Circular Soundbites
Circular Soundbites is the place to hear from the people shaping what’s coming next within the many industries and sectors Reconomy reaches. We’ll be talking to key industry experts and insiders, offering up real, practical insight on everything connected to the circular economy.
In addition to standalone episodes, Circular Soundbites will also offer dedicated, multi-part series that explore the systems, decisions and day-to-day realities driving real circular progress.
Circular Soundbites
Thread Talks: How M&S is Scaling Take-Back, Repair and Reuse
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In this episode of Thread Talks, part of the Circular Soundbites podcast, host Aimée Campanella, Reconomy's Development Director for Textiles EPR, is joined by Katherine Beacham, Head of Raw Materials, Packaging and Sustainability at Marks & Spencer.
Katherine has spent 14 years at M&S, moving from fabric technologist to leading raw materials, packaging, and now ethical and responsible sourcing. In this conversation, she takes us through M&S's journey from Shwopping, the UK's first clothing takeback scheme, launched in 2008 with Oxfam, to Another Life, the retailer's current circularity programme spanning rewear, repair, resale and recycling.
In this episode:
- How M&S moved from Shwopping to Another Life, and what convenience means for driving customer behaviour change
- The four pillars of Another Life: rewear (Made to Last standards), repair (the Sojo partnership), resale (Reskinned and eBay, including a first-of-its-kind live shopping event), and recycling
- M&S's raw materials progress, from converting to preferred cotton to the push toward fully preferred fibres by 2030, and early work on textile-to-textile recycled polyester
- Supplier decarbonisation, including the Schneider Electric partnership and the Future Supplier Initiative
- Inside the ACT project, the UKFT-led automated sorting pilot that saw 6,000 of 9,000 collection bags used in under a week
- Beauty packaging takeback, and how empty containers get a second life
- Why EPR matters for unlocking investment in UK textile sorting and recycling infrastructure, and how the UK compares to EU markets already moving on this
- Advice for any brand or retailer considering launching their own takeback scheme
Listen to the full episode on all major streaming platforms or on the Reconomy YouTube channel. To learn more about Reconomy and the circular economy, visit reconomy.com.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Circular Sound Bites, the podcast that breaks down the ideas, systems, and decisions that are driving real change behind the circular economy. Circular sound bites, the Reconomy podcast. I'm your host, Amy Campanella. I'm the development director for Textiles EPR at Reconomy, and this is our series Thread Talks. On today's episode, we are talking take back, giving our unwanted garments another life. And I'm super excited to be joined today by Catherine Beecham, Head of Raw Materials, Packaging, and Sustainability at Marks Spencer's. Catherine, welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Great. Thanks for having me. Catherine, you have been at Marks Spencer's for just about 14 years, going from fabric technician to head of sustainability. Tell us about your journey in material sustainability.
SPEAKER_00So I started back as a fabric technologist and I worked across many different product areas in denim, in coats, in shirts, in menswear and women's wear, so across different parts of the business. And then moved to add all of menswear. So I took a lead in a fabric role and then a product role, and then took on colour as well, and then added on sustainability a few years back in 2020. And then packaging got added on as well a couple of years ago. And then just recently also ethical and responsible sourcing.
SPEAKER_01When we're talking about raw materials, what types of materials are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00So yeah, so that's everything that we source across the business. So we're predominantly actually cotton, but obviously we source polyester, polyamide, um, wool, um, silks, linens, um, elastane. So it's the conversion of all of those raw materials to what we call prevered fibres. Um so those that have a lower impact on the environment and supporting the buying and design teams in the selection of those raw materials, um selection of those tier two facilities, as we call them. I know across the industry they're always the tiers are talked about slightly differently, but and the selection of those tier two facilities and also the decarbonisation of those facilities as well.
SPEAKER_01And Marcus and Spencer's has made some really great achievements when it comes to the raw materials. Can you tell us a bit about that when it comes to the journey with cotton and polyester?
