Product reuse can be thought of as the operation by which a product or component is used repeatedly and for long periods of time, for its original purpose, without being significantly modified, remade, or recycled.
Products might need to be ‘prepared for reuse’, which often involves cleaning, repairs, or small modifications so that they can continue to be used throughout time and multiple users.
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Collections
Refers to the services offered to citizens and/or businesses to collect post-consumer textiles for onward sorting for reuse and recycling.
This includes kerbside collections, facilitating textile banks, postal and door-to-door pick up services for citizens and direct pickups from businesses. -
Preparation for reuse
Checking, cleaning or repairing recovery operations, by which products or components of products are treated so that they can be brought back into use without any other pre-processing.
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Repair
Replacing or mending components of a garment that are faulty or close to failure.
Repairing a garment can return it to a useable state or may involve altering a garment for a better fit/style. -
Resale
Mechanism to generate revenue from additional sales of a garment after the first sale, with ownership changing hands at each sale.
Recovering own-brand products through a takeback scheme to be resold through the brand or via a partner, alongside only their product or a multi-brand offering. Or selling secondhand garments of any brand/ origin. -
Rental
A business model where each garment or collection of garments can be hired/leased for a limited time.
The ownership of the garment remains with the rental/subscription company or the lessor.
- Brand and Retailer (B&R) take-back schemes are a growing source of post-consumer textiles, as companies attempt to build on more circular and sustainable ways of disposing used garments. These schemes are a good way for B&R to take responsibility for volumes placed on the market in the absence of policy.
- Take-back initiatives are one of the mechanisms retailers can use to engage their customers in circularity and will be key to scaling up circular models, including resale and fibre-to-fibre recycling. However, to enable this to happen we must increase the amount of unwanted clothing collected rather than disposed of in our bins. Greater focus on the transparency and traceability of the end routes for collected clothing is also needed.
- Good collection mechanisms can in some cases prevent used textiles from becoming waste, and in other cases they can divert waste from End of Life scenarios to Material Reuse or Recycling. There's currently a missed opportunity of approx. 675.5 kilotonnes of textile resources going straight to End of Life.
Collections: ready to take action? Check out the next steps for your business…
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Develop partnerships to drive an effective collections infrastructure.
Finding the right collection partner – one that shares the retailer’s vision and objectives and can adapt to existing processes, whether online or in-store – is important. Commercial partners can offer a comprehensive garment collection proposition, as they are often vertically integrated businesses with strong logistics management, covering the full textiles operational process from collection, sorting and transfer, to final re-use and recycling destinations.
When working with a collection partner, logistics costs can be shared between both parties. Third-party commercial services can propose a cost model usually able to generate some financial surplus. -
Establish a take-back scheme/ partnership.
Take-back schemes can increase brand loyalty, demonstrate corporate responsibility in a visual way and strengthen the shift towards circularity in textiles. Some retailers offer their own take-back schemes. These can often be set-up through commercial or charity partnerships, online reuse and recycling platforms, or can be retail landlord-led initiatives.
Data reports to Textiles 2030 show there has been a 60% increase in the volume of used textiles collected from signatory take-back schemes between 2019 and 2021.
See the Retailer clothing take back guide for more information. -
Innovate to optimise collections, to keep a greater volume in use.
Reverse logistics is the biggest challenge to overcome for takeback models, whether organised internally or with a partner. Setting up a take-back scheme involves clear internal communication and high internal engagement, with buy-in from senior management. WRAP’s Retailer clothing take back guide includes good practice for scheme delivery.
The ACT-UK project has also delivered insights on optimising post-consumer textile collections. -
Engage with citizens, and gain regular customer feedback.
Due to the current lack of customer awareness, brands and retailers must take on an educative role.
They can engage customers through setting up schemes that are as easy as possible to participate in; encouraging participation through in-store communication and training store staff; and by running campaigns on multiple channels, most importantly on digital and social media platforms.
The delivery of the scheme needs to be based on simplicity and communication. See the WRAP’s guidance on consumer behaviour for more information. -
Build citizens’ awareness and trust.
WRAP 2019 survey shows 42% agree that knowing where donated clothes end up is important to them. Citizens are increasingly eager to understand where collected textiles are ending up, and providing transparency on end-destinations brings trust and actively contributes to increased public awareness.
Brands should therefore show their customers what happens to the clothing that they return, and the impact this has. Generation Z and millennials want to make conscious decisions. Providing these customers with relevant information and traceability of end routes emphasises brand responsibility, thus helping build brand loyalty.
For wider impact, it is important to keep the messaging clear and simple and avoid technical jargon.[x] -
Make collection schemes accessible to motivate citizens.
Due to their reach and influence, brands and retailers are well placed to engage their customers on a large scale, motivating them to act by providing easy to-use, accessible points for textiles donations. See the Retailer clothing take back guide for more information.
To further increase their impact retailers could direct customers to donate their used textiles through routes that capture the greatest monetary value. The average price per tonne of used textiles collected in 2022 runs at £32,938. The monetary value of used textiles is highest when the source of the collected textiles was from Local Authority kerbside collections. Bring banks and HWRCs were found to be of the lowest value. See WRAP’s Textiles Market Situation Report 2024.
- Items in a rental, resale or repair model need some form of basic treatment prior to reuse. The level of cleaning can vary widely from simple steaming, right through to ozone cleaning, dry cleaning and re-texturing. Items that can be repaired need to be identified and processed. [x]
- Collaboration between partners can strengthen collection efficiency, subsequent processing and resale opportunity. [x]
Preparation for reuse: ready to take action? Check out the next steps for your business…
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Consider developing partnerships with third-parties.
