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Marks & Spencer and Oxfam have joined forces to create the biggest clothes recycling project in the UK. Customers who drop off their old M&S clothes at an Oxfam shop will be given a £5 voucher that they can use on their next purchase at M&S.
You can use the voucher with any purchase of £35 or over at any of the M&S stores in the country, for food, clothes or anything else you can find stocked in the nation's favourite underwear shop. The project starts on 28 January, so you have time to root through your wardrobe and find that jumper you never wear, that coat you don't like or those jeans that, thanks to Christmas, you can't fit into anymore.
The scheme benefits everyone -- Oxfam gets more donations and more income from selling those donations, customers get money off new clothes and an incentive to clean out their wardrobe, and M&S can encourage customers to trade in their old clothes for new and fulfil part of its Plan A scheme to go green.
Every year in the UK we send 1 million tonnes of clothes to landfill. Some of these are beyond repair (but could still be recycled), while some are perfectly usable and could be sent to charity shops to find a new home.
Oxfam director Barbara Stocking says: "Recycling and reusing clothes -- and anything else we can sell -- has always been central to Oxfam's fundraising, as well as being good for the environment. Through our unique textile sorting facility and the resourcefulness and skills of our specialist staff, Oxfam is able to make the most of all the clothes we receive. People's unwanted clothes really will raise much needed money to help people living in poverty."
The scheme is starting on the first anniversary of M&S' Plan A campaign, which aims to make the company carbon neutral within five years, and to reduce the amount of landfill waste it creates to zero.
"We've made good progress on Plan A. We've a lot more to do, but we remain committed to delivering the goals we've set. More and more of our employees and suppliers see Plan A as a way of helping us all innovate and do things differently. For example, we originally began working with our suppliers to open three 'eco' factories. Now we have plans for several more, including our first in China," says M&S chief executive Sir Stuart Rose.
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