A five-metre-high pile of discarded white clothing overlooking London’s South Bank is an unlikely place to start a conversation about the future of circular fashion.
Yet, according to international laundry and cleaning brand Dr Beckmann, this was precisely the point.
Timed to coincide with the start of Wimbledon, Dr Beckmann’s “Murray Mound” installation, fronted by Judy Murray and created in partnership with circular fashion specialist Reskinned, was designed to make the UK’s growing textile waste problem impossible to ignore.
The campaign follows research by Dr Beckmann and Reskinned suggesting the average UK consumer throws away eight white clothing items every year, adding up to an estimated 440 million white garments annually.
The research also found consumers are expected to buy an average of 212 white T-shirts over their adult lifetime, with staining, greying and yellowing among the biggest reasons garments are discarded despite many of those issues being treatable.
The campaign arrives as the UK fashion industry faces increasing scrutiny over overconsumption. According to WRAP, around 711,000 tonnes of used textiles are discarded every year in the UK, while extending the life of clothing remains one of the most effective ways of reducing fashion’s environmental impact.
For Dr Beckmann UK & Ireland managing director David Shaw the campaign is about much more than promoting laundry products.
“The sole purpose of Dr Beckmann really is to help people care for things that they value,” he explains.
“One of the ways that we really saw an opportunity to bring this to life was to demonstrate the huge impact that textile waste and clothing waste has across the UK population.
“We’re probably in a position now where people buy more clothes in a year than people would have bought in their lifetime in the 1960s. That has a huge impact on the environment.”
Rather than highlighting clothing waste in general, the company deliberately focused on one of the most recognisable wardrobe staples.
“What we really wanted to do was demonstrate that specifically from a white textile point of view because, through our partnership with Reskinned, what we found was people were throwing away white garments for things that are very treatable,” Shaw says.
“I don’t think anybody really appreciated the scale of this.”
The resulting installation recreated the scale of the UK’s daily white clothing waste as a visual statement.
“There are eight white garments a year thrown away per person, and that’s around 440 million garments every year in the UK,” he says.
“We decided to create this visual representation through the Murray Mound on the South Bank. It was eight metres wide, five metres deep and five metres high. That’s the level of white garment waste that gets thrown away every single day in the UK, which is crazy.”
And so launching the campaign during Wimbledon was, Shaw says, an obvious choice.
“For a business that’s passionate about resource efficiency from a sustainability point of view, we thought it would be the perfect way to bring this to life right at the start of Wimbledon. What more iconic moment is there for white clothing in the UK?”
Why buy new when you can care for what you already own?
One of the biggest challenges facing campaigns promoting garment care is consumer behaviour.
Fast fashion has dramatically lowered the cost of replacing basics such as white T-shirts and socks, making repair or restoration seem less worthwhile than simply buying new.
Shaw believes that mindset needs to change; “The greenest garment we have is the one that’s already in our wardrobe,” he says.
“Buying new costs the consumer money, it creates waste and, ultimately, from the research, it’s very avoidable.”
He argues that many consumers give up on white clothing far too quickly.
“In general, it’s only really a fixed group of stain types. You just need the right tool for the right job to remove those stains.
“Unfortunately, consumers give up too easily.” According to the FMCG’s research, around three-quarters of white garments are discarded because of staining or dullness rather than because they are worn beyond repair.
“Three quarters of all the white waste we see is purely because of stains and dullness,” Shaw says.
“They’re not ripped. They’re not tired enough to be irreplaceable. It’s stuff that can be treated with the right products.”
The findings also raise wider questions for fashion retailers. If consumers are buying more than 200 white T-shirts over their lifetime, is the industry doing enough to encourage customers to look after garments rather than replace them?
Shaw believes responsibility is shared. “I think the resale market when it comes to clothing is a huge booming business,” he says.
“In terms of share of wallet in the UK right now, around 10 per cent of clothing sales are going through the resale environment.
“When you look at dedicated clothing manufacturers and retailers, they’re increasingly having a resale approach within their business. You look at the growth of vintage and platforms such as eBay. It is becoming more part of their economy.”
However, he argues retailers can only do so much if consumers are unwilling to change their own habits.
“I think consumers have the opportunity to prolong the life of their garments and ensure they’re treating them with the right product first and foremost.”
His own philosophy is simple: “I often subscribe to the idea of buy once, buy well, and then look after those things you care about to make sure you get the longest lifecycle possible.”
For Shaw, extending the life of existing clothing is one of the simplest ways consumers can contribute to a more circular fashion economy, particularly at a time when fashion businesses are under increasing pressure to reduce waste without slowing growth.
The challenge, he suggests, is convincing consumers that a stained white T-shirt has not reached the end of its life simply because replacing it has become cheap and convenient.
“The problems we’re talking about are largely preventable,” he says. “It’s about helping people realise they don’t always need to buy another one.”
