What is Circular Fashion?

Today we want to talk about circular fashion, and what we're doing to ensure our underwear don't end up in landfill, and can be turned into something useful!

What is Circularity in Fashion?

Circular fashion systems can take three different forms, starting with recycling old garments into new ones. It then can occur during a garments life, through repairing or up-cycling them into something new. Finally, we also need to look at the end of life solutions for garments - like more recycling or composting. 

What We're Doing to Be More Circular

At the start of 2022, we implemented a circular fashion scheme that allows us to collect and recycle underwear, socks and tights. We accept any brands, not just our own, and recycle the textiles through TerraCycle. They're used for industry, and don't end up in landfill. Our end goal is to have a fibre to fibre recycling scheme. 

With our sustainable business model, we are also cutting out single-use plastic and minimise our waste and impact and we’re committed to Zero Waste principles. In our latest initiative to reduce waste, we’re working with YagoEco; a small business who will be turning our green recycled plastic mailers into earrings. We’ll be collecting our old packaging from customers and hope that this project lets us further our zero-waste commitments.

Our Materials

Our underwear is Fairtrade, PETA-Approved Vegan and made from 100% GOTS Certified Organic Cotton. Organic cotton is significantly better for the environment than its conventional counterpart, causing 98% less soil and water pollution and using significantly less energy and water.

95% of our underwear is made from GOTS Certified Organic Cotton, and the final 5% is made from elastane to ensure durability, quality, comfort and stretch. We hope to improve this as garment technologies allow. 

We are proud to only use low-impact, fibre-reactive GOTS certified dyes, which use less water, contain no toxic substances and produce a limited waste runoff than conventional chemical dyeing processes.

Want to Recycle Your Underwear?

If you're local to Oxford, you can drop your clean underwear, socks & tights at our shop in Oxford’s Covered Market, directly into the TerraCycle box, 7 days a week.

If you're elsewhere, or can't get to the shop, you can post them to us at:

Y.O.U Underwear, 11 Bodley Place, Oxford, OX2 7TF

and we’ll make sure they get recycled!

Unfortunately, as a small business, we can't cover the postage costs. We are covering the recycling costs though, so you don't need to pay to have your garments processed.