Swap Society is a subscription clothing swap service that uses a points system to give consumers equal value for their unwanted clothes. The service makes it fun, affordable, and easy for people to mix up their wardrobes in a sustainable way. People can send in the clothes that don’t fit them anymore, that are no longer their current style, or that they bought but never wear, and swap them for clothing they want to wear. By bringing value back to unwanted clothing, they are helping keep those textiles out of the landfill as well as abating the over-consumption of new textiles.

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).

Swap Society 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 second hand consumption and diverting ‘new new’ purchases, thus hopefully slowing down resource depletion. Consumers are incentivised to swap rather than donate their clothes, since this way they can exchange their unwanted clothes for potentially wanted clothes.