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John Lewis trials buy-back scheme to reduce landfill waste

John Lewis Partner Michaela Richards tests the service: Paul Grover
John Lewis Partner Michaela Richards tests the service: Paul Grover

For many of us the back of the wardrobe is a Narnia-like cavern of impulse purchases, too-tight jeans and “it might be good for fancy dress one day” sparkly tops.

In fact, it’s estimated that the average UK household owns around £4,000 worth of clothes, but selling clothes online can be a real faff, so the reality is most of us never see that cash.

In a bid to reduce the 300,000 tonnes of clothing which gets sent to landfill each year in the UK, John Lewis is piloting a scheme that could be about to change that.

In an industry first, John Lewis will allow customers to return any unwanted clothing bought from one of its 50 shops and website and be paid immediately for each item regardless of its condition.

It will send a courier to shoppers’ homes to collect products once they have a total buy-back value of at least £50.

(Paul Grover)
(Paul Grover)

Using an app that links to sales data spanning the last five years, customers select the products they want to sell and are immediately shown the amount they can receive for them.

A courier will arrive to collect the products within three hours, and 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.

“We hope that by making it as easy as we possibly can for customers to pass on clothing that they’re no longer wearing we can ensure that the maximum life is extracted from items bought from us," said Martyn White, Sustainability Manager at John Lewis.

John Lewis will accept everything from broken trainers to 5-year-old underwear, and everything they buy back will then be resold, mended or recycled into new products.

And you could make a fairly tidy sum in return. Among the 100 customers currently trialling the service, one made £51 on a bag they bought for £169 in 2017, and another made £11 on a shirt dress she bought for £48 in 2016.

"All customers need to do to earn money from their unwanted clothing is tap on the clothing they want to sell, hand it to a courier and it will be given to someone else to love or made into something new. If the concept proves successful the next stage will be to offer an option for customers to donate the money to charity,” said White.

John Lewis already has a similar scheme which they use to buy back sofas, beds, and large electrical items such as washing machines, which they then either donate to charity, or reuse and recycle parts. Last year, they reused over 27,000 electrical products, approximately 2,000 used sofas and recycled materials from 55,000 mattresses.

The app, which is currently being tested by 100 John Lewis customers, was created in partnership with social enterprise Stuffstr.

John Atcheson, CEO of Stuffstr, said; "This service gives customers an incentive to buy high quality, longer-lasting products, and buying such products is a win for both customers and the environment."

With any luck it’ll hit the app store soon, and we can turn our unwanted clobber into cash.