We've partnered with Upparel
800,000,000kg of clothing/textiles is thrown away every year. That's 600kg every minute.
So we've teamed up with Upparel to minimise what goes to landfill, making
it easier for you to send your clothes back for reuse and recycling.
Gently used items are donated to charitable organizations to be reused.
Clothing with more signs of wear are upcycled into new items.
Damaged items are used to create material for new clothing or other uses.
The UPPAREL Mission
Textile waste needs
radical intervention now! At UPPAREL we’re stepping up to lead the
change and demonstrating sustainability equals success.
Collect
Customers, including individuals and recycling partner brands from all over Australia, send us their textiles regardless of their state. We pride ourselves on making this process seamless and simple.
Our approach for recycling partnerships is always carefully considered to deliver a balance of financial and social benefits. For our journey towards fashion circularity to be realised, we need to make it easy and appealing for both organisations and individuals.
Sort
Once textiles arrive at our warehouse every item is identified and sorted through to ensure whether it’s fit for wear or unfit for wear. Each item is graded by our sorting team and analysed to be sorted into two overarching categories: reuse and recycle.
For the items that can be reused, we then separate that product into subcategories, like men’s tops, women’s pants, kids’ shoes, etc.
Textiles like damaged, worn out, and stained clothing, or uniforms with official logos can’t be reused and are sorted into different categories depending on their suitable recycling channel.
Re-use
For items that are still fit for wear, we have an open-door policy for charities, social enterprises, and not-for-profits. They can come to our warehouse and collect as much clothing as they need, go out and make an impact with it, and return anything that is unused free-of-charge.
Every charity and social enterprise we vet to ensure they are Australian or New Zealand based and that the textiles provided will remain on-shore. We are providing them with guaranteed wearable goods and reducing the burden for these not-for-profit organisations to dispose of textile waste.
Recycle
Where items are not fit for wear, we break down the textiles into a variety of categories depending on their material and decommissioning required. From there, we begin the recycling process.
Mainly, this means taking these textiles and tearing them into a super fine fluffy fibre. This material we call FillUP can be utilised as is to replace virgin polyester fill for cushions and stuffed toys.
To take it one step further, we’re able to compress this fibre to create our revolutionary circular product, UPtex. This completely recycled and recyclable material can be used for packaging, signage, homewares, and more!
In addition to our UPtex recycling process, our comprehensive sorting operation allows us to support other industry leaders with suitable feedstock for their recycling approach. Why compete when we can collaborate!