University of Lancaster and Community Clothing (Lancashire) Ltd AKT 3

Community Clothing, a small online-only sustainable fashion brand, is building a system to take back its garments from customers after they are worn out. The company will test different collection methods—such as postal returns or drop-off points—and then sort the used clothes either for resale or for recycling into new fabric. The problem is straightforward: even sustainable fashion brands rarely know what happens to their products after the first sale. Most clothes end up in landfill or are exported abroad, with no way to recover the material or the value. This project aims to close that loop for a single brand, creating a transparent, traceable pipeline from customer back to manufacturer. If the take-back scheme works, it could change how small fashion brands handle end-of-life garments. Instead of relying on vague recycling claims, a brand could show exactly which items were resold, which were broken down, and what new products came from the old ones. The impact is on supply chain infrastructure—specifically, the quiet logistics of collection, sorting, and reprocessing that most shoppers never see. Success here would provide a replicable model for other small brands trying to reduce textile waste without the resources of a global corporation.