Postal Protest

[Read on Ethical Revolution]

Earlier this year designer Wendy Ward launched a campaign aimed at fashion brands over their waste and greenwashing.

The campaign urges anyone to post end-of-life items back to the brands who made them along with a letter demanding accountability both for the wastage of textiles and of false recycling promises.

Wendy wrote a template letter and some guidance notes so that anyone can easily participate in the campaign. A copy of both is at the bottom of this article.

Using the hashtag TakeItBack the campaign aims to shine a light on the fashion industry’s failed take-back schemes, which result in 75% of the items ending up in destruction, landfill or waste colonialism.

So go ahead and take part in the campaign! Get your parcels and stamps at the ready and use the tools below to join the postal protest.

TEMPLATE LETTER:

[date]

Dear [full name of CEO],

Please find enclosed a [insert description of item that you are returning] that I can no longer use.  I purchased this from [insert name of company and roughly how long ago you purchased], it has served me well. However, there are no sustainable options available for what I should do with it now:

• I can’t really repair it [explain why it’s un-repairable, or that you don’t have the skills needed].
• I can’t donate it to a charity shop as it’s unsuitable for anyone else to use and charity shops (reasonably) won’t accept damaged textile products.
• I don’t want to put it into a textile ‘recycling’ collection as the likelihood is that it will be shipped overseas or incinerated and not recycled. In reality there is very little true recycling of textiles in the UK (ie. where textiles are reprocessed into new textiles). Textile waste collection services, often called the textile recycling industry, is on the verge of collapse with many charities no longer able to rely on so-called ‘rag’ merchants to collect their unsold ‘waste’ textiles (https://www.textilerecyclingassociation.org/press/textile-recycling-sector-faces-unprecedented-financial-crisis-amid-global-market-challenges/ & https://euric.org/resource-hub/press-releases-statements/crisis-in-europes-textiles-sorting-and-recycling-sector-could-trigger-a-domino-effect). This is leading some charity shops to be charged for placing these unsold ‘waste’ textiles into their waste collection.
• If my [insert item description eg. Jacket] was made from 100% natural fibre rather than [insert fibre content again eg. polyester/cotton] it would be easier to reuse the fabric in my household (as it’s absorbent and easy to dye) or I could even compost it.
• The only action I can personally take with this item is to put it into my general waste bin. I don’t want to do this as 95% of general waste in the UK is incinerated as “energy recovery” (https://www.veolia.co.uk/insights/where-does-my-general-waste-go). This isn’t a sustainable option as such processes have been shown to be as damaging to local air pollution as burning coal (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp3wxgje5pwo).

So, I am left reliant on a non-existent textile waste infrastructure to deal with this [insert name of item eg. Jacket]. As [insert name of company] is responsible for designing and manufacturing this product, with no consideration for what could be done once it reached the end of its life, I have decided to return it to you.   

Research by the Waste & Resources Action Plan (WRAP) published in 2024 (https://www.wrap.ngo/resources/report/textiles-market-situation-report-2024) showed that 52% of post-consumer textiles (clothing, household textiles, leisure textiles and accessories – shoes, bags, belts) are sent almost directly to end-of-life processing, most of which (84%), is incinerated in energy recovery facilities like those mentioned above. 

The [insert description of your item] is clean, I washed it before sending it to you, I would really love to hear what you decide to do with it.

With best wishes,

[Insert your name]

GUIDANCE NOTES for TakeItBack / guerilla EPR action:

1. Take some time to find out the name of the CEO of the company where you are returning your item and the correct head office address.

2. Only send clean items.

3. To be sure that the company has actually received your item you will need to send it via a tracked method of postage, ie. Royal Mail Signed For – first or second class.

4. If you haven’t had a response after a month, send a reminder.

5. If you receive an unsatisfactory response or one that doesn’t tell you what they have done with your item, write back reiterating what you’d like to hear from them.

6. Check the care label on your item, if it’s made from natural fibres (ie. cotton, wool, linen, silk, hemp), try and re-use the fabric within your household – these fabrics are absorbent and easy to dye so have many more uses than synthetic fibres. My letter template is best suited to synthetic fibre items. If you do want to send back an item made from natural fibres, edit the letter accordingly.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. Please do share your experience and a photo of your item/s on social media using the hashtag TakeItBack and hopefully we can help each other, share tactics and bring about change. We’re stronger together! 

Wendy

[Via Ethical Revolution]