Top apps, websites and groups to help you reduce waste and grab a bargain or freebie (UK) : PART 2: Fashion

 

Full wardrobe

Welcome to the second in a series of posts linking useful apps and websites to help you reduce waste and save money.  This post focusses on clothes and fashion.

According to WRAP campaign Love Your Clothes an estimated 3000,000 tonnes of clothes goes to landfill in the UK every year. There is no need for any textiles to end up in landfill in the UK – the Love Your Clothes campaign promotes a more circular economy and provides lots of useful tips on extending the life of your clothes to reduce the environmental impact of clothing.

Buying  (or selling) preowned:

New clothing is resource intensive so one of the first things you can do to reduce the impact of clothing is to buy preowned whenever possible, and if you no longer want a piece of clothing, to pass it on rather than throw it away.

My favourite way to buy is by browsing my local charity shops,  or the weekly Swap Rail at the Eco Chi stall on Chichester market (if you are local you can find this near Marks and Spencer on North Street).  Clothes Swaps are another good opportunity to give your wardrobe a bit of a makeover.  But if I am looking for a specific item, online is another good way as you can often set up alerts to be notified when specific products are listed or join brand specific selling groups on Facebook.  Online is also good if you don’t have time to get into town during opening hours.  This is just a selection of the huge online opportunities to buy/ sell/ giveaway or swap.

Clothes Swap Party

Pre loved Fashion:

Ebay is perhaps the best known and the one I use most.   If you are after a particular brand or size it is easy to set up alerts as new items are listed to make sure you don’t miss out.   Good for selling too as you can reach a large market.  Many charity shops also sell through ebay so you can support your chosen charity at the same time – most offer free returns.

Re- fashion is a great new site for online charity shopping made easy with free returns in case your chosen item doesn’t fit.

Facebook marketplace can also be useful for finding great buys in your local area. Many areas also have local sell/swap groups so it’s worth searching for these groups near you.  There may be dedicated groups for school uniform or uniforms for groups such as guides and scouts.

As well as local groups I use a couple of zero waste related Facebook selling groups:

Journey to Zero Waste UK Sell/Swap/ Gift – for a whole range of items but often includes clothing while Zero Waste Fashion Swap/Sell/Buy is dedicated to clothing and fashion.

Depop  and Vinted  are both sites to browse for your style – although I haven’t used these yet personally.

Free stuff:

Freecycle and Freegle are both, as the names suggest, for free stuff .   You are more likely to find people offering a whole bag of clothes after a clearout here rather than individual items.  You can also share wanted posts asking if anyone  has what you need.

Many areas also have Facebook groups dedicated to free items.

Repair or Upcycle your clothes:

Repairing or upcycling your existing clothes and fabrics is another great way to reduce textile waste.  Love Your Clothes is a really useful resource for this – with a dedicated page for care and repair.

And back to Facebook, the Eco-Friendly Sewing UK  is helpful and friendly.

Look out for sewing  and repair meet ups in your area too.    I’ve taken a few small sewing jobs to my local repair cafe.  You can find our more about the Repair Cafe Network via this link but do note that not all local repair cafes are featured there so do search online to find your local one.  My local one is the Chichester Repair Cafe

As ever, this is just a selection of the many resources available to reducing waste when it comes to clothing and fashion.  I would love to know about your favourites – please do let me know in a comment below.

Happy Blogiversary to me!

WordPress tells me it is my 8th anniversary of blogging today so please help me celebrate by sharing and  signing up to follow this page or my linked Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts.

I’m sharing this post as part of the Going Green Linky

 

 

 

More places to shop with less waste in Leighton Buzzard – the Circular Economy

I have previously written about the places I shop for consumable items locally – but what about the other things you sometimes need or want to buy?

WRAP describe a circular economy as an alternative to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.

A Circular Economy – WRAP and the circular economy | WRAP UK http://www.wrap.org.uk/about-us/about/wrap-and-circular-economy

 

With the circular ecomony in mind I tend to adopt a ” second hand first” to those non – consumables I sometimes need to buy.  Fortunately Leighton Buzzard is very well supplied with places to find some lovely pre-owned things. This post focusses on the shops  you can look through in town, but if you scroll to the end you will find a link to online sharing/ swapping and selling sites operating locally.

