London Marathon Events (LME) and the Salvation Army Trading Company have teamed up to collect discarded participant clothing at its events.

The scheme is one of LME’s new sustainability initiatives for 2024 aimed at reducing the environmental impact of its events, with a particular focus on lowering carbon emissions, cutting waste and improving circularity.

Salvation Army volunteers will collect clothing discarded by participants prior to the start lines of all the major London Marathon mass participation events. 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.

LME head of sustainability, Kate Chapman 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.”

Salvation Army Trading Company service development manager, Richard Shea, added: "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 Salvation Army volunteers will be collecting discarded clothing at the following events this year:
• 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
• The Royal Parks Half on 13 October

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