SPEAKER_00Back in 2019, all of the cotton was converted to better cotton, recycled or organic cotton or um and um across fashion um and then um home by the end of um 25-26. So great news, it's all converted um to what we call preferred um cotton. Um and then um we've moved on to do also marmade cellulosics and recycled polyester, and then to 2030, we've got um plans to move all of our fibres to preferred um raw materials. So that's everything from like the recycled nylon um to responsibly sourced wool and all of the other fibres in between. Um but what we were really focusing on originally was cotton, polyester, and then mammaid cellulosics, because they they're what we call our kind of main materials because that's over 80% of our fibre mix. We've got a cotton project where we're working um on at farm level in India um with Paleo, and we're now also looking for textile to textile recycling within our polyester. So we've kind of hit that 100% now, but like what's the next step to even lower that environmental footprint is is the challenge for 2030.
SPEAKER_01And the next step is looking at recycling old textiles back into nearly?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, is looking at like how because obviously most of recycled polyester does come from plastic bottles, and so how do we now move that to textile to textile recycling?
SPEAKER_01What's some really innovative stuff that you're seeing when it comes to raw materials or recycled materials?
SPEAKER_00So there's loads of um opportunities, I think, with um raw materials, with interesting um next generation fibres. Um we've signed an agreement with Circulos and with other brands, which is really exciting because it's good to see those pulp um producers starting to um help through the supply chain with the recycled post-consumer um fibres that will start to come through. A lot of the challenge is where the carbon sits in our supply chain. So 38% of it's sitting at tier two in the dyeing and finishing of the of the product. So, you know, with fabric, that's a real challenge for us. Um, but what we're starting to really see is the effects of the decarbonisation projects that suppliers are doing at tier two. Um, so using the Higg data, we're able to see what's happening at tier two, and then we're able to support that with a carbon leadership program that's run by the AI, and we're able to see um and help with engineering projects. Um, we've actually signed up a programme with Schneider Electric, a three-year programme, and that's to help our suppliers um see what access they can get to renewable energy, help them look at purchase power agreements and other certifications. Um, and so um we're helping get webinars for our suppliers to join, help them get one-to-one consultations, um, because obviously we're not energy experts across the world, um, but that's able to help. But what's really interesting is that when you walk into some of the suppliers who've done these um projects or have done decarbonisation projects already, you walk into the mill and you think, oh, something's a bit different in here. But actually, by doing some of the projects they've done, um, you know, the steam's encapsulated or the actual factory itself feels cooler or feels different, but that's because a lot of the projects are actually reducing or saving the heat and doing work inside the facility. So it's actually um improving the factory environment as well. But we've also joined the Future Supplier Initiative, which the um guidehouse are running. Um that was a project that Mango and HM and a few other um retailers were already doing, which is helping um loans uh provide loans to suppliers to help them do those really big projects where they're changing their boilers over to say biomass from coal.