Ollie Vees – Market Square  This is a fantastic vintage store selling clothing, sewing patterns, records, buttons and much more.  They also hold regular events including sewing and making meet – ups.

Peacock Mews Collectables A collection of several shops along Peacock Mews selling a variety of vintage collectables including clothing and furniture and other items – pop in for a browse.

Allsorts – Clarence Road  – a house clearance business selling a variety of second hand furniture, electrical goods and antiques.

I mainly tend to shop in the charity shops – of which we have a good selection ( and there are probably more I have missed).  I can almost always find what I want in one of these – with Oxfam being my personal favourite.

Variety of charity shops:

Oxfam – High Street

British Heart Foundation – Waterbourne Walk

The Salvation Army – Waterbourne Walk

Breast Cancer Care – Lake Street

Sue Ryder – High Street

Willen Hospice- Bridge Street

Extra Care Charitable Trust – Bridge Street

Age UK- Lake Street

I previously wrote about the places I shop for food and other convenience shopping items in Leighton Buzzard – you can read about those here : My favourite places for shopping without packaging in Leighton Buzzard

As well as the local shops, there is a wealth of local sharing/swapping/selling groups in the areas, mostly online, forming part of the local circular economy.  Some of these are listed at the bottom of a previous post: 7 top tips to reduce your household waste

So, most of the time there is no need to leave town for a shopping fix, and no need to buy new, saving the resources involved in buying new things, and saving other people’s unwanted items from being thrown away.

Why I won’t be donating to the “Phil the Bag” recycling scheme for schools

Clothes Swap Event

If you have kids at school, you’ll know the drill.  A letter from school asking that you donate something or other to help the school raise funds, or to use for a project. Or that you go and buy something to donate for the school fete, or that they need to go in fancy dress, usually with about half a day’s notice.

These things always make me anxious.  I’m no good at sewing (I was always bottom of the class and ditched it for woodwork as soon as I could – not that I’m any good at that either) and if I am going to buy something I want it to be secondhand, or free of packaging – and the short notice always makes this difficult. I like to plan things ahead. But I also don’t want to feel guilty for being the mum that doesn’t join in with the idea.

My son has just started at a new school.  I was hoping things might be slightly different. He told me they had been asking for nominations for  “Eco Warriors” or “Eco Council”.  Although he didn’t want to stand he did want to suggest they had more recycling bins, particularly in the dining area and told me that he had been telling his class all about “Plastic Free July”.  Proud mum moment (of course I really wanted him to volunteer as well – but he thought it would be more boring than football!).

Then came the first letter asking for something.  Donations to an “innovative fundraising programme” called Phil the Bag (and there are many other similar schemes operating in schools around the UK).  On the face of it this looks a good idea.  You take in your unwanted, but still useable, clothes and other textiles.  The school receives money based on the  quantity of textiles they collect.  At the same time this, and I quote the school’s letter “not only develops the children’s sense of enterprise but also teaches them about the importance of recycling and how we can protect the environment.”  Sounds great doesn’t it?

Being the curious sort of person I am I contacted the school to see if they knew more about what actually happens to the donated textiles.  I then searched online myself and easily found the website for the scheme.  And the educational aspect of it looks great – and I can see it would be very attractive to schools.  They are even helping the environment by no longer providing plastic bags for you to fill but asking you to provide your own (surely this couldn’t be a cost cutting exercise?).

So, what happens to your donations? 

The first thing I noticed is that Phil the Bag is not a charity.  This is clearly stated if you look at their website.  They are a business, buying good quality clothes at a knockdown price to sell on for a profit.

