Across Hong Kong, 130 companies, clubs and schools joined our campaign to learn about the impact that fashion has on the environment by donating their unwanted clothes in the Get Redressed Clothing Drive and helping us to redistribute them at the 24 Hour Sort-a-thon. We were also excited to work with 21 schools in 2019, who not only took part in the clothing drive but took advantage of our brand new school resources pack. The campaign also saw public awareness adverts across the MTR and the creation of an online resource hub for consumers. We have loved hearing your feedback and receiving photos of your campaigns - from donation boxes, holding Get Redressed Days to celebrating wearing and sharing what we have instead of buying new, and even holding your own secondhand clothing markets - every story is just one step in bringing about positive change in our attitudes to how we consume and dispose of fashion.

Redress would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their time, donations and support. We could not have created such an impactful campaign without the generous support of our sponsors Li & Fung, Swire Community Caring Fund, Swire Properties, DBS Bank, KPMG, Redbox Storage, LKF Group, PizzaExpress, Eat Natural, IKEA, MANA!, Peroni, Sofe.Coffee and Urban Spring.

Stats in a Nutshell

Whilst the volume of clothing collected throughout Get Redressed Month is a significant achievement, the true impact is the number of people, both young and old, who have engaged with the campaign to drive a circular future for fashion.

First Ever Get Redressed Sort-a-thon at Swire Properties’ Berkshire House

The culmination of our Get Redressed Month campaign was our first ever “Sort-a-thon”, held on 21 and 22 November. It involved six four-hour clothes-sorting sessions with corporate and community volunteers across two 12-hour days at Berkshire House, Taikoo Place. This was the biggest volunteering event Redress has ever hosted, and possibly the biggest sorting event in Hong Kong! The aim of the Sort-a-thon was to sort through all 15.4 tonnes of clothing donations collected in the Get Redressed Clothing Drive in just 24 hours, while bringing volunteers face-to-face with the issue of textile waste and giving them some insight into Redress’ work and the challenges of keeping clothing in use. The 15.4 tonnes of clothing was emptied out into a giant “clothes mountain” which served as a powerful visual reference of the scale of the textile waste problem in Hong Kong. We calculated that 15.4 tonnes is merely one hour’s worth of Hong Kong’s textile waste (at a rate of 370 tonnes of textiles entering Hong Kong’s landfills daily).

The Sort-a-thon involved 419 volunteers from 20 companies and the community, with an overall count of an incredible 2,124 manhours required to weigh and sort the donations into 20 sorting streams, including re-sale, re-use, recycling and downcycling.

Of the 20 different clothing streams at the Sort-a-thon, the charity donation stream is one of the largest and Redress partnered with 19 charities to provide carefully sorted clothing that meets the exact needs of their beneficiaries, as well as each organisation’s individual capacity. Clothing suitable for re-use was donated to the following 19 charities: Castaways Charity Shop (St John’s Cathedral), Christian Action Centre for Refugees, Cornerstone International Church of God, Crossroads, Friends of the Earth, Green Ladies & Green Little, H. K. S. K. H. Tung Chung Integrated Services, Hong Kong Dog Rescue, Impact HK, J Life Foundation, Mission to New Arrivals, Oxfam, Pathfinders, Po Leung Kuk, Remar Association, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Run Hong Kong, The Salvation Army, and YWAM Tuen Mun. “ImpactHK are very proud to partner with Redress. The work they do is outstanding, plus the Get Redressed Sort-a-thon greatly supports our organisation and helps the homeless and less fortunate in Hong Kong,” said Jeff Rotmeyer, Founder of ImpactHK.

Volunteers were treated to live music provided by DJ Mengzy, DJ Benny Cullen, DJ Katie Abrams and DJ Koppa, a chillout area by IKEA, water by Urban Spring, beer by Peroni, cold brew coffee by Sofe.Coffee, energy bars by Eat Natural and food by MANA! and PizzaExpress. 207L of water were drank over the two days and therefore 732 single-use plastic bottles were saved through Get Redressed Sort-a-thon together!

Redistribution to Charity Partners

Sort-a-thon Clothing Redistribution Streams

1 “One garbage truck of textiles wasted every second: report ....” 28 Nov. 2017, https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/news/one-garbage-truck-of-textiles-wasted-every-second-report-creates-vision-for-change. Accessed 20 Nov. 2019.

2 “2019 Resale Report - thredUP.” https://www.thredup.com/resale. Accessed 19 Nov. 2019.