Marks & Spencer @ Launched Clothing Exchange Campaign in Hong Kong

Marks & Spencer (M&S) launched its new Clothing Exchange in Hong Kong, a new campaign that encourage everyone to recycle their clothes and help them to live more sustainable lifestyles. M&S believes unwanted clothes should have a future: they should be put to good use, not just thrown out. It is therefore asking its customers to bring in any unwanted clothing of any brand to any of M&S’s 14 stores. It’s a new, free service aimed at changing your shopping behaviour by encouraging them to give an unwanted piece of clothing every time they buy a new one. The Exchange is designed to reduce the tens of millions of tonnes of clothing sent by the public to landfill around the world each year. All the clothes donated will be recycled. Any profits made from the recycling of the garments will go to M&S’s global charity partner UNICEF to help transform the lives of vulnerable children across the world by providing life changing education. Not a single item will go to landfill. Every donation of clothing will receive a cash coupon worth HK$50 when you spend HK$500 on full priced clothing. The campaign will be trialled for six months in Hong Kong and reviewed on an ongoing basis. The Exchange will help M&S to engage with its employees and shoppers in Hong Kong on Plan A, its eco and ethical programme which aims to make M&S the world’s most sustainable major retailer by 2015.

Adam Elman, Global Head of Plan A Delivery at Marks & Spencer, said: “We’re delighted to launch our new Clothing Exchange in Hong Kong today which is all about getting customers to recycle their unwanted clothes every time they shop at M&S. We want to stop clothes ending up in landfill and change the way we all shop clothing forever.” The new campaign in Hong Kong build’s on Shwopping, M&S’s successful clothes recycling scheme in the UK with charity partner Oxfam. Since its launch in April 2012, Oxfam has received 6.9 million items of clothing thanks to Shwopping, worth £4.5 million for the charity. All money raised by Shwopping is used to support Oxfam’s projects around the world working to alleviate poverty.