Children outgrow their school uniforms quickly and getting replacements can be expensive for families. However, as the cost of basic school uniforms has gone down due to wide availability in supermarkets, which is great in some ways of course, but the flip side is more school clothing items are being thrown away whilst still having wear left in them. Nearly a third of unwanted clothing in the UK currently goes to landfill, including millions of non-recyclable school uniforms.

A community-scale response to this is a school uniform exchange event. Individual schools can host a uniform swap for their specific uniforms (perhaps run by members of the PTA) or a community centre can host an event to exchange uniforms from all the schools locally. Local people with sewing skills can be involved to make repairs and alterations to uniforms.

Hosting a school uniform exchange during the school summer holidays (before the start of the new academic year) is a simple and effective way to:

• reduce the cost of buying new school uniforms (especially for larger families/schools with bespoke / branded uniforms)
• reduce the quantity of ‘clothing that is still perfectly wearable going unnecessarily to landfill
• reduce the need for purchasing of new school uniforms, which have a high carbon manufacturing process.