'Every year, a young person creates 7kg of school uniform waste…in their school lifetime this is 84kg of outgrown school uniform! We wanted to offer free school uniform to all Head of Muir Primary and ELCC families through easy access to our Eco Uniform Exchange. This is because the cost of buying school uniform can really add up and the Eco Uniform Exchange is a great way to save money. Reusing school uniform also cuts down landfill waste so it’s good for the environment too. 'We firstly agreed on an area that we could use within the school and I then sourced donations of sturdy clothing rails from a manufacturing company I work for who at the same time were revamping their workwear area so it was a fabulous start for us! We wanted the area to look good and opted for red matching hangers for items to be displayed by age. We managed to also get two tall filing cabinets that were being removed from my workplace and the idea came to use them for storage of any excess stock. A few of us are a bit crafty so we made some school logo stickers for the cabinets and some clothing dividers by age. We then had a clothing donation drive and advertised it with bright posters using a free app called Canva. 'The Eco Uniform Exchange solely relies on parent and local community donations to make it work. Donations of school uniform can be dropped off at the school office or local Dennyloanhead community centre. For ELCC items, we asked they hand these into the nursery directly. All items should in good condition and have been freshly washed/pressed. Depending on stock, there will be times we hold a donation drive and ask for specific sizes and/or items. We also accept school bags and like new footwear. 'We emphasise that we cannot accept items that are damaged, torn or have no life left in them. Any items of this nature (non branded) should be donated to the rag-bag collection. The rag-bag bin is situated to the front of the school next to the gym hall fire exit door. All rag-bag donations raise money for the school too so it’s still a win-win situation for Head of Muir families. Our wonderful volunteers sort through the uniform donations to help us make sure we have as much stock available as possible. As always, our stock depends on what we have received so we ask to please check back if parents can’t find what they need. 'We recognised that some people may not be able to come into the school, so I created an online Microsoft form that allows for a request for uniform. We want to make sure that everyone can have the same access. All requests will be handled with discretion. Everyone is welcome to use the Eco Uniform Exchange - they just come into our friendly school or ELCC with freshly washed uniform items that are finished with and swap them for uniform they need. If they don’t need anything in exchange, parents simply donate the uniform. If they don’t have anything to swap, that is ok too. Parents are free to access what they need. We absolutely invite anyone to use it as they choose. 'Parent Council members and PTA volunteers as well as our Headteacher were involved. We worked well as a team to combine ideas and launch before school photo day! Our biggest success was that we supported over 50 families with uniform and we managed to also secure a donation of brand new items of school wear from our ASDA community champion. Our local community centre worked with us to also do the same and then we worked together to bundle the items and bag them into sets by age. We then worked with school to determine any specific bundles they needed made up and were also able to offer every new primary 1 pupil school wear such as trousers or pinafores. This was a lovely project to be involved with and certainly made for a positive addition to the p1 parent induction day. We were able to talk firsthand to all the parents and carers about our parent council/ PTA success. 'Our advice would be that unless you have lots of storage, avoid winter jackets until nearer a time when you will be offering these as an option. They take up so much space. We also underestimated just how much we would receive and have to store as the new school wear was way more than expected. As we are a smaller school and space is restricted, we definitely now need to invest in our own area for storage space. This will be an investment in the long run and hopefully we will secure some donations to make it feasible. 'We are so happy with how successful the exchange has been, it will most definitely encourage us to continually add to what we can offer and once we have sufficient space we are thinking to expand to include uniforms for after-school activities such as rainbows, brownies, beavers, scouts etc. Also, we have an idea for a ‘wall of warmth’ somewhere, where we can hook up outdoor jackets and have everyone help themselves once the colder weather here. 'We did not receive any funding, we just had donations and we thought outside the box for what could be of use to us that some local businesses may not need anymore.'
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