The donated textiles are sold on to a wholesaler in Africa who then sells them on to local markets.  It has been suggested that this kind of trade undermines the local economy as the market is flooded with cheap clothes from the West. This puts local people out of work. A friend tells me there was an investigative programme on this on TV (Dispatches or Unreported World or similar).  The volume of donations (you only need to imagine the number of schools and community groups participating in such schemes as a way of fundraising to see this is going to be vast) means that at least some of it is likely to end up in landfill sites in Africa rather than ever being sold.  Are we simply shifting our problems of overconsumption overseas rather than facing up to them at home? A number of African countries have actually banned imported clothing to start addressing this issue, which also affects the countries’ balance of trade surplus/deficit.

And we are teaching the children that this is good “recycling”.  Actually it is not “recycling” but “re-use” but perhaps I’m a pedant.  Perhaps there are more Rs we should be telling them about as well, starting with Refuse and Reduce.  There is no denying that it is “enterprising”, but on the part of the company making all the profit, rather than the school.

Such schemes are also potentially diverting goods from genuine charities or relief projects.

Is there a better alternative?

I would love the children to learn about re-use in the context of a Circular Economy operating at a much more local level.  Why send our clothes all the way to Africa if they can be found a good new home in the same town?

Of course the school needs to raise funds (the letter says the scheme will raise money for “vital resources” – trying to make me feel guilty if I don’t take part?), but perhaps a Swishing event (clothes swap) or even a table top sale could raise an amount closer to the real value of the donated goods.  This may not have the “ready made” educational resource that comes with schemes like the Phil the Bag, but the benefits might really be much greater.

And if you do want to donate to people in Africa, do so through a genuine charity – if the intention is to clothe people in Africa, it might be better to donate money to be spent on locally made clothes rather than to swamp them with our unwanted items. And if you want to donate your unwanted clothes, do a bit of research into where they will end up, as some charities, and a lot of those organisations posting bags through your letterbox, also send clothes to overseas wholesalers as reported in this BBC article  Where do Your Old Clothes Go?

Phil the Bag – this is one innovative fund raising programme in which I won’t be taking part. And I won’t be feeling guilty.

Now I just have to explain that to my 9 year old.

 

UPDATE

After writing I noticed that Phil the Bag claim to be an official partner to Eco Schools, an initiative run by Keep Britain Tidy.  I contacted Keep Britain Tiday in the hope they could allay my concerns.  I have now received a response and it turns out that Phil the Bag have not actually worked with Eco Schools for many years.  Keep Britain Tidy say they entirely agree that we should be teaching our kids about the circular economy at a local rather than global level and suggest The Salvation Army as a better partner to worth with on clothing donation schemes.

 

 

 

 

 

Wardrobe Revamp – Preloved Style

Since I wrote about not needing any more clothes No new clothes – learning to love the clothes I have and realising I actually don’t need more., and successfully extended my challenge to not acquire any new or new to me clothing from an initial 4 month period to 10 months, I have really fallen off the wagon when it come to clothes shopping.  Over the last 6 weeks I have acquired, I think, 3 new dresses, 3 new tops, a scarf and a necklace .

But do you know, I don’t feel guilty about it at all – all my recent acquisitions have been pre-owned and purchased in aid of charity, at a friend’s fantastic clothes swap party and the local Oxfam Shop.    These are great ways of having a bit of a wardrobe makeover without breaking the bank, and in a more sustainable way than buying cheap new fast fashion. And this is pretty much all I have bought over the past year.

Buying pre-loved is an easy way to be part of a circular economy, prolonging the life of items and preventing (or at the very least delaying) them ending up in landfill.  My new clothes were all acquired without a need for more resources going into clothes production, and in turn many of the items I no longer wanted were passed on to new owners.

Swishing Party (Clothes Swap)

This has to be my favourite way of looking for some new clothes. Even though I didn’t end up with quite what I wanted this time, it was a great social event.

A friend kindly opened her house to host a swishing party which was really well attended.  I had a bit of a wardrobe rummage and managed to come up with 2 coats, 2 skirts, 4 pairs of trousers, 1 pair of shorts, 1 cardigan, 1 blouse, 2 hats, 2 necklaces, 2 belts and 1 handbag to take along.  Wow, that’s 18 things I had in my wardrobe that I didn’t need or want!  And that’s not counting the ones I couldn’t quite decide about, some of which went later.  I hoped to come home with a dress, ideally a shirt dress.

