Two weeks ago at Tenter Ground we transformed our main meeting room downstairs into a pop up ‘swap shop’ and traded our old, unwanted or unused clothes, shoes and accessories with each other in the name of fashion, recycling and the climate. Swap shops, freecycling, swishing or even - as Joanna Lumley has now coined on behalf of M&S’s new initiative – “shwopping” are a growing phenomena that encourage us to swap our old or outgrown garments with colleagues/friends/family/strangers instead of throwing them away and buying new clothes. Thereby cutting the amount of waste ending up in landfill and reducing our carbon footprints by not buying new clothes, the production of which involves a lot of CO2 (for example a pair of jeans equates to 415kg CO2e from materials, production shipping, washing etc... ).  

We must be a pretty generous office - or one that never throws away clothes - because donations streamed in from the moment we put the ‘swap boxes’ out and kept piling up over the collection week. The Green Team (our six-person team leading the nfpSynergy environmental policy and organisers of events like the swap shop and environmental film nights) then sorted the clothes, hanging dresses on cupboard doors, draping trousers over chairs and lining up shirts along the table – plus marvelling at the diverse array of clothing owned by our colleagues and, of course, trying to guess who had donated what. While we found no embarrassing wardrobe relics like well-worn Spice Girl T-shirts or shoulder padded blazers, we ignored any donor anonymity by doing our best to guess who had once owned the tiny white frilly mini skirt, or the brown T-Shirt lined with cherubs.

The swap was a success. We delved through the piles of clothes, complimented each other on things tried on, lamented that our feet weren’t one size bigger to fit into the gorgeous olive green heels, and politely fought over items that several people had their eye on – but everyone left with at least one thing to refresh their summer wardrobe and the best part was that it was all free and carbon neutral.  With our  wardrobes boosted we packed the unclaimed clothes into boxes where the swap box system will remain for another month (for anyone who missed out, or wants another rummage) and will then be sent to a refugee centre where Mhairi, one of our researchers, volunteers twice a month.