Shwopping—a mix of shopping and swapping—was temporarily paused in March to enable the Marks & Spencer Group (M&S) to focus on putting in place additional measures to serve customers. Following a rise in wardrobe clear-outs during lockdown, M&S customers can restart donating unwanted clothes, shoes, bras and accessories of any brand or condition in nearly 290 stores from October 1.
All clothing items that customers donate are sent to Oxfam to be resold in one of its shops or online, to be reused via its social enterprise in Senegal or to be recycled into new materials, which are used by businesses such as M&S’s mattress filling.Shwopping-a mix of shopping and swapping-was temporarily paused in March to enable M&S to focus on putting in place additional measures to serve customers. Following a rise in wardrobe clear-outs during lockdown, M&S customers can restart donating unwanted clothes, shoes, bras and accessories of any brand or condition in nearly 290 stores from October 1.#
To support a more sustainable shopping journey, M&S has started includng details of the sustainable raw materials it uses for its clothing products online, which is available for over 4,000 items so far. The British retailer has also removed paper returns slips from every online parcel in place of digital returns, thereby saving 140 tonnes of paper each year, it said in a statement.
“At M&S, our goal is to source all our products with care and ensure nothing we make goes to waste. We want our customers to be confident that the clothes they buy at M&S are made to last, but if they finish wearing their old favourites, we make it easy to give them a new purpose through Shwopping. It’s a brilliant programme that many of our customers rely on as they shop with us for new staples—and now more than ever it’s perfect for those who have been decluttering,” Carmel McQuaid, head of sustainable business for M&S, said.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)