More and more UK retailers are catching onto the circular economy. However, rather than appealing solely to their social and environmental conscience, reGAIN app, the UK’s first app for the recycling of unwanted clothing, has appealed also to their commercial sense.

Get paid to throw stuff away

Customers of retailers like prettylittlething, Superdry and Missguided, can return their unwanted clothing to pick-up points and get vouchers that they can exchange for discounts against future purchases at member retailers. This makes sense in the context of research which shows that more than a quarter of Londoners and one in ten UK residents currently throw unwanted clothing in the bin instead of recycling.

No landfill!

Crucially for all parties in the deal, none of the returned goods go to landfill. This is co-founder Jack Ostrowski’s pledge and he backs it up with commitments to other environmental initiatives such as Ellen MacArthur’s foundation which is working to solve the problem of plastic and fashion pollution, and runs Make Fashion Circular.