SPEAKER_01Those are really amazing initiatives to help your suppliers to become more educated and understand how they're able to decarbonize their operations. And really interesting to hear about the progress with materials and moving away from virgin to recycled and making sure that those sources are sustainable. So um Marks and Spencer's has been running Take Back since 2008 in partnership with Oxfam. Was it 36 million items that have been channeled towards reuse as a result and fundraised around 23 million pounds? What an amazing achievement. 2008 was almost 20 years ago. What did take back look like then when Marks and Spencer's was first starting?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so a very different place, obviously, than today. It was the first take back scheme in the UK. Um, and what's interesting about it then was there wasn't really that many options, and people didn't really know what to do with their garments or what was happening. And a lot of garments at the that point were going into landfill. Um and so they actually had Joanna Lumley, um, interestingly, um, with the CEO um in Brick Lane, kind of um do a massive kind of opening for for for schwapping, as we called it then. Um very difficult to say and very difficult to spell. Um, but schwapping was um I can picture her saying it's yeah, and looking fabulous. Yeah. Um so that was introduced in 2008, and and it was the first of its kind, and it was really trying to get people to think about their clothing and thinking about you know what could they do with it next and where could they bring it, um, and trying to keep it out of um the bin. And we had a hundred different businesses involved and and working with us um at that at that point. And circularity looked very different then to how it does today, um, and how we as brands and retailers all think and talk about circularity. You know, we go to conferences about it, we're talking about it constantly with our design team, so it is very different um to what we think about it today. And and then it was sort of almost thought about two different things because as a brand, we've been talking about how we design our products, how we make our products with our made well made-to-last high performance standards. Um, but that was wasn't talked about as part of swapping, it was two very different things. Um, so it was really about trying to get the customer engaged. Um, we worked with Oxfam, we put on the care labels, I think, in 2010, a little recycle with Oxfam symbol, and that again was nudge behaviour to try and get people to think about dropping their products into the Schwab bins, as they were known, into stores. You could drop it into the Oxfam stores. There's over 580 of those stores across the UK. So if you drop them into there, or you could bring them into our stores, and that's kind of how it got started. Um, so just amazing to think that that was 2008, um, and there was kind of no other scheme like that at the time. Um, and great to have like, you know, an icon like Joanna Lumley sort of kicking that off um and getting getting us started.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen Motherland? She's so hilarious in that. She's really good. She's absolutely fabulous, isn't she? She is absolutely fabulous. For for take back to have started in 2008 and fast forward to today, and we've gone from schwapping to another life. Tell us about that transition and rebranding and what another life means for Marks and Spencer's today.
SPEAKER_00It was really about bringing together all the parts of circularity and really trying to bring it all together to make it for the customer. I think the main aim was really thinking about convenience because one of the ways to try and help the customer and make a customer do things differently is about convenience and make things available and really easy to the customer. Um and really we think about another life in four ways. We think about rep rewear, which is, you know, you buy something and we want you to wear it and we want you to love it for longer. We make it, we have our made well, made to last standards, and that's really even down to how many stitches per inch, how we make the garment, how we test the fabric before we even buy it, how we test the fabric during production, you know, how we check all the trims and componentry, and really like how we design, you know, 80% of the impact environmentally of a garment is in how you design the product and think about how it's going to be used. So that's all about reware for us. Then we have um the kind of repair. So as we started to introduce a repair scheme, whether that's our repair videos or whether that's our relationship with Sojo and the repair service that we wanted to offer, then again, it sat under that another life because again, it was a nudge behaviour to say to the customer, you can continue to love this, the button just needs to go back on, or yes, your zip needs replacing, but the garment itself is in perfect condition. So how could you do that? We chose that relationship with Sojo because it was a really simple, easy relationship. So it fitted into that another life again. So it's trying to bring everything under that same umbrella. And then the same with the resale. What does resale look like for 2026? Bringing that up to date and having an online offer as well as our um another life bins in stores and our relationship with Oxfam. How could we make another online convenient option for someone who wants to send it from home and doesn't want to have to bring into our stores or into the Oxfam stores? So that was kind of what we were trying to do with the um resale parts. And then obviously, absolute end of life when there's nothing else that can be done with that product, then having that um recycle and thinking about what recycling projects we can do, being part of the app project and looking and trying to think forward of how we can do recycling projects, how can we look and think about the automatic sorting, what kind of sorting projects, and obviously working with Oxfam with what they do receive, um, how they can sort and how that can be industrially recycled into different um, you know, carpets, underlay, other opportunities that that do exist at the moment. MS. We always think about the customer first and what are the solutions that are going to kind of help the customer. Um, but also it is really hard to say swapping. And another life, I think, just really brings it all together really nicely.
SPEAKER_01Another life, we've got repair with sojo. Yeah. We've got resale through reskin and eBay, we've got recycling as part of the ACT project. Let's start with Sojo, because that came out of the accelerator fund. Could you share with us what the accelerator fund is?
