Each year, 92 million tonnes of textiles are either dumped into landfills or burned in incinerators, which gravely pollutes the environment and degrades our ecosystems. To combat this, British company Yellow Octopus has launched its reGAIN app, aiming to change people’s habits of throwing away unwanted clothes and find solutions to recycle textile waste. We spoke to Janet Nakonechna, collaboration manager at the company to find out how it works – and what the future holds for fast fashion.
Could you explain the concept of the reGAIN app ?
The key idea is that textile waste is a huge environmental problem. We can’t deal with it ourselves, but we can try and take the first steps. The main objective is diverting textiles from going to landfills with our collection system. Once we make sure that clothes are not going to end up in landfills, then we can figure out what we can do with this waste, and the only way to do this is to make available a convenient and rewarding system for the customer, that is the reGAIN app.
Once we make sure that clothes are not going to end up in landfills, then we can figure out what we can do with this waste
How did it start?
We started over two years ago in April 2018. We were also inspired by an H&M programme where they collected clothes from their customers in their stores and gave all the donors discount coupons. We thought this was a nice idea, and that it would be great to not only create a programme which would collect clothes from specific brands but to create a multi-brand take back that will collect any item and provide an option of multiple discount coupons reward system. We work with a number of fashion retailers but we also have discounts for services such as travel, hotels, and nutrition.
Actually, as Yellow Octopus we’ve been in the business of finding sustainable solutions for the fashion industry for over 15 years. We’ve been dealing with the textile waste problem for over a decade. The reGAIN app came as one of the logical solutions after witnessing all the issues that fast fashion and fashion, in general was creating. It’s based on our experience with brands we worked with, conversations we had and ideas we discussed on what would be the most efficient way to deal with the textile waste issue.
How does recycling work on your app?
We provide a free shipping option for the clothes to be sent to us, and there are also multiple drop-off points across the UK. All clothes are collected from our services, and then there are two options. First, we started with recycling routes only, with the clothes going directly to Yellow Octopus. We then resell them in the secondary market network or redistribute them across our partners’ network of textile recycling companies i.e. the Textile Recycling Association members, research initiatives, students’ projects and fashion designers to be renewed, upcycled or recycled into new products.
So, the clothes would mainly be resold but the items that couldn’t be resold would be turned into mattress fillings for instance. Then we started our collaboration with the British Red Cross, where clothes would be going to the Red Cross shops to be resold there. They raise money, and 100% of the funds stay with them.
This year we also invested in a company that is a part of patent pending technology (under review technology) that can turn almost any textile material into, for example, home decor products. We are now working on clothes hangers made out of those wastes. For the moment no items are being sold, we’re only testing it, and it will be on the market by the end of this year.
Who are your clients?
We’re targeting young people, the new generation of consumers, mostly aged 18-35. They are active fashionistas, active customers and are mostly interested in all the trends. They are why we made this coupon rewards system. It is an incentive to motivate them to use the service. The older generation, the people over 30-40 years, are also our active customers. But most of them would only want to use the app as a responsible way to dispose of their clothes, they don’t even ask for discounts.
You work with fast fashion brands, don’t you think giving out coupons is encouraging consumption?
We are often criticised for working with brands like Boohoo or PrettyLittleThing, but we think that we cannot only cooperate with brands that already provide sustainable products. The problem is mostly created within fast fashion, so we must draw those customers into the reGAIN system to teach them how to responsibly treat the clothes they no longer need using the app. Basically, we cannot stop people from buying fast fashion; they will still go and shop. The only thing we can do is to show them that there is a responsible way to not just throw away their clothes, which then prevents textiles from ending up in a landfill.
We must teach fast fashion customers how to responsibly treat the clothes they no longer need
How is reGAIN drawing fast fashion customers into recycling?
For instance, any of Boohoo’s customers can go to the dedicated reGAIN page on the Boohoo website to see the recycle option and it’s the same for PrettyLittleThing. We’re also working on adding our content at the order checkout stage and we recently launched a 2 year project with In The Style and Stacey Solomon, the singer and television personality. She promoted the reGAIN app quite heavily on her social media, and we saw thousands of new downloads of our app and more people giving up their old clothes. Also, for every order from the Stacey collection, customers will receive leaflets about the reGAIN app, the charity donations, and the recycling, so they could learn about how they should dispose of their clothes if they no longer need them.
If you could imagine the future of your app in five or ten years what would it be?
I think there are a lot of additional things we can do in this regard. The industry is changing, and the policies are changing too. I think many greater features can be added within one system, like creating an ecosystem where you could find all the solutions for post-consumer textiles: donate, recycle, swap clothes, etc…
One day, we will probably have a digital wardrobe, where we can track a replica of our own wardrobe on our phones, and from this point decide what we can do and what we want to do with our clothes. Having a personal advisor who would say, “You can do this and get these discount coupons, or you were searching for this dress, your friend has just bought a similar one and you can borrow it from her.” I think this is a great deal of time ahead of us.
We can start by trying to collect data and know exactly what is happening in the fashion industry because, for the moment, no one knows anything. Where do clothes end up? For what period of time? Are the clothes being used? Brands don’t even have access to the information on how long their products are in use, and what then happens to the items.