Clothing Swap Green

This is an idea whose time has come! Our Daily Green has long promoted the idea of thrift shopping to save money as well as resources on clothing. However, there are several drawbacks to thrift shopping, primarily the lack of predictability and the time investment. There is no guarantee that a shopper will find the right size after hours of combing the racks in a local thrift store. Online auction sites can overcome such concerns, but often at a premium price as bidding escalates.

But what if you could receive a flat priced box of the right size and style of clothing (of over 10 pieces) shipped right to your door? What if you received a prepaid shipping box to package your clothes to swap without ever having to set foot in a post office?

ThredUP is a great new online clothing and toy swap. For a nominal fee ($5.00/box plus $10.95 flat rate shipping), parents can receive a box of properly sized clothing as well as share theirs. ThredUP matches the needs through a national swap network. ThredUP capitalizes on the three Rs of environmentalism, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. ThredUP also offers book and toy swaps.

ThredUP has peer reviews and rankings to insure integrity between the swap participants. The site is easy to navigate and membership is free. Billing itself as the place for America's busiest families to easily exchange kids clothing online.  As of May 2011, the San Francisco based company's users were projected to swap over one million items. That's a lot of reusing and a lot of green saved! Our Daily Green encourages our readers to look into this swap service. ThredUP was recently featured in both The Economist and The New Yorker.

FTC disclosure: Our Daily Green is affiliated with ThredUP and receives a commission for each sign up. Nonetheless, we only promote companies that fit with our mission and that we think would be of interest to our readers. 

Be a Fan