RECYCLE MY GEAR
How To Recycle Your Old Outdoor Kit And Give It a Second Life
At Cotswold Outdoor, our Recycle My Gear service offers you the chance to give your well-loved outdoor clothing, footwear, and equipment a new home and keep it out of landfill. To recycle your kit, simply drop your gear at any one of our recycling points in your nearest UK mainland Cotswold Outdoor store.
As part of our ongoing mission to reduce our environmental impact, we’ve partnered with The Phoenix Resource Centre to help carefully repair and sort your kit - giving it a second life and helping others. The Phoenix Resource Centre is a registered charity dedicated to safeguarding and conserving the environment. Their initiatives advocate for waste reduction, reclamation, and utilising recycled products in the UK and beyond.
What Gear Can I Recycle?
Before heading to our recycling points in-store, please check what can and can’t recycled:
We Can Recycle:
• All types of clothing including jackets, swimwear, wetsuits, and underwear
• Clothing accessories (hats, gloves, ...etc)
• All types of footwear
• Small Tents (no larger than 5+ persons) + tent poles
• Electronics including torches, headlamps, smartwatches, etc
• Rucksacks and bags
• Sleeping bags and camping equipment incl. stoves (remove gas canisters)
• Climbing equipment
We Can't Recycle:
• Sharp objects (Knives or other objects that could be used as weapons)
• Liquids of any kind including gas canisters
• Food/perishables of any kind
• Maps and guidebooks (Instead, donate these to local charity stores)
How Does Recycle My Gear Work?
To Recycle your gear, Simply pop your kit into one of our Recycle My Gear bins located in-store, and Phoenix will come later to collect it from our warehouse to sort and send it straight to projects worldwide. This gives your kit a second life helping others. Your kit will either be re-worn, reduced to raw material, or recycled to help make new gear.
Our scheme follows the environmental hierarchy: Re-use first, Re-purpose second.
If it’s wearable or repairable, it’s re-used.
Extending the lifetime of clothing and shoes to gift to organisations around the world has the most impact because:
- Wearable clothing remains in its original form for as long as possible.
- Garments get a second life without using additional resources and impacting the planet.
Did you know? When re-used, the kit you donate helps clothe orphaned children in East Africa, and any rework goes to the Women’s Institutes of East Africa to be repaired.
If it's not wearable, it’s re-purposed.
Items that aren't wearable - or easily repaired - are divided into material types. and re-purposed through open and closed-loop recycle methods:
- Open Loop: Fibres become raw material for use in various industries; re-purposed into play equipment, as insulation, or re-purposed as dirt-catching rags.
- Closed Loop: Fibres are made into yarn to make new textiles in a textile-to-textile process.
Did you know? East African tribes often make shelters from cloth sheeting - the material we provide from donated tents can help to make them waterproof.
All UK mainland Cotswold Outdoor stores have Recycle My Gear boxes. Find your nearest drop-off point today:
Frequently Asked Questions
Textiles and fabrics – in garment form or as loose material - and any paired footwear (excluding ice skates and ski boots).
Good news - Recycling your kit in-store with us is completely free! So you can help us work towards minimal waste at zero cost.
No, but we can’t accept anything heavily soiled and ask that all products deposited are clean, dry, and not badly ripped or shredded.
We can’t accept split or splintered tent polls for safety reasons. Give life back to ripped sleeping bags, and torn feather / fibre-filled coats by instead sending them to our Repair and Care team.
Yes – any type of paired footwear can be recycled except ice skates and ski boots.
Phoenix Resource Centre collects your donated kit from our UK Head Office for sorting at their UK recycling site. Here, they work with an organisation called Olympus Core to carefully grade your donations - ahead of shipping them directly to East Africa. Olympus Core is an employment scheme that creates jobs for people with additional learning needs.
In addition to our UK mainland scheme, it is orphaned children, the homeless, refugees, and tribal communities across the globe who benefit from your donation. Since children remain in the orphanages until they are 21 years old and often become carers and teachers, much of your donated adult clothing is directed here. Learn more here.
Phoenix Resource Centre's work repurposes textiles for community aid in the UK and 59 other countries with the help of NGOs and collaborators. With a focus on education, Phoenix supports schools and colleges, delivering art and education initiatives like workshops and building sensory play areas.
As well as their educational initiatives, Phoenix provides emergency relief worldwide, sending food, blankets, medical supplies, and more to those in need. Their objective is to establish long-term community relationships through resource provisions. To date, their outreach to over 1,200 organisations has helped over 1 million people in the UK.
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