Welshpool’s Rotary Club has teamed up with the town’s Morrisons branch to launch a campaign collecting old bras for good causes.
At Welshpool’s Morrisons, a pink Bra Banks bin is giving people the chance to donate an old item of clothing to support UK Breast Cancer charities as well as environmental and international projects.
The Against Breast Cancer Bra Banks will see the old garments go to another part of the world, benefiting people in Togo, Ghana and Kenya, where bras are “impossibly expensive to make and buy”.
According to a spokesperson from Welshpool rotary Club: “When you drop a bra in one of our Bra Banks, your bras will be whisked away to start a new life on the another part of the world – Africa.
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“Here they are used to support small businesses for African women to support their families by selling the bras in the markets in places such as Togo, Ghana and Kenya.
“Bras are impossibly expensive to make and buy in places like Africa. One of the unexpected gains of the initiative, now that these bras are affordable in town markets, more women are now wearing bras and sexual assault has gone down.
“Many of the bras are resalable as they are. Some are taken apart by the African women and remade as cottage industries.
“The ones that are not reusable in any way are broken down and recycled as cotton waste and metal. Everyone is a winner.”
The initiative is designed to benefit the environment by keeping the textiles and materials out of landfills, while also raising money for Against Breast Cancer.
Against Breast Cancer have teamed up with a UK recycling company who help small businesses in Africa.
The recycling company bale-up the bras for export and donate £700 to cancer research for every metric tonne of bras collected.
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