Project Summary: Describe your contribution in one sentence

Building a collective of organisations to integrate circular economy solutions in the outdoor sector making outdoor sports more accessible and reducing their environmental impact.

What are the additional countries or territories of impact?

France, Switzerland, New Zealand

Challenge Focus: What topic does your project most directly relate to?

Website URL(s) or social media handles

https://re-action-collective.org/ https://www.instagram.com/re_action_collective/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/re-action-collective/

The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve?

The size of the problem: The outdoor industry produces tonnes of clothing and equipment waste every year. Much of this waste is made from plastic and has intrinsic value. However lots of it is sent to landfill or donated to charity where it is sent away overseas where it is often completely useless (ie. ski clothing sent to Ghana). Ghana receives 60 containers of clothes per week (approximately 20 million items) from the US, Europe and Australia. Whilst it's difficult to quantify the exact amount that comes from the outdoor sector, our experience shows that a high proportion of good kit is going to waste for several reasons: items are not well maintained, items are not repaired, items are considered 'out of fashion', items are bought online and don't fit, items are not well used.

A lack of understanding: We need to educate people about the environmental impact of their buying choices.

A lack of visibility for organisations offering circular solutions.

We formed Re-Action to challenge the linear (take-make-use-dispose) system and engage outdoor organisations to implement circular models such as repair, rental, reuse and repurpose to keep gear in use and in use for longer to reduce waste and its carbon footprint.

Your connection and commitment: How close are you to the problem and/or the community impacted?

We work within the outdoor sector - ski industry in France, but via our collective members we are also in the running community, and the hiking, climbing, sailing, cycling, camping communities.

Your approach: How are you enabling other people to identify as green changemakers? How are you influencing them to get involved in your initiative or care about the issue you are addressing?

We have a 2 pronged approach:

1. incite organisations to join the Re-Action collective to collaborate, share knowledge and co-create solutions. We do this by highlighting the amazing work of Re-Action members and forging collaborations wherever we can.

2. inform and engage outdoor enthusiasts (and citizens in general) through newsletters, social media posts, website, in person talks, workshops etc. Re-Action member One Tree at a Time is currently running a series of repair workshops designed to teach people how to repair their own clothing and equipment.

Community involvement: How is your approach involving community participation, especially the historically marginalized groups?

Re-Action focuses on community based solutions - building a network of local repairers, holding community workshops to teach repair and other maintenance skills, linking up organisations with repair solutions.

Through our work, we are making second-hand outdoor gear more available. Our aim is to democratise access to the outdoors - it shouldn't just be for those who can afford fancy kit.

Re-Action member Kitsquad is focused on collecting outdoor clothing and kit such as camping equipment from companies and individuals to donate to low income families (people living on benefits) to allow them to access the outdoors.

Re-Action member Ran By Nature makes sports clothing for women with adaptive and religious needs  (items include a sports hijab and an adaptive sports bra).

Re-Action member Vicky's Bikes is focused on mindset, adventure, bike maintenance and repair, promoting adventures, whatever your physical situation.

Re-Action member One Tree at a Time recruits people with health issues who find traditional roles inflexible to their needs.

We would like to partner with other marginalized groups as we firmly believe that access to the outdoors lets people see climate change with their own eyes. If they enjoy the outdoors they are more likely to want to protect it.

Your Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions already out there? How is your approach original and innovative? We are particularly interested in solutions that use regenerative approaches.

Our community approach differentiates us from other solutions. Rather than competing with other organisations in the same space, we collaborate. The Re-Action Collective is a community of organisations that fosters cross-collaboration. A great example of this is One Tree at a Time rescuing branded ski jackets and pants from a chalet company that closed down. They patched over the chalet company logos and gave them to another member, rental shop White Storm, who rented out the clothing to skiers hundreds of times last winter, saving people from buying new. Another example is when we linked up Outside (a family run outdoor shop) with Sheffield Clothing Repair. Now they run repair days together where customers can bring clothing to the shop for repair.

We encourage and promote the innovative approaches of our members.

Examples include Tentshare - a peer to peer tent rental platform which allows tent owners to monetise their investment and people to rent a tent rather than buy a new one for their summer camping trip. This saves a huge amount of resource and therefore carbon emissions. Kidd3r is another Re-Action member with an online peer to peer swapping function where people can swap kit they no longer need, for kit that they do. Another member Used & Loved uses API technology to help people find second hand items across multiple website across the internet. One Tree at a Time has developed a unique patching service to rescue items branded with company logos and rebrand them with creative patches bearing their logo, creating unique items that resell really well.

We also support regenerative organisations like One Tree at a Time and Earthruns.

 

Founding Story: Share a story about the "Aha!" moment that led the founder(s) to get started or the story of how you saw the potential for this to succeed.

In 2020, One Tree at a Time ran a repair day outside a ski shop in Courchevel. People were invited to bring items that needed mending and donate old ski kit that could be sold to raise money to plant trees. The result was huge - we raised 9000€ in one day! This demonstrated the amount of waste and the need for circular solutions in this industry.

Re-Action was founded to scale up the work of One Tree at a Time, which has grown into a community space that rescues, repairs and resells waste clothing and equipment from the ski industry. We saw obvious potential for this in other sports and countries.

 

Impact: How has your project made a difference so far? How is it contributing to a zero-carbon world- where every person thrives, and nobody gets left behind?