Clothes swap parties work in a number of ways but for this one, there was a £5 entry fee with clothes sold at a flat rate of 50p per item.  I also took along a bottle of Cava for the raffle and some Prosecco for the evening.  All proceeds were donated to the Red Cross.

As you can see from the poorly focussed pictures above (and I was only on my first glass of prosecco at that point), everyone had managed to turn out a lot of things from their wardrobes, so there was plenty of rummaging to be done, with clothes and bags spread across several rooms in the house and bedrooms serving as shared changing rooms.  Some people knew each other, others didn’t, but trying on clothes together is a great way of breaking down any barriers and we were soon trying things and passing them around between us to see who they suited and fitted best.  A few glasses of Prosecco probably helped!  At the first round of trying things on I decided on a T shirt and was persuaded about a pair of jeans.  Remembering I’d been wishing I had a larger scarf to cover up with when I had caught the sun a week earlier I managed to find one of those too. Sadly, although there were lots of dresses, I didn’t find quite the one for me.

After much rummaging, chatting, drinking and trying on a few more things we congregated for the raffle – there were so many prizes this went on for a while and I eventually won a cute little manicure set.

At this point in the evening the clothes rails were still bulging so, as some people were starting to leave, I suggested a second round of rummaging.  This turned up a couple of blouses, a T shirt and a necklace to add to my earlier buys.

A couple of the items did end up going straight off to the charity shop when I tried them on at home, where I am sure they got more for them than the £1 I had paid, along with a few extra items I cleared out subsequently.  In total I had spent £8 (excluding the raffle and wine) on a whole load of new things to refresh my wardrobe. And I did achieve my goal of coming home with fewer things than I had donated!

At the end of the evening I helped with the clear up and took a bag of items to the nearly new  shop in town where they earnt some additional money for the Red Cross Charity – the event raised around £350.  I would guess about 10 bin bags full of good quality leftover clothings  were also donated to a variety of charity shops around town from where they hopefully found a good new home as well as raising additional funds.

 

Dresses

Still on the hunt for a dress I popped into my local Oxfam shop and over a few weeks managed to pick up not one, but 3 lovely dresses. My wardrobe has definitely become more dress orientated over the past few years , primarily pre-loved.

The first is a Per Una dress from Marks and Spencer which cost me £6.99.  This is perfect for the office, and happens, by chance, to match perfectly the grey and green necklace I had picked up at the swishing party.

Per Una Dress for work

My next purchase was a bit of an impulse buy , which I am trying to avoid. We were off out for a walk on my birthday and I spotted a lovely green cardigan in the shop window.  As I was still thinking about it when we walked back I popped in to have a look but sadly it had gone already.  As it was my birthday I had a bit of a rummage through the rails anyway and came up with this casual cotton dress from  Mistral which will be perfect for holidays.  I think this one was £7.99.

Holiday Dress

I then received an invitation to a family wedding.  I wasn’t going to buy something new but having tried on a few things from my wardrobe,  nothing felt quite right, and I noticed I had put on a little weight round the thighs since a cycling injury last year  which had forced a hopefully temporary reduction in exercise. In a spare 10 mins on the way to pick son up from his town centre school I nipped into Oxfam again and found this lovely Phase Eight dress which is perfect for the occasion and also fits perfectly.  It even goes well with a grey cardigan I have already.  A top quality dress for £12.99.

Phase Eight Dress for a family wedding

 

I admit to buying another unsuitable dress along the way from a local Facebook group for £4 which I donated to Oxfam along with a couple of old dresses replaced by my new items. and a gorgeous dress from Cancer Research UK’s ebay shop which didn’t fit so is on its way back to find a more suitable new home. You can also buy online from Oxfam

Together all these new items,  including the clothes swap and the items I donated straight on again, set me back less than £40. This is all I have spent on clothes since last July.

And the quest for a shirt dress?  Well I’m about to try dyeing one I have already to give it a new lease of life. Will see how that goes.

What is your favourite way of buying new clothes?