By Antonia Barthel.
For the second time, the Swedish Embassy in The Hague organized a clothes-swapping day at the Ambassador’s residence at Lange Voorhout on Saturday 24th of September. Almost 200 persons attended the event and swapped more than 1.000 items of clothing.
Every year 13.1 million tons of textiles are thrown away. With this event the Embassy showed how small initiatives like this can benefit the economy. By reusing 1 Kilogram of clothes instead of buying new ones, approximately 15 kilograms of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) equivalents, between 10.000 and 15.000 liters of water and 2.7 kilograms of chemicals are saved.
The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation has introduced this event in 2010. Since then, many other organizations as well as Swedish Embassies in the entire World have adopted this event in order to protect the environment.
Everyone who wanted to renew their wardrobe or simply wanted to do some good for the environment was invited to come and bring clothes (max. 7 items) to swap. Everything that was left over was donated to local non-profit organizations or second hand stores. Besides clothes swapping all participants had the possibility to take part in several raffles either winning a piece of clothing form the Swedish design house Filipa K or the Swedish brand Jumperfabriken.
Everyone who needed a break could enjoy tea, coffee or lemonade with Swedish sweets prepared by Markus Johansson for a 1 Euro donation to the Dutch Red Cross in the embassy’s garden. During the event, 134,15 Euro were raised for the Dutch Red Cross.
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Photography by Carlotta Duken.
