Most of us have been there: after finally getting round to clearing out our wardrobe, we find a top that we can’t even remember buying and maybe doesn’t fit anymore.
For too many, the easy option is to throw it away. Each year in the UK an estimated £140m worth of clothing goes to landfill. What a waste!
At George, we redistribute our surplus to a number of different charities, such as His Church and Newlife, to repurpose and reuse. We also have a zero-tolerance policy towards incineration. At our stores, customers can donate their unwanted clothes to our network of almost 500 clothing banks.
But now we’re trialling something new: our first ever in-store pre-loved fashion shop. For the next four weeks, our Milton Keynes store will host our ‘Re-Loved’ pop-up shop, which will help to find new homes for unwanted clothes. There will be a number of brands for sale and all the proceeds will go to our Tickled Pink campaign, which supports Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Now.
We hope that we can encourage our customers to think again about re-loved fashion and think twice before throwing away that top or those jeans they no longer want in their wardrobe.
We’ll be taking customer feedback over the next few weeks, to see how they respond to the trial and inform any future decisions. We’ll still be taking customer donations at the Tickled Pink clothing recycling point in store.
Our commitment to sustainability doesn’t stop here. Earlier this year, we announced our new George sustainability strategy, which committed to improving the environmental and social impact of our clothes, from using sustainable or recycled materials, to increasing transparency in our supply chain. You can read more about that here.
