Since its launch ten years ago, multi-award winning social enterprise The Clothing Bank has revived 10 million items of clothing waste (worth R600 million), touched the lives of more than 3 000 previously unemployed mothers and over 200 men.

In 2015, the fashion industry produced 92 million tons of waste. Globally, 80% of discarded garments are headed for landfills, where they can take hundreds of years to decompose. In South Africa, many children are raised in single-parent households, run by mothers who rely on state grants to sustain their homes. The Clothing Bank works at the intersection of these two issues.

The organisation, founded by Tracey Chambers (on the left) and Tracey Gilmore (on the right), offers income-generating opportunities, a two-year training programme and nurturing environments for women on this programme. End-of-sale clothes and customer returns are donated by South African fashion retailers, such as Woolworths, The Foschini Group, Edcon, MRP, Pick ‘n Pay Clothing, and Truworths which are sold to these women at discounted prices. They then sell the product on for a profit through their micro-enterprises.

It all started in 2010. Tracey Gilmore was working with unemployed women to prepare them for job interviews. She collected second hand clothes for the interviews but “found that accessing clothing was the easy part, finding job opportunities for the women I wanted to help was a lot more challenging.”  During this time, she met Tracey Chambers, who worked  at Woolworths, one of South Africa’s largest retailers, and found that they shared a passion to build an inclusive society that encourages equal access to opportunities and financial freedom. After discussing how much stock is wasted in the retail supply chain, an idea was sparked and The Clothing Bank was born.

Ten years later The Clothing Bank is a centre of driven and confident women, who are learning to take charge of their lives. That energy is palpable when I visit the Cape Town warehouse in Thornton. Across from the piles of boxes is a team of women, unpacking, sorting and barcoding donated items. In return for the empowerment programme, the women volunteer time weekly to unpack, sort and barcode items.  Over 160 000 items are collected, sorted and redistributed across five national branches per month. These garments are sold to the women in the programme, at a low cost and then resold through each women’s  micro-enterprise in their communities.

The Clothing Bank has built strategic partnerships with the major South African clothing retailers, who donate excess stock. Tracey says that, “in return for donations, these retailers earn Enterprise Development or Socio-economic Development points for their BEE score cards.”

The Clothing Bank also has a big focus on education for empowerment. The organisation has the capacity to  support 1000 women (like Bukeka Kwababana pictured above) nationally and recruits five intakes annually in each of its five branches. “The women are recruited for our two-year business, finance, computer and life skills programme to equip them with the skills they need to manage and sustain their micro-enterprises. Our vision is to support, skill and inspire unemployed South Africans to eradicate poverty in their lives,” says Tracey.

The Clothing Bank has launched a SEW programme. “We don’t teach women how to sew, we recruit unemployed seamstresses and provide them with the skills they need to operate sustainable sewing businesses,” says Tracey. They have also launched The Appliance Bank which equips unemployed men with the technical skills needed to repair damaged household appliances and the skills to run their small businesses.

So the next time you wonder what happens to all the end-of-sale stock in your favourite clothing retailer, you now know where it could be going.  You have The Clothing Bank to thank for giving new life to 10 million items of unsold items of clothing.

For more information visit The Clothing Bank’s site here.

This is an edited version of Stella Hertantyo’s article which was first published on her blog Conscious Conversations