SPEAKER_00The accelerator fund is a million-pound fund, and that's shared with us and the feeds team. Um, and it's spread across the business each year. Um, and we go to the business and we say, Oh, we found an interesting project with a startup or a company, um, and it has to be um to show how we can um lower environmental impact or social impact. Um, and we have to take the project, fill out a project plan, say how much money we want to draw down from the fund, um, and then it gets approved through the NESG committee, and then we can kick off the project. So with the repair one, we wanted to sort of see, like, you know, is there even an appetite for it? Um, obviously, we know if we can get um a garment worn many more times, then we're lowering the environmental impact of that garment um by continuing to wear it rather than it being stuck in the back of someone's warehouse or them putting it into the bin potentially at home, because we know from a lot of the studies out there that 40% of the garments just go in the bin at home, which is frightening. So we wanted to kind of prove, you know, would that even work? Was there an appetite for the MS customer to do that? Um, and would they send MS clothes or other clothes? Because we didn't want to close it up to just MS products. Um, so we um borrowed some money from the Accelerator Fund to kind of start that project off and kick it off. And we did a massive kind of piece across the industry to look at all the different types of repair out there, all the different companies that were offering it. And at the time, you know, Sojo felt like a really good match because it was online, so it was open to all of our customers. It wasn't going to disrupt anything that was happening with our store colleagues and trying it out ourselves. Um, we found it really easy to use. Um, I had a product that I wasn't quite sure how to describe it, so I did a call with the tailors um and did a you know, like a chat, online chat with a video call, and they were like, Oh, it's you, Catherine, how are you? And did a chat, showed them the problem. They explained how to describe it, showed them what it was, and brilliant, it came back a couple of days later, repaired beautifully, and you know, the garment was wearable again. So absolutely brilliant. Because not every customer is going to have um the finances to necessarily spend on a repair. So we also did online videos because again, that can be a challenge because not everybody wants to spend the money on a repair, um, and not everybody has also um the skills to do it at home. So we wanted to offer also videos on our website as well to so that if people want to try and do it themselves at home, they can watch the videos and and have a go.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Learn a new skill set. Yeah. So I think you said you I can sew a button, you can sew a button, but I think that's probably the extent of my repair capabilities.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's about mine as well. But there's options there to watch the video and learn and have a go yourself, or you know, use um the Sejo option as well. So we've got the both there.
SPEAKER_01Markson Spencer's is doing so much to help change consumer behavior. You mentioned about how with the takeback having uh something on the label to encourage consumers to donate to Oxfam, either direct or through MS. And you're talking about repair now, giving your consumers the option to not only repair their favorite MS garment, but another garment as well, and even learning online. What do you think are some other key enablers to help drive that behavior with consumers to be more sustainable and to help like lengthen the time we we love our clothes?
SPEAKER_00There's definitely um lots of different ideas to get people to just think differently about their clothes. Um, we've done an interesting one with kidswear, for example. We put a label in the back of the kids' coats. And with children, um, they grow so quick, they just into the next size before you know it. So that's proper fast fashion. Yeah, yeah, they do grow so quick. So we were trying to sort of get people to think about, you know, do they sell it on, do they pass it on, can they gift it on? And so we put labels in the back so that you can, you know, cross out the child's name and then someone can write the next child's name in, because obviously they also lose their colours really easily in the cloakroom. Um so that was a kind of nudge behaviour to suggest like, can you pass it on? Could you drop it into the another life bins? Could you pass it on to Oxfam? And we still know there's that 40 odd percent of people putting things in the bin that is still some of them good to sell. So trying to give that incentive to that behaviour. So if you take a bag of products into an Oxfam store with MS and MS products in it, Oxfam will give you a five pound voucher, and then you can buy something in MS with a £35 spend. And then if you go into MS um store and put it into the um box or you send it in online um to reskinned, then you'll get a voucher as well. That incentive was helping us um get people to donate rather than leave things locked up into their wardrobe that they're never going to wear again.
SPEAKER_01We've got to keep in mind that the products that are being donated for Oxfam are helping to fundraise for their beneficiaries.
