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But one team of Suffolk parents decided that a more environmentally conscious approach was required and started a website called Patched Elephant.

Camille Nixon and Heather Durie are the Debenham based team behind the website which was formally launched in June 2007. The team wanted to provide an effective way of buying and selling good quality school uniforms and sporting equipment in local communities as a form of recycling.

"I wasn’t an online auction addict but my husband was," said Heather.

Landfill site

"I was aware that everything had a value really, so I made a website whereby people can recycle locally all these out grown and unused items that are perfectly good for somebody else to use.

"There are so many tons of textiles and other equipment that are going into land fill needlessly, and this way everyone can feel good about it.

"You can get a little bit of pocket money, the person who is buying it gets a good quality item for at least less than half the price, and everyone can feel good about themselves because they're recycling and doing their bit for the environment."

Heather and Camille with their children

According to Suffolk County Council, between 400,000 and 700,000 textile items are sent to landfill every year in the UK. Suffolk collects around 702 tonnes of textiles for recycling every year, and these are used in a number of ways including stuffing for furniture, rags and cloths for industry and for re-sale in charity shops.

Along with the cost of dealing with textile waste there are a number of environmental issues associated with particular kinds of materials. Buried wool for example generates methane, and the Environment Agency suggests that 25 per cent of all pesticides used across the world are used in cotton production, so recycling textiles can potentially make a substantial difference.

Online notice board

The Patched Elephant website is set up as a kind of online notice board, allowing both buyers and sellers to register for free and search for items within the section relevant to their local school. Each item costs 50 P to list and will be kept on the site for six months, with a percentage of the profits going to the relevant school.

"Eventually we would like to see the website working across the country, but we'd like to see things really taking off in Suffolk," said Heather.

"We've been trying to get the schools involved but it is quite difficult, so we're trying to work more directly with parents and children. I think it takes a long time to get these ideas beyond the sort of second hand school shop and for people to think it's so much easier to get things second hand."

Some of the items recycled by Patched Elephant

One organisation which has really embraced the idea behind Patched Elephant is The Old School House Nursery School based in Helmingham. Play Leader Jan Packard explained that the scheme is providing both practical and educational benefits.

"The reason we would encourage the use of the website is because we like getting children to reuse and recycle and this is a way of teaching children to think about others and our environment.

"Hand me downs have always been done in the past and children are always quite proud to think that someone else wants to have something they have worn."

The Patched Elephant, along with a number of other organisations across Suffolk, is being championed by Suffolk County Council's Creating the Greenest County Initiative. Councilor Eddy Alcock is the Portfolio Holder for Environment and Waste Management, and he is particularly supportive of environmentally conscious businesses such as this.

"Organisations of this sort that enable any kind of recycling are important and of course we support and applaud their efforts.

"It is particularly valuable to reuse an item for a second or third time and particularly encouraging to me."

There are many ways in which textile products can be re-used, including the traditional charity shops, redesigning items into new clothes, and even reusing items as cleaning cloths around the home.

Approaches such as this can provide an opportunity to be ethical, environmentally friendly and become involved in your local community.