The Swapshop is a social start-up with the mission to extend the life of clothing and other fashion items and make swapping the norm. Their initiative started in 2018, with the aim of making fashion consumption more sustainable and circular. They organized small swap events under the name Awearness Kollektif. Their events became bigger and better known with partners such as BlueCity010 and Motel Mozaique. 

Since they knew that events were not going to change the linear system of consumption in the clothing industry, on August 31, 2019 they opened the first physical swap shop in the center of Rotterdam, and later Amsterdam. Customers can bring clothes and gain 'store credit' currency called 'Swaps' to later redeem other items in the store.

The rapid purchase-to-discard ratio of fast fashion and piling up of clothing in landfills, often made from synthetic materials which do not decompose easily. When consumers throw away clothing in the garbage, not only does it waste money and resources, but it can take 200+ years for the materials to decompose in a landfill. During the decomposition process, textiles generate greenhouse methane gas and leach toxic chemicals and dyes into the groundwater and our soil. There is also the unmet potential of clothing which could be resold, and its lifetime extended- as opposed to manufacturing new clothing which requires more energy and water use, and is associated with more carbon emissions. Finally, there are lack of incentives for people to responsibly pass on/resell their unwanted clothing due to the associated costs- be that time or monetary (e.g. shipping).

The Swap Shop addresses these problems through providing an easy way to redirect unwanted clothing and thus divert it from landfills. It also provides a swapping marketplace thus encouraging looking to second hand and diverting ‘new new’ purchases, thus hopefully slowing down resource depletion. The Swap Shop also provides an incentive for consumers to give them their clothes, since they can redeem 'new' second hand clothing in exchange for their donation, thus making them more attractive than a local textiles bin.