The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Company trials clothing buyback service
Hopes scheme will help reduce the amount of items sent to landfill
John Lewis is trialling a buy-back service for customers’ unwanted clothes to help reduce the 300,000 tonnes sent to UK landfill each year.
More than 100 customers are testing the scheme that allows them to sell any unwanted clothing back to the store, regardless of its condition.
The app-based service links to a customer’s John Lewis account data on what they have bought from its 50 stores or website over the past five years.
Customers select the products they want to sell and are immediately shown the amount they can receive for them. Once a customer has a minimum of £50 worth of clothing to sell, a courier will collect the products within three hours.
As soon as the products have been collected, the customer is emailed a John Lewis e-gift card for the value of the items they have sold. Items bought back are then either resold, mended so they can be resold or recycled into new products.
The trial has seen John Lewis pay £4 for a pair of broken cashmere gloves bought in 2015, £8 for a pencil skirt bought in 2014 and £11 for a top bought in 2016.
If successful, the next stage will be to offer an option for customers to donate the money to charity.
John Lewis developed the idea with social enterprise Stuffstr, which partners with retailers to buy back used items and recycle them.
Martyn White, sustainability manager at John Lewis, said: “We already take back used sofas, beds and large electrical items such as washing machines and either donate them to charity or reuse and recycle parts, and want to offer a service for fashion products.”