Good practice:

Promoting reuse of textiles and circular economy

Moment Česká republika o.p.s (Moment) is a Czech second-hand shop and non-profit organization that creates funds for other non-profit organizations. Moment collects second-hand garments donated by citizens and reuses, recycle, repurposes and resells them further. Moment donates all profits from second-hand to non-profit organizations. By circulating garments from citizens' wardrobes, they contribute to sustainable fashion while implementing new circular economy practices of clothing.
How it works: People sort their wardrobes at home, donating clean and suitable clothes for sale to Moment, who sorts them again and sells them in the second-hand shop. Non-salable clothing must be further recycled, which is costly. After the sale, the costs will be retrieved from the revenues of the sale, the money left will be used as donations for supporting non-profit organizations.
In 2019, Moment consisted of a sales network of 10 stores, with over 60 employees, a warehouse and a textile sorting room. Furthermore, Moment focuses on marketing and fundraising for gifts.

The development of the network and the entire organization was made possible by private funds of the founder and chairman of Moment Richard Gazda in the total amount of 175 000 EUR during 10 years of operation.

During the 10 years of their operation, Moment has managed to support 7 Czech NGOs with financial donations in the total amount of over 233 000 EUR. By collecting and sorting over 400,000 kg of textiles, and from this amount, returned to circulation and sold over 1,000,000 pieces of clothing.

A large part of donated clothing does not meet the expectations of the customers and is, therefore, not placed in second-hand shops. It is difficult to find a large-scale use for the textile waste locally, furthermore, textile recycling and waste management is costly for Moment and in the Czechia.

Moment educates their donors and customers in sustainable consumption and that the wardrobe that the citizen uses regularly and buys second-hand are already in circulation thus they are considered primarily sustainable.
Demonstrating the practice and functioning of Moment is an important part of increasing sustainability of the textile industry. By textile sorting, and reselling textiles Moment tackles and reduces the problem of the growing and alarming amount of textile waste. By returning things to circulation, Moment reduces the demand of producing new products. In addition, the profits support the operation of other non-profit organizations.