It wasn’t all bad

John Lewis is to buy back worn and unwanted clothing from customers in an attempt to reduce the 300,000 tonnes of clothes Britain sends to landfill every year. Developed with social enterprise Stuffstr, the scheme, currently being trialled, uses an app to value clothes bought from John Lewis, even old socks and pants. Once £50’s worth has been collected, a courier takes them to be resold elsewhere, mended for resale or recycled, in exchange for a John Lewis e-gift card.

A non-profit launderette is set to open in one of the poorest areas of Liverpool in honour of Kitty Wilkinson, the Irish migrant who opened the UK’S first public wash house in the city in 1842. Known as the “Saint of the Slums”, she came up with the idea after inviting local women to wash their infected clothes in her boiler during a cholera epidemic in the 1830s, saving many lives. The cooperative group behind Kitty’s Launderette in Everton, where almost half of children grow up in poverty, say that it will provide not only cut-price washing facilities, but also a warm and welcoming space for art exhibitions, community events and film screenings.

When the star of the West End production of Mamma Mia! was injured in the show’s first scene on 7 June, and the understudies were both ill, producers were in despair, until they remembered that Steph Parry – who had performed the role of Donna in a different production five years earlier – was working as an understudy for 42nd Street at a theatre down the road. They put in a call, and 18 minutes later Parry took to the stage, saving the evening. Her story made headlines, and now she has been promoted to a lead role of her own, in 42nd Street.