Yes it’s true. A customer complained after wanting to purchase ‘Boy Stuff’ for her daughter for Christmas. Welcome to the power of social media in the twenty first century. Marks & Spencer, the mega retailer, totaling $16.3 billion in revenue in 2013, has some mega news, and it all started through Twitter.

After a call out from a customer who wanted to purchase a marble run for her daughter as a Christmas present, she was halted by a marketing label that read ‘Boy Stuff.’ She called out Marks & Spencer via Twitter, and the company quickly responded that they would be canceling gender specific marketing for toys by spring 2014. Toys have a long history of being geared towards a specific gender, but for Marks & Spencer that is all about to change.

The company said in a statement: “’Boy’s Stuff’ will be rebranded to use a simple graphic logo, whilst the ‘Little Miss Arty’ range will become Poppy and Blue – which will use character based branding.”

As the first major UK retailer to be carbon neutral, Marks & Spencer is no stranger to innovative initiatives. During an internal assessment of the company, they found aerodynamics of transportation trucks can account for 50 percent of fuel consumption. The company responded by redesigning their vehicles for lower ‘drag’ and more fuel efficiency. The redesign rather serendipitously increased the truck’s carrying capacity by 16 percent, allowing more merchandise to be shipped by one truck than the previous designs.

In September 2012, Marks & Spencer released the ‘most sustainable suit ever,’ made from reclaimed material and GOTS certified wool. The suit claimed to be the first intricate garment made entirely from sustainable material, and was another large step forward from the company’s innovative initiatives.

Other big projects have included their Shwopping events, a collaboration with London College and Oxfam, which encourages a customer to give one article of clothing for each one purchased.

By now, corporations know, acknowledge, and act on the importance of providing options that keep sustainability at the forefront. And by sustainability I am not simply referring to environmental sustainability but, as important, social sustainability–which can truly be translated to responsibility.

From inside intel I know some of the largest corporations are taking steps towards more responsible practices, and listening to consumers, as is shown through the Marks & Spencer case. But most companies aren’t bringing information on their initiatives out to the public because they are in the midst of deep research around best marketing strategies–probably similar to why Marks & Spencer kept their gender neutral plans under wraps until the Twitter incident.

Whether a large corporation can actually be sustainable is another debate, for another time, but what is important to mention now is their efforts towards a better way of business–a triple bottom line approach, for people, planet and profits–should not be ignored.

What do non-segregated toys have to do with sustainability? A lot. The efforts of Marks & Spencer are exactly what is needed from a billion dollar multi-national corporation to try and sustain themselves in the local maker market of the twenty first century.

See Also:

7 Clues To Tell Your Garment Is Really Sustainable: Eco Fashion Dissected 

Will The Fashion Industry Ever Attain Sustainability?

Fostering a Responsible Fashion Industry: The Sustainable Apparel Coalition

image: geir tonnessen

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Oxfam and the London College of Fashion partner with Marks & Spencer to do some shwopping.

It’s always refreshing to see how far sustainable fashion has come. One needn’t search any further than the crowd at the launch of British retailer Marks & Spencer’s (M&S) new sustainable fashion initiative in East London’s Brick Lane neighborhood last week.

As vintage-clad guests sipped champagne inside, thousands of donated clothing items covered the building edifice outside, serving as a powerful visual representation of the 2 million tons of clothing that end up in British landfills each year.

Through a partnership with Oxfam and the London College of Fashion, M&S used the event to introduce the idea of “shwopping:” for every clothing item purchased in their stores, M&S wants customers to swap a donated item of any brand, which they will then pass on to British charity Oxfam. The ultimate goal is to “collect as many clothes as [M&S] sells.”

As Britain’s largest retailer, M&S launched their “Plan A” initiative in 2007, with the goal of becoming the most sustainable major retailer in the world by 2015. While the idea of shwopping addresses waste reduction, the iconic British brand – which has 21 million customers per week – is also improving its practices in the areas such as energy efficiency, packaging, food sourcing, and resource consumption.

Since 2008, when Oxfam began offering £5 vouchers to customers who donated M&S clothing to one of its many charity shops around the UK, the effort has collected 10 million unwanted garments from the wardrobes of Britons.

Despite concerns from critics that the new effort will reduce the amount of donations given to smaller charities, Leona Everitt, head of PR for OxFam, said these donations are needed now more than ever. In addition to providing inventory for Oxfam’s more than 600 hundred shops and online store, Everitt explained that clothes donated to Oxfam are also sold to foreign markets in a responsible way.

“For charity shops like OxFam, what happens during a recession is that our sales go up but our donations go down,” Everitt said. “The pieces that we can’t sell in a charity shop get sorted, recycled, or sold in a responsible way.”

Standing amid racks of clothes featuring “shwopped” pieces from various designers and celebrities, was Absolutely Fabulous actress Joanna Lumley, the public face of the shwopping campaign. Lumley, who has long been a public supporter of Oxfam, spoke about how the initiative accomplishes multiple goals: getting people to be more conscious about what they’re accumulating, reducing landfill waste, and supporting the global efforts of Oxfam.

“Fashion doesn’t suddenly have to become gloomy,” said Lumley. “But if you keep buying clothes your wardrobe will keep getting fuller and fuller. However, if you give pieces away, they will go on to have another fabulous life.”

Images: Unity PR

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While the New Year has provided the typical fashion media’s pause for reflection, coverage for the sustainable fashion movement is enjoying a few more toasts and moments of celebration.

Champagne Lifestyles. Don’t you think the Golden Globes’ red carpet fashion could have used a little more green? And I’m not talking about the emerald dresses sported by Angelina Jolie, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Elizabeth Moss. The best news about Colin Firth’s win for the Kings Speech? The spotlight will be more brightly focused on his dedicated green-living wife, Livia Firth, and her Eco Age store which offers sustainable fashion and domestic solutions.

Congrats! Along with mentoring the newly launched Awamaki Lab Initiative, Study NY designer Tara St. James won the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award for Sustainable Design. Along with seven New York-based designers who will each receive the $25,000 grant towards production of their runway show at February’s New York Fashion Week.

Hitting the big TIME. Discussions about the need for greener fashion are increasingly penetrating the mainstream media. Levi’s Water Less Jeans have garnered a steady stream of discussion-provoking coverage since the advance news of their launch hit the airways culminating in this week’s issue of TIME.

Bottoms up! Three U.K. mass market chains are broadening the reach of ethical fashion. After the well-received upcycled line From Somewhere, the popular supermarket chain Tesco announced the launch of a capsule collection from Goodone, made from factory surplus and off cuts.

Pharrell Williams’s sustainable Fabric company, Bionic Yarn, is teaming up with retailer Topshop to launch a three-piece denim collection with this season’s 70s style detailing. Retailer M&S is also launching a 70s influenced sustainable line, Indigo Green. The 15-piece collection will be made from organic, fair trade and sustainable sourced fabrics.

Image: Matt From London

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