it takes a holistic approach to sustainability, focusing on involving customers, engaging all areas of the business and tackling issues such as climate change, waste, raw materials, health and being a fair partner.

Shwopping is Marks & Spencer’s revolutionary clothes recycling initiative where customers can donate any item of clothing, of any brand, to be re-used, resold or recycled by charity partner Oxfam.

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Join the Marks & Spencer revolution!

Pooja Sahny
Photos: Courtesy of Marks & Spencer

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