Swishing helps to save the environment. Swapping wearable clothes for a new outfit rather than chucking them away extends their lifetime and saves energy, reducing carbon emissions.
It saves energy. The Government’s waste strategy report for 2007 says that re-use of textiles gives environmental benefits, partly due to the high resource requirements of primary material production such as energy and water use.
Textiles are now the fastest growing sector of household waste, swishing will help to tackle this head on. Sales of new clothing in the UK have increased by 60 per cent in 10 years. According to the charity Traid, which specialises in recycling textiles, about 900,000 tons of clothing and shoes are thrown away in the UK each year; around three quarters of this ends up in landfill. See traid.org.uk.
