Swaps - How-To Guide
Over the 3 years of duration of Highland Community Waste Partnership project, we held 19 swaps, 4 of them were in collaboration with other local community organizations. 609 people visited our swaps, and we managed to divert 14022 items from landfill.
We certainly hope that we planted the seeds of interest in swaps among our community. We encourage Thurso-based and local community groups and individuals to take the matter in their hands and carry on with organising swishing events. Here are leaving the how-to tips and our takeaway from running swaps for the community in Thurso and area.
Firstly, the entire set of clothing swap equipment is available for hire from Caithness Asset Bank.
Clothing Swap Equipment
Thurso CDT purchased some equipment to facilitate clothing swaps. We have 4 clothing racks which are very easy to assemble/disassemble, and they have wheels for easy movement – can highly recommend our clothing racks.
We also purchased a couple hundred velvet coated coat hangers and very handy triangular collapsible containers for them. Anyone who ever tried to organise several coat hangers, will appreciate how useful those containers are!
Over the time, we cumulated couple more hundreds of coat hangers of all sizes, colours and styles which were donated to us during the swaps.
We also have pop-up tables and a thrifted lightweight standing mirror which we use for the swaps, as not every venue may have mirrors and trying rooms.
All this equipment is available for hire as part of Caithness Asset Bank and available for both organizations and individuals who would like to organize a swap/swishing event.
Now, there are a lot of ways to swap stuff. For instance, we know that our partners in Lochbroom and Ullapool Development Trust worked out a brilliant format of their Re-Love Clothing Fairs that involves money. There are other formats when one individual can only adopt as many items as they donated and some variations in between.
However, we wanted our swaps to be as inclusive, easy and “no nonsense” as possible. Anyone is able to donate as many items as they wish/can, and adopt as many items as they need/like. At our swaps. If people are only interested in donating for the swap, or only need to pick something up, they are equally welcome. We never bring the money factor into the swaps either, though quite often people who adopt something at the swap, if they didn’t contribute to the swap, feel that it is appropriate to leave a donation in return.
We used to hold our swaps on a monthly basis, to keep momentum going.
Busting stereotypes
When it comes to swaps, the main challenge is removing the false stereotype that this is “for the poor” who cannot afford buying new things. We are seeing positive changes but this stigma is still definitely out there. Therefore, we put a strong emphasis on the waste reduction side of the swaps when marketing our events. At every opportunity, we remind that the swap is for rescuing good things from landfill. And we always say “thank you for adopting the item and giving it a new life”, we make our customers feel like they are doing a favour to the planet, not getting themselves a freebie.
However, swaps shall not be underestimated as a powerful tool for acquiring otherwise unaffordable things! We casually mention that this is a “budget friendly” event when advertising swaps, though our main focus is always on waste reduction aspect. Thus, those members of our community who struggle financially feel no guilt if they adopt quite a few items, while we also sound more attractive to people on the other side of the scale, who might feel that because they are fortunate to be able to afford anything they need, the swaps aren’t for them. Swap after swap, we do notice the shift of the demographics and notice visitors with all kinds of income.
It traditionally comes to mind that swaps are fashion swaps. We broke this stereotype and organised thematic swaps for various categories of things – we swapped warm stuff (like electric blankets, thermoses, draught excluders etc.), baby articles, plants, gardening tools, pet accessories, craft items, you name it!
2 in 1
We trialled both swaps solo and hybrid events when swaps are coupled with other activities, such as repair cafes, fairs, competitions – basically anything exciting, so that we could attract more visitors. For example, as part of our pet swap, we used the fully enclosed tennis courts in the centre of Thurso to run the doggy toy swap – we laid out loads of dog toys and let the dogs in, one by one, to have fun and choose themselves a new toy.
As our swaps in Thurso become really popular, we would then twin an event with the swap to ensure footfall for it. For example, our final celebration event “Say Bye to Waste” was a swap and sustainability fair held simultaneously, and that was our way to guarantee a lot of visitors for the fair.
Logistics
One very important consideration is how you receive donations for the swap. We were fortunate to have a zero waste shop as one of our sister projects, and donations could be dropped off during some period before the swap (usually 2 weeks) during the working hours of the shop.
If you do not have a location that is open and manned for considerable periods of time, you might approach local community organisations or shops, libraries etc. with a request to be your drop off point. In such case you must make sure that you collect donations regularly so that the bags don’t pile up.
Another way is to announce one-off times when donations can be dropped off. We would recommend having at least two drop-off sessions, one within working hours, and one in the evening/during the weekend, to give a chance for people with different schedules to participate.
As a last resort, donations may be brought in straight to the swap, however, this is the least effective strategy. Firstly, because it is time-consuming, and if you are short of hands, you might never get a chance to put the donations on the display. Secondly, if someone comes with their donation closer to the end of the swap, chances for those items to be adopted are slim.
But no need to despair if you end up with a lot of items at the end of your swap. We used two routes here:
We team up with other organizations which run swaps in our area, and any leftovers from one swap become the starter for the next one in the area. With such circulation through different locations and different groups, eventually most pieces find their new owners.
We also donated all leftovers to our local charity shops, thus helping a good cause. The good thing about this route is that even if some items are not in great condition, charity shops (at least, Highland Hospice Charity Shops certainly do) have established procedures of sending off textile as rag to be recycled responsibly, and they receive small income for this.
We hope this information helps, and looking forward to seeing more swaps organized in Thurso and area!
The Highland Community Waste Partnership ran between April 2022 – March 2025. Funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and coordinated by Keep Scotland Beautiful, this project brough together eight community groups in the Highlands to reduce waste and promote more sustainable consumption. To learn more about the project visit: www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/highlandcommunitywaste