SPEAKER_00When we looked and were talking to eBay, we realized we were the third most search brand on eBay, which was just incredible. And so when we were thinking about doing our own online resale platform, it just didn't make sense to work with doing it ourselves when our customers are looking on eBay for our product. So we decided to work with um Reskined and eBay. They were the like the two experts in this area, and then we give 15% of our donations to Oxfam from that because it just made sense to continue our partnership, but which is really interesting to see um what's the products coming through to Reskin because again, not everybody wants to drop it to an Oxfam store, not everybody wants to bring it into one of our stores, so giving them an online option as well, and it's just been really interesting to see how that really suits some of our customers and giving them that flexibility.
SPEAKER_01And through your partnership with eBay, Marks and Spencer's recently did a live shopping. Yeah. Tell us about the live shopping. This is quite a quite a new thing. Well, not really, I guess live shopping. I when I think of live shopping, I think about QVC many, many years ago. But I think it's come a long way. So what is live shopping like today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that was a really fun event. Um, and we had a couple of stylists doing a live shopping event um with eBay. Um, so again, they did a live shopping, they had, you know, a lovely rail of all the products. There were some really old school St. Michael products that had been donated. That's gonna be amazing to see. Yeah. So I think one was an old leather jacket, one was an old ski like sweatshirt um sweater. Um, I think one of our team actually um bid for that one. Um, and so you know, people were bidding, asking questions, um, loads of really fun interaction. And also the stylist talking about like, you know, how you could wear a product, what to wear it with, and talking about like the age and the type of the products. When people buy new, they're able to look at the product, think about how it's styled, and maybe when they're buying secondhand, they worry that that's a problem. But I think we really need to learn that secondhand doesn't mean second best. More live shopping in the future. Yeah, watch out, watch this space. I think that will definitely happen again because yeah, such a fun event.
SPEAKER_01Another life. We've covered take back, we've covered repair, we've covered resale. Let's go on to recycling. You mentioned ACT, the automated sorting project, which you did in partnership with UKFT, and that concluded in 2025.
SPEAKER_00This is a project that was um UKFT, um, and it they were running that with um Innovate UK Money and lots of um consortium partners. And so we we were really you know pleased to be asked to be part of that and um with Oxfam and with some other brands and sort sorting partners. Um and what was really interesting about that is we were looking um not a wearable, um just a wearable product, but also NRT, so non-rewearable textiles. Um, and so there was um a couple of other brands and their collection partners as well. And um, we what we were looking at was how could you ask um a customer to sort between what was not wearable and what was wearable and send in to us. So we did a kind of online collection point with um with Oxfam. So we put the money aside to do this project um and we ordered all the bags, got ready for the project. Um, our comms team did an amazing job at getting, you know, information into the Guardian, all went live. 6,000 bags went out in the first five or six days. Amazing. And we all started to panic because we were like, oh no, we've only got 9,000 bags of the whole three-month project. Get more bags. Yes. We're like, panic, um, which is great because it just showed us that so many people have got a stash of clothing at home that has maybe stains, maybe um holes in it that cannot be repaired, that they don't know what to do with, um, but they aren't putting it in the bin and they aren't sending it into um, you know, donation banks. So it just showed that there's product there that isn't waste, because I don't like to call it waste. It's a resource, but at this point, we don't have the facilities in the UK to recycle it into textile to textile. Yes, there is what I call industrial recycling. I know some people call it downcycling, but at the end of the day, it could be under carpet underlay for many more years than it would be in a t-shirt. So um it was just a really interesting project, and we were really, you know, lucky to be part of that project to learn about um the need for automated sorting plants to be able to scan that textiles and sort it into the different fibre types and then cut and pre-process to remove what's known as the disruptors, so the buttons, the zips, any of the kind of what we would call it in the retail side, trim uh out of the garment so that you have the fabric left and then able to, you know, process those separately and make those back into um recycle them back into textiles. People think that polyester can't be recycled and cotton cannot be recycled, and you know, wool can't be recycled. All of these things can be recycled if they can be separated and if the disruptors can be removed, but it's about cost and it's about the actual facilities to be able to do that. Um and in some countries that's already happening, but in the UK, unfortunately, we don't have those facilities uh yet. There's so much opportunity, and that's you know, um, I'm so excited about you know what the future's going to be in the next few years once we can get um an industry built up. Here because it's going to bring green jobs, it's going to bring opportunity in terms of um fiber to fiber textiles, um, which will then be able to go back into products again um and deal with kind of the waste um challenges um from textiles once you know we finish with clothing and can't um rewear it and and can't repair it.
