Marks & Spencer is calling on its customers to donate any unwanted or unused clothes to Oxfam.
On Thursday March 24, 2011, 367 M&S stores across the UK will be accepting donated clothes and accessories. The high street giant hopes to collect as many as 500,000 items and customers who donate their cast-offs will be rewarded with an M&S £5 off voucher.
The ‘one day wardrobe clearout’ is being supported by an advertising campaign fronted by X-Factor judge Dannii Minogue. The initiative follows new research which shows that charities are missing out on as much as £1.5 billion in revenue a year as clothes are thrown out instead of being donated to charity shops.
Richard Gillies, Director of Plan A, CSR and Sustainable Business at M&S, said: “It’s clear that far too many clothes still go to landfill when they could be making money for charities and helping the environment. We’re calling on our customers to donate their clothes: it’s an easy way to make a difference and you get a great M&S money-off voucher.”
The event is part of the M&S Plan A Campaign, which aims to increase recycling in the UK and promote environmental causes. A recent M&S poll of 2,200 people revealed that today’s busy lifestyles get in the way of recycling with a third of people citing time as a reason for not donating items to charity.
Oxfam's Director of Trading David McCullough said: “The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange has been an incredibly successful partnership for us. The generosity of the thousands of M&S customers who have donated to our shops has helped us raise more than £3.5million to support our ongoing work fighting poverty around the world.”