Re-Action, in under a year, has brought together 30 organisations across the world. Collectively, we are rescuing kit from landfill, keeping items in use through repair and repurpose, promoting rental solutions (over ownership) and supporting several start ups including peer-to-peer lending services and an organisation that collects donations of kit that go directly to people living on social benefits so they can access the outdoors.

 

What’s Next: What are your ideas for taking your project to the next level?

We have a project in the pipeline to launch a REPAIR REVOLUTION! This involves creating branded patches from rescued materials (such as Goretex, neoprene etc) and selling them with a bespoke sewing kit and tutorial to empower and equip people to repair their outdoor clothing and equipment. The tutorials will be professionally created by our Re-Action members and the patches will be branded to raise awareness of circular and social movements.

Your team: What is the current composition of your team (types of roles, qualifications, full-time vs. part-time, board members, etc.), and how do you plan to evolve the team’s composition as the project grows?

We currently have 3 directors - Gavin Fernie-Jones, Heather Davies and Gill Jones. We also have occasional student interns to help us. We have 30 member organisations.

Heather Davies is a Communicating Sustainability professional, with a certificate in Carbon Literacy and Business Sustainability Management from Cambridge University. She has 15 years experience in the outdoor industry.

Gavin Fernie-Jones has 30 years experience working in the outdoor industry and is about to begin a course in Sustainability Leadership with the University of Cambridge.

Gill Jones has 40 years of outdoor industry experience from running outdoor centres and a lifetime of repair experience.

We would like to grow to 100 organisations. We would like to be able to allocate more time to Re-Action, but can only do this if we can pay ourselves (we currently work on an entirely pro-bono basis). We are hoping to bring another person in an advisory capacity to help us secure funding and attract more members.

Operational Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure operational sustainability.

We plan to grow to 100 members over the next 3 years.

Each member will pay a subscription of £30 per month to cover running costs and to help us promote their solutions.

Our REPAIR REVOLUTION is designed to be profitable. We have several ideas for income streams beyond making a small profit from each patching/repair kit sold to include patterns for upcycling / repurposing items into new items and paid for workshops / online courses.

Funds will be reinvested to grow the impact of the collective.

 

VIDEO: Please share the link to a 1-minute YouTube video that answers the following “I identify as a Green Changemaker because...”. Ensure that your video does not exceed 60 seconds

https://youtu.be/9JznD9e3DmI

Impact Model: While reviewing applications, we identified a need to better understand the impact models for the innovations that applied. How would you describe the activities you engage in and what outcomes and long-term impact do they lead to?

Main activities: sharing best practice and promoting collaboration on rescuing products, reviving them through repair and repurposing them. We advise on the best ways to redistribute items through resale, rental and donation and how to reallocate profits to regenerate the outdoors.

Key stakeholders: Gavin Fernie-Jones & Heather Davies (co-founders) and the 30 Re-Action members whose activities span repair, resale, repurposing, rental and donation. Our roles are to support each other (as individuals and organisations) to have as much impact as possible in terms of keeping kit out of landfill and in action for as long as possible.

Short to medium term outcomes: raise awareness of the waste issue and circular solutions - get first adopters on board, empower outdoor communities to find solutions within their networks, reduce carbon emissions. Grow to 100 members.

Outputs measured: we are starting to measure our impact in terms of items repaired, resold and saved from landfill / clothing bins. Once we have this information we will be able to attach a carbon saving estimate to our work and promote this too.

Long-term impact: our long term goal is an outdoor industry that embraces circularity over and above the linear take-make-dispose model and that has well established communities with a variety of skills within them.

Audience: Who are you most directly impacting through your work? Who is the target beneficiary? Please specify if the population you are reaching is underserved due to any of the following characteristics?

If you chose the "Other" option, please specify

We impact a broad spectrum of society, from people (younger and older across several countries) who are already active in the outdoors but also people from poorer economic backgrounds. By giving outdoor clothing and equipment a second life, we are offering an affordable way into the outdoors for people who would not otherwise be able to afford to buy the kit new at full price.

How are you activating green changemakers?

If you chose the "Other" option, please specify

 

Organization Type: Which organization type best describes how your work or initiative has been organized or registered?

Nonprofit/NGO

Tell us briefly about how you have and/ or would like to engage partners or other changemakers to enhance your approach:

Our whole approach is based upon collaboration. We would welcome other changemakers into the Re-Action Collective as this would have the potential to broaden our geographical reach, broaden our offering (in repair, repurposing, resale, rental, donation) and our knowledge too. Other changemakers would benefit from being part of a caring, sharing collective that are continually helping each other out in practical ways as well as supporting each other mentally and emotionally.

Annual budget: Hint: What is the cost for your current operations every year (or most recent year)? This is expenditure for your project or organization. The reference currency is the U.S. dollar.

$10k - $50k

Winning Impact Potential: How would winning the Green Changemakers Challenge impact and leverage your work?

Winning the Green Changemakers Challenge would provide us with a platform to massively increase our visibility (we need more people to know about what we and our members do). 

The funding would allow us to rethink our website to put more emphasis and focus on the incredible activities of our members and launch our Repair Revolution in the UK!

 

Skills Matching: If you win, you may have the opportunity to be matched with HSBC employees for skill-based mentorship. If matched, which of the following skills would you be most interested in receiving?

Planning & Strategy