First awareness, then action
For Dr Beckmann, partnering with Reskinned was about more than adding sustainability credentials to a campaign. Shaw says the collaboration was intended to connect garment care with the growing circular fashion movement and encourage consumers to see value in clothing that might otherwise be thrown away.
“First and foremost, it’s about awareness,” he says.
“When we started looking at possible partners, the work Ross and the team at Reskinned have done has been fundamental in driving this reappraisal of how people can purchase resale garments.”
The partnership also extended beyond the public installation itself. Shaw says discussions quickly turned to what would happen to the thousands of garments used to build the Murray Mound after the campaign ended.
“We were talking about the mound itself and how we’d recover the clothing afterwards, looking at recycled circular opportunities, whether that’s through reuse of the materials or through donations to fashion students that they work with.”
That practical approach also reflects the broader challenge facing resale. While charity shops remain the first destination for unwanted clothing, white garments often struggle to find a second life.
Research commissioned for the campaign found more than a third of consumers believe white is the hardest colour to buy second hand because marks and discolouration are easier to spot. Meanwhile, one in three said they would be less likely to buy pre-owned white clothing.
“I think almost two-thirds of garments that are thrown out tend to go to charity shops as a first port of call,” Shaw says.
“But when you look at consumers’ inclination to buy white garments in the resale sector, it is much, much lower.”
For Shaw, changing that perception starts long before a garment reaches a charity shop or take-back scheme.
“It’s about awareness and working with partners who can help support that mission to drive a reduction in unnecessary waste.”
Asked whether the research revealed similar trends for black or coloured clothing, Shaw says the wider dataset exists but has not yet been analysed to that level of detail.
“We did cover all garments within it, but we don’t have the breakdown to that level of granularity,” he explains.
“We were looking purely through a white fabric lens.” Instead, he believes the campaign highlights a wider issue around clothing care that extends beyond white garments. “There are many different challenges, even when we think about whites and colours.”
More than half of those surveyed admitted they do not always separate white and coloured washes, increasing the risk of colour transfer and dulling.
“If they’re doing that, are they using the right solution or the right tools to avoid it?” Shaw asks. “There are products available that help minimise those issues. Treatment and care around black fabrics, around denim, all of these are real challenges.”
Ultimately, he says, the campaign is less about individual products than changing habits.
“It’s about creating awareness that a lot of these problems can be treated with the right laundry process and the right tool.”
A long-term play
While many brand campaigns disappear after a few weeks, Shaw sees this as the start of a longer conversation rather than a one-off marketing exercise.
The response has given the business confidence that consumers are willing to engage with the issue. “We haven’t put any specific targets against what success looks like in three or five years,” he says.
“But making a difference means we can repeat the education year after year, create that visibility and keep focusing communications on it.”
By those measures, the campaign has exceeded expectations.
“It generated more than 170 million impressions and I’d go so far as to say it’s probably our best ever activity as a brand.”
Although Dr Beckmann is best known for specialist laundry and household cleaning products, Shaw describes it as “a small, growing brand” with ambitions to build on the momentum.
“We’ve had retailers reaching out to us already,” he says. “There could be brand partnerships in the future, there could be other like-minded partners like Reskinned. We’d be very receptive.”
Future campaigns could also move beyond Wimbledon. One obvious opportunity, Shaw says, is the annual back-to-school season, when millions of white school shirts and polo tops enter family washing baskets.
“You could equally look at back to school,” he says. “The amount of waste that comes through school polos and school shirts, particularly with white garments, is huge.”
For Shaw, these collaborations are not simply commercial opportunities but part of the company’s wider identity.
“For us, this is perhaps purpose with a little ‘p’, more so than a big ‘P’. This is a raison d’être for us in many ways.”
He is more cautious, however, when it comes to calls for retailers to publish more detailed data on garment lifespans or the outcomes of take-back schemes.
While measurement has an important role, he warns that reporting requirements can become a distraction if they are overly complex.
“You manage what you measure,” he says. “If the data is there, it gives people targets to go after.”
“But sometimes the reporting infrastructure that comes from capturing and sharing this level of information takes away from driving action and improvement.”
Instead, he argues the immediate priority should remain helping consumers get the maximum value from the clothes they already own.
“We’re still some way from truly circular systems when it comes to repeat use and reuse,” he says. “Our focus is on supporting consumers on that journey and helping them maximise the use of the garments they’ve invested in.”
Looking beyond the campaign
The fashion industry has made significant progress in resale, repair and take-back schemes over the past decade, yet the figures behind the Murray Mound campaign illustrate how easily wearable clothing continues to fall out of circulation.
For Shaw, that makes education as important as innovation. “The response has given us the confidence to do more of this,” he says.
“It helps to have somebody like Judy Murray involved, because she understands better than most the challenges of keeping white clothing looking its best.”
Ultimately, however, he returns to the same point that underpins the campaign. Helping consumers keep clothing in use for longer, he argues, is one of the simplest ways to reduce waste.
“Our mission is helping people treat and care for their garments for longer,” Shaw says. “As a fourth-generation family company, that’s what we’re here to do.”
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