Salvation Army joins forces with London Marathon team

The Salvation Army Trading Company (SATCoL) and London Marathon Events (LME), the team behind the London Marathon and other large-scale races, have joined forces to collect clothing discarded by participants at its events.

Salvation Army volunteers will staff collection points at the starting line for major mass participation events to collect clothing discarded by participants before the race begins. 

Volunteers will be at Brighton Marathon on 7 April, TCS London Marathon on 21 April, Ford RideLondon on Sunday 26 May, The Big Half on 1 September, The Vitality London 10,000 on 22 September and The Royal Parks Half on 13 October.

The clothing will be taken to The Salvation Army processing centre in the East Midlands for sorting and distribution to be resold, reused or recycled. 

Richard Shea, SATCoL Service Development Manager, said: "We're delighted to work alongside London Marathon Events, aligning our shared commitment to supporting the environment by utilising our textile innovations to repurpose unwanted clothing across a number of events this year.”

The scheme is one of LME’s new sustainability initiatives for 2024 aimed at reducing the environmental impact of its events.

Kate Chapman, Head of Sustainability at LME, said: “We are fully committed to reducing our environmental impact and we’re working to introduce more initiatives every year to achieve this.

“Depending on the weather conditions, on some occasions many thousands of participants in our events will discard clothing as they move towards the start line. Our new partnership with The Salvation Army means this clothing will be collected, sorted, sent for resale and reuse, or – if no longer in a condition to be reused, reprocessed through their innovative “Fibersort” technology which creates more opportunities for garments to be repurposed and diverted from landfill or incineration.”