By Jessica Ocheltree
TOKYO —
At the bottom of your drawers or in the back of your closet, you
probably have some perfectly good clothes that you haven’t worn for
ages. Whether they’ve gone out of style, faded a little or just no
longer fit, they’ve been cast aside until the day they end up in
the trash or are reincarnated as cleaning rags.
But there’s a more eco-friendly and socially conscious option — for
some of those unwanted items, at least. Since March 1, Uniqlo
stores throughout the country have been accepting donations of any
of their clothing for recycling.
The company first started the program in 2001, and initially only
accepted specific items at scheduled times. The operation has since
been vastly expanded in the hope of increasing customer
participation and giving products a longer life cycle. Officially
titled the All-Product Recycling Initiative, it’s more commonly
known by the catchier moniker of Uniqlo Recycle.
“We strive to reduce the environmental impact of our business
activities in a sustainable manner because we produce more than 500
million [units] per year,” explains Eiko Sherba, from the Corporate
Social Responsibility department of Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast
Retailing.
Such prodigious output is a recipe for a whole lot of landfill, so
the company started looking at other options. Their first plan was
to process the used clothes as fuel, but then the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees expressed an interest in sending
them to refugee camps.
Aid workers often have difficulty ensuring that refugees have
proper clothing to protect against the elements, so Uniqlo began by
collecting items from their popular fleece line. This initiative
was so well received that they expanded to include all Uniqlo items
in 2006.
After clothes are collected, they are sorted. The roughly 10% which
aren’t in sufficiently good condition are sent for conversion into
industrial fiber or fuel, and the remainder distributed with the
cooperation of the UNHCR, Japan Relief Clothing Center and Japanese
Organization for International Cooperation in Family Planning.
These groups make sure that the deliveries to camps are suitable
for local weather, meet the demographic needs of the population,
and are culturally appropriate.
Last year, the program collected a record 2.62 million items and
provided emergency clothing aid to victims of violence and natural
disasters throughout Asia and Africa. Now that it has begun
collecting items year-round and can ensure a larger and more
consistent flow of clothing, Uniqlo hopes to reach more of the
estimated 30 million refugees and internally displaced people in
need this year.
“We place brochures and posters in Uniqlo stores, and we report to
our customers what we have seen and felt at the refugee camps
through our website,” says Sherba. They may not have to try very
hard to promote the program, mind you, as the response so far has
been extremely positive.
“Customers aren’t rewarded for bringing clothing back to the store,
but they support our initiative,” says Sherba. “They are so happy
to bring clothing in to the store, because they have a lot of
clothing at home that they can’t dispose of.” Uniqlo only asks that
the donations be laundered and not stained or torn.
Even with the increased responsibility of year-round collection,
Sherba is already looking forward to the next step. “In the future,
we would like to expand this to overseas stores and we are thinking
about expanding to our sister brands.”
While Uniqlo Recycle is an admirable example of corporate social
responsibility and cradle-to-cradle thinking, it’s a program that
can’t work without the participation of its customers. Sherba
encourages Metropolis readers to bring in unwanted items, even if
it’s only one.
“That one piece of clothing you don’t need may be the one piece of
clothing somebody else does.”
To find out more about Uniqlo Recycle, see
http://meturl.com/uniqlorecycle
This story originally appeared in Metropolis magazine
(www.metropolis.co.jp).