SPEAKER_01Um that pilot project was is set another great example of how consumer behavior can change and it's a right it's about the right messaging. And we are able to separate reusable from non-reusable and and make sure that we are keeping textiles out of the bin. Going back to another area of another life, we have the garment takeback, but then there's also the beauty take back. What is happening with all these empty beauty boxes?
SPEAKER_00We have our beauty boxes as well, um, and they often sit in the beauty area of our stores. We have a really great partner, um Handel, who um worked with us on our beauty um takeback scheme. Um, and they are all taken back um to their facility, they're all washed, cleaned, and sorted, and often they can be separated into like many different um segments and parts because it's very complex, the the packaging. Um, and then once that's done, um they're all then separated and then um ground down, and actually um products are made from them, and they're actually um hairbrushes and combs that are made and sold out of the um contents of those products. Um so that's quite nice because it's actually a secular product to some degree and that's come from the waste that people have um put into those boxes. So um, yeah, if you see them, please drop some product into them. Um, because you know, again, people are putting them in the bin at home when often um their local um councils or recycling centers don't take that product, so um, bring them to our stores.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a really great initiative because there are have been times where I have been hesitant to put something in the recycling bin or the general waste bin because so many components. So I'll bring bringing it to MS. Any excuse to go to MS. Especially that food hall. Love it. What do we have to look forward to for the year ahead that MS is going to be doing? We've got repair, we've got resale. What's next?
SPEAKER_00We are relaunching a plan A to 2030. So um, Plan A started in 2007, which again feels like a very long time ago. And really, that's our sustainability journey that really underpins how we do business. Um, and it sets out kind of for foods, for fashion, home, and beauty, and the entire business about kind of how we make and source product with care and the people within our supply chains and within our business. Um, and so now we're you know resetting to what that looks for like for 2030. Um so really excited um how that will relaunch this year with um set key targets about another life, um, about our scope three emissions um and also you know, like what plans we have um to hit for 2030, um including you know our marks and starts. Um we have that in our um sourcing offices. So we work um to make sure that people from disadvantaged communities can get roles in our working with our um factory partners um in overseas across our different regions. So within um Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, um, we've helped people get into roles. We've got um one team member, Sandra Marley, who's been uh in Sri Lanka in the factory for um over 20 years. Oh cool, amazing. Been working through the marks and starts um journey. We've just had our Bangladesh 20-year celebration um last month. Plan A. Why plan A? Well, for us it's about um firstly plan A because there is no plan B, but it's about being a trusted brand um and retailer and um it's about doing the right thing. I think that's how we we're always taught throughout the business, you know, from the chairman and the CEO down, it's always about, you know, you've got to do the right thing, is what we are as a business, and it underpins everything we do.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Plan A, because there is no plan B. Let's get it right the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Going back to the beauty take back and how currently the technology allows us to take the plastic products and make it back into a new product. We want to get there with textiles too. We want to get to textile the textile recycling. Where are we and and where do we need to get to? And how are we going to get there?
