Retailer to trial 1st UK coat hanger amnesty in eleven stores
14 Sep '07
3 min read
New research reveals that there are over 530 million unwanted coat hangers stashed away in UK homes – and that almost 100 million of them go straight to landfill every year when they could be recycled.
The average Briton has 67 coat hangers in their home and 18% of these aren't used. As a result almost a fifth (18%) of them end up in the bin. The remainder are gathering dust and taking up valuable storage space in lofts, garages and wardrobes.
M&S currently reuses or recycles all of its coat hangers that are not taken home by customers. In the last 15 years, the company has recycled over 1 billion coat hangers, saving over 32,000 tonnes of plastic from ending up as landfill.
As a result of the survey, M&S is trialling the first UK 'coat hanger amnesty' in eleven of its stores. Between 20th and 22nd September customers will be able to take any unwanted plastic coat hangers into any of the participating 11* M&S stores for recycling.
Guy Farrant, Director of Stores at M&S, said: “We've been reusing and recycling our hangers for 15 years but we know that many of our customers simply don't know what to do with their unwanted hangers.
“This research has shown us that there could be almost 17,000 tonnes of unwanted plastic hangers sitting in our homes and they could very easily be recycled. We are hoping that our customers will dig them all out – not just M&S ones – and bring them into us so that we can recycle them.”
M&S customers are currently asked if they need their coat hanger with their purchase or if they would like it recycled instead.
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