Ready, Set, Go Here! -traid

 One thing I love about St Johns Road and Clapham in general, is that for a vintage lover, bargain hunter, slightly odd taste in fashion wearer like me, is the abundance of charity shop dwellings! There are 4 within a five minute walk of my flat alone and a few months ago a fifth popped up, Traid. But this kooky clothing cave was selling something a little bit different…
At first I didn't realise it was a charity shop and I didn't quite get it. But the window displays just got  better and better and after a week of eyeballing the heavy, tapestry puffball skirts teamed with victorian chiffon blouses, it drew me in.

 TRAID stands for Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development and they have three main objectives:
• To protect the environment by diverting clothes and shoes from landfill;
• To reduce world poverty by raising funds for overseas development projects
• To educate the UK public on environmental and world poverty issues.

Why do they do it? -Do we need yet another charity shop? Well yes!
Over 900,000 million items of clothing are thrown away each year in the UK alone and are usually sent to landfill. Textiles present problems with their synthetic fibres as they don’t decompose. Wool does but produces methane, which, if you listened in science about all those cows, contributes to global warming and therefore climate change.
The World Health Organisation has numbers that suggest 150,000 people die every year from climate change.

We love fashion. fact. and the industry is doing its best to keep up with our love of new styles and latest trends and now with so many cheap retailers hitting our highstreets we’re getting rid of our garments as quickly as we’re buying them. Virgin resources are being used faster than they can be produced, toxic pesticides and other chemicals are being used to grow cotton and energy is being used to transport products around the globe - scary stuff! Grasslands are being turned into dustbowls and 85% of the Aral Sea has disappeared as a result of drainage for cotton production. 
Another thing to recognise even if you do donate your clothes already, is that thousands of charity branded textile banks make profit from the clothes. Traid are different. Although they are small they have huge ideas and run great initiatives. The money they raise is used to expand Traid’s recycling activities, fund assemblies and workshops in London schools and is  donated to overseas development projects. Another campaign they run is ‘Suit into Loot campaign. Traid not only raise awareness in the UK, help impoverished communities overseas but also provide an ethical alternative to fashion buying whilst reducing the amount of textile waste sent to landfill. Wow.

 Suit Into Loot

Is a weekly policy held at offices throughout London. Employees are given ECO-friendly jute bags to bring their unwanted clothes on the bus or the tube. Suit Into Loot staff call in at the end of the week to collect the clothes and donate them to Traid. Old suits are quite literally turned in to loot which is, in turn is put to good use by benefiting one of the overseas development projects that Traid support. The rest is cleaned and sold or or rescued, clothing that is torn or stained is reconstructed and redesigned into new one-off pieces and sold under the award-winning recycled fashion label, TRAIDremade.

School's Programme
Explores and discusses Waste, Reuse &Revamp; Recycling, Climate Change, Ethical Fashion and World Poverty with TRAID's Education Team. They run fashion customisation workshops, assemblies and activities for schools and community centres. They also lecture at universities and conferences. 
And they’ve also released a toolkit!
'Behind the Seams' is a well designed Education Pack (£45) created to train teachers to bring ethical issues in the fashion industry into the classroom. Including Lesson plans on waste and ethical fashion, Activitiy plans, Traid eco/issue awareness campaign posters, Traid Ad Campaigns, Fashion customisation techniques,  Resource lists, Fact Sheets, A Short DVD  film introducing Traid on DVD and puzzles.

Traid was founded in July 1999 from the remaining assets of Humana UK after it was closed for managerial reasons. In the same year they met Wayne Hemingway who agreed to become its patron and who has gone on to support the organisation ever since. In 2000 Traid expanded outside of London and opened its Brighton branch and in January 2002, partnered with Topman for a year, selling second-hand, vintage and customised clothing. In 2003 TRAIDremade was a finalist in the National Recycling Awards.

Traid shops stock high quality and hand sorted secondhand, original vintage, brand names and designer clothes, shoes and accessories reclaimed from the UK public via their network of Clothes Recycling Banks.  Traid Camden and Clapham also stock TRAIDremade - their environmentally and socially conscious fashion label upcycling damaged textiles into beautiful clothes and shoes.  You can also buy online at www.traidremade.com
Traid has 10 shops located in London;
Brixton, Camden, Clapham, Hammersmith, Harrow, Holloway, Kilburn, Shepherds Bush, Westbourne Grove, Wood Green
 and are open: 
Monday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm 
Sundays, 11am-5pm. 

All images were found at www.traid.org.uk are copyright of traid.

All information and content was found from the traid website.