Joanna Lumley launches 'swap and shop' campaign

by Lucia Binding

Marks & Spencer is becoming absolutely fabulous as comedic actress Joanna Lumley fronts a new campaign for the company that aims to make customers recycle their old clothes.

The system, dubbed ‘Shwopping’, plans to increase consumer awareness about waste in the fashion industry and also decrease the amounts of waste textile that people generate, with the Ab Fab star joining forces with the retail giant in a hope to revolutionise clothes.

Recycle old clothes

The initiative is to allow customers to ‘swap and shop’ their newly bought garments with their old, unwanted ones in aid to help customers lead more sustainable lives.

Even clothes that aren’t from Marks & Spencer are more than welcome.

All proceeds from the campaign will go to Oxfam, where clothes will either be sold on or recycled and despite the process being similar to a clothing drop, M&S are the first ever business to execute the idea.

Emily Pascoe, a Fashion and Environment student at the London College of Fashion said: 

“I think that donated clothing is the ideal end-of-life cycle for garments.”

Giving garments a new life

She continued: “Clothing, once donated, is sorted and given a second, third and fourth life, and any clothes that aren’t used by the charity is usually passed on to sorters - they will be sent in bales to a developing country where it then becomes a part of another clothing market.”

“As a fashion student, I think old clothing should be looked at as a resource - as a sustainability student I don’t think we have an option to consider clothing as ‘old,’ but I also don’t think these fields should be separate,” she added.

Recycling old clothing is extremely useful everywhere in the world and especially the UK. The UK has little space for landfills with 10,000 articles of clothing being discarded every five minutes - and rarely biodegrades.