SPEAKER_00We're hoping that there will be automatic sorting facilities in the UK. I I think it's on the horizon and due this year and that there will be some sorting plants. Um, we know that a lot of the companies making the sorting plants have plans to be in the UK this year for at least pilots. So we're looking forward to hoping to see if we can be part of some of those. I think the challenge is investment. If the government signals um in the circularity growth strategy that they will be setting EPR in in the coming years, that will then allow investment into new business models, um, which will allow investment into automatic sorting, recycling industry to set up in the UK, um, and that will make a big difference to the industry. Um, that will support the collectors' sorters, that will support um chemical and mechanical recycling, and it will um you know allow for the automatic sorting plants to be built and engineered here. So um that'll make a big difference. But I think until the government signals that an EPR is coming, even if it's after 2030 or even towards 2035, until that happens, the investors won't won't be looking to invest, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01EPR is a great tool to help invest in innovation. And we see it happening with textiles in Europe. I mean, in France it's been around since 2007, but now we know it's happening all across the EU ahead of that June 2027 deadline. So it'll be interesting to see what happens here in the UK. Yeah, and like you said, how that features in the circular economy growth plan. And one thing that's great about the UK is the strong charity retail presence and the collectors and sorters. So it really is just that next step of investing in the current mechanical infrastructure because, like you mentioned, it's important. We call it downcycling, but it it is recycling. We we need the products that are being made. And to see what kind of cool stuff we can do with chemical, with thermal, with bio, what's some innovations, innovative stuff you've seen in the the textile recycling space?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I think we've seen a lot of stuff from um both here in the UK with startups, but also, you know, offshore when we've been visiting, um we have a lot of challenges with cutting waste in factories. Obviously, when they cut out of garment, there's waste. So we we're doing a lot of recycling with that waste um in the different countries we operate. Um we've seen everything from you know doing mechanical um recycling with that and chemical recycling with that back into product. Um we've also seen um garment recycling um in in a lot of countries that are working where they're doing take back schemes of their own. Um we've seen that in China, seen that in India where they're doing take back schemes and then chemically or uh mechanically recycling garments, literally cutting out the zips and buttons off and then um recycling the garments. Um so you kind of think like, why are we not doing it here if we're able to do it there so easily? Um, but you know, obviously it always comes down to the cost, which is why the automatic sorting um is needed, I think.
SPEAKER_01You've mentioned really innovative stuff that's happening with material manufacturing. And we've also touched upon some really cool stuff that's happening on the textile recycling side of things, especially when it comes to voluntary take back, which is what, again, going back to MS in another life, that's what you're doing is voluntary take back. It's something that EPR mandates, but ahead of EPR being mandated in the UK or even beyond the UK, elsewhere. What advice would you give to brands and retailers that are looking to start their own take back? What's important to keep in mind to ensure that it's scalable?
SPEAKER_00We found doing research um was always that a charity partner or someone um who can work with you and help you do this is probably the easiest way. With your own um logistics and your own infrastructure set up to bring product in and then ship to your stores or to your customer, it is sometimes quite challenging to bring things back in. Um so often working with a charity partner or a retail, uh specialist in this area, such as our partner Reskined, um, made much more sense because they're set up to do this as a professional entity. And so this was a lot easier to work with them on than it was to try and do ourselves because we're not in every town and city and we're not in every area. Whereas Oxfam have over 500 stores, so having a partner that the customers could go to as well as our own stores just makes it so convenient, and for us that's really important, and I'm sure it is for other brands to be convenient for the customer, and also to have an online option is really, really important as well, as we've learned in the last um not even six months. When one of the things that's challenging is for a brand is whenever they're starting a new project is having the um the right business case for your um C-suite. And I think it's really important to think about the sustainability side of it, but also the customer side of it and why you're doing things, but also thinking about the future legislation part of it as well. What's the best way to think about eco-modulation of um what's going to be an ESPR and looking at the future legislation risks? Um, I think that also making sure that you're building that into your business case is always um really important.
SPEAKER_01And this links back nicely to that consumer reward to help support that financial business case for starting take back. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_00And we often find that, you know, people do donate a lot more product than you think they're going to donate, um, which, you know, is an is a great thing for Oxham to be able to support all the great work they're doing, which is which is brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much to my special guest, Catherine from Marks and Spencer's for joining us today on Circular Soundbite series Thread Talks. If you enjoyed today's episode and would like to listen to more, check us out on all major streaming platforms or our YouTube channel. And if you'd like to learn more about Reconomy and the circular economy, check us out at Reconomy.com.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Circular Soundbite, Reconomy.com