Partnerships between brands and retailers, service providers, charity organisations operating in the sector or ecommerce platforms can be beneficial: working with an experienced provider can reduce the risk, speed up implementation and provide a tried and tested end-to-end service for customers.
Costs of cleaning and repair can vary with complexity from having an in-house team right through to bespoke systems and external servicing (including logistics costs).
For more see WRAP’s Circular Business Models Guide for Fashion. -
Pilot, scale up, replicate.
At the trial stage, aim to measure the offer and processes developed against the KPIs. Do not expect a trial to deliver instant financial or circularity benefit. The trial is about confirming real market usage, testing the systems and improving how things work.
For more information see Circular Business Models Guide for Fashion. -
Communicate with citizens.
WRAP’s research shows that telling the story about the journey of collected clothing can help to build trust and motivate action. e.g. sharing exactly how the donated textiles are being processed after collection
Provide information to citizens on what to do with unwanted textile items. Give guidance on how to tell if an item could be prepared for reuse or sent for recycling and what to do if they are not sure. For more information see Circular Business Models Guide for Fashion.
- Designing products that can be repaired easily will allow products to stay in use for longer, decreasing the demand for the production of new products and the impacts associated with them [x].
- Citizens want to learn more about repair: Over half of women and nearly a quarter of men have expressed interest in learning clothing repair skills, and more citizens are feeling confident about making simple repairs, such as sewing buttons. [x]
- When seeking a repair service for textile items, key concerns for citizens include the quality of repairs, whether fit/appearance remains the same after the repair, and costs. [x]
Repair: ready to take action? Check out the next steps for your business…
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Design for repair.
This principle focuses on strategies that will keep a product in continual use for longer. This will depend on the durability of the product, how easy it is for your customers to care for and maintain the product, and finally, making sure the product can be repaired when its physical durability fails.
Choose materials that are easy to repair and reinforce, and design products so that components and parts can be easily detached and replaced, such as zips, pockets and elbow patches.
See WRAP’s Circular Design Toolkit for more information. -
Ensure that your business has the logistics in place to collect/ return items for repair.
This could involve establishing pilots or similar schemes to prove the environmental savings and the business case for repair models.
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Secure access to repair expertise.
Repair business models require skilled labour to deliver unique repair and alteration services. Businesses should assess whether existing workers in their supply chains require additional training or equipment, where repair jobs will be carried out (e.g. will these be carried out in the same location that original product manufacturing takes place), and consider establishing new partnerships for repair.
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Raise awareness and improve accessibility of repair services available to citizens.
Encourage citizens to consider repair over buying new, as this displaces the sale of new items.
Ensure equal access to circular products and services by offering circular products and services in default, non-premium product ranges. Pricing should not prevent customers from extending the life of a product, such as when the price of repair is higher than the cost of buying new[x].
Resale: ready to take action? Check out the next steps for your business…
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Design for longevity to extend product life.
Design products to be durable so they can be used for as long as possible – by their original owner as well as by multiple owners through reuse, rental and repair services. For more information see WRAP’s Design for Circularity Toolkit.
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Form partnerships with businesses with a resale offering.
Partnerships between brands and retailers, service providers, charity organisations operating in the sector or ecommerce platforms can be beneficial: working with an experienced provider can reduce the risk, speed up implementation and provide a tried and tested end-to-end service for customers.
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Offer a pre-loved rail in all stores, and improve pre-loved offering online.
Normalise resale and make it accessible alongside new stock.
Encourage peer-to-peer reuse, e.g. via swap shops. -
Explore authenticity innovations.
For high value items, make it easier to find out if product is authentic to increase its resale value: for example, RFID technology.
- Extending a product’s lifespan is the most effective intervention to reduce the environmental impact of clothing. Implementing a high street or online resale can reduce carbon and water footprints by approximately 5% and 2% respectively [x].
- WRAP’s citizen research confirms a clear and mainstream potential market for repair, resale, rental and upcycling CBMs. With the underutilisation of clothing presenting a prime opportunity for businesses to deliver circular solutions for consumers.
- Rental models can meet short-term customer needs. WRAP’s CBM Receptivity Survey found that citizens are more likely to consider formal wear when it comes to service-based models, whilst favouring preloved for more casual garments. [x]
- A 10% shift from purchase of new products to short-term rental would reduce carbon footprint by 2.7% and water footprints by 0.1%.[X]
Rental: ready to take action? Check out the next steps for your business…
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Consider implementing a rental model.
Consider implementing a rental model.
Maximising the use of items means that more revenue can be derived from the same product, while business efficiency will drive the minimisation of the number of products needed to serve the market. If you do not have the capacity to do so, consider partnerships with existing rental organisations. For more information see: WRAP’s CBM Guide. -
Consider partnerships for successful fulfilment of rental models.
As the rental market expands, more players are expected to enter the market on the fulfilment side, leveraging the ease of front-end technology implementation. Many digital-first emergent businesses have been focusing on meeting short-term customer needs in a variety of ways. For example, by offering multi-brand selections for occasions, subscription services for children’s clothing or by facilitating P2P renting.
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Consider accessibility for citizens.
For example, offer online try-on and sizing services. Product-as-service solutions are becoming more mainstream and the variety of clothing available for pay-per-use rental and subscription rental is broadening.
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Make rental affordable and open to a wider audience.
High cost of rental could be inhibitive and result in exclusivity to luxury markets.
Where the cost of rental is too close to the cost of buying this may disincentivise the customer.
Making rental/leasing as easy as purchase is key to establishing these alternative business models.
Encouraging peer-to-peer sharing and swapping is also an option.