Lucy & Yak: How witnessing a huge Indian landfill led to Yorkshire brand’s sustainability drive
The co-founder of clothing brand, Lucy & Yak, has told The Yorkshire Post how witnessing a large landfill in India inspired the company to launch a drive which has now seen 50,000 garments saved from destruction and kept in circulation.
Lucy & Yak was first founded by Lucy Greenwood and Chris Renwick in Yorkshire in 2017. The company now operates a large warehouse in Barnsley and runs 17 stores, including a Sheffield site.
The brand recently hailed a major milestone, with 50,000 garments having been resold, repaired or recycled through its Re:Yak scheme, which aims to help extend the product life of its garments.
It comes as the company prepares to host a Circular Fashion Fair in Sheffield this weekend, and launch its new Repairs for Life sustainability initiative.
Speaking on the inspiration for the schemes, Mr Renwick said he had been inspired to launch them following a trip to India around six years ago.
“In about 2020, I was with a supplier who was taking me to a factory in Gujarat, India,” he said. “We drove past a landfill, and I’ve just never seen anything like it. I don’t think I’d ever seen a landfill before.
“It just absolutely blew my mind. It was about five or six storeys tall, and just seemed to go on for miles in all directions. There were families crawling across it and tractors up on top of it.
“That was the moment where I was like, ‘I think we need to do something’”.
The experience led to the company launching its Re:Yak scheme, where customers can return garments in any condition and receive a money-off voucher for th-eir next purchase.
The garments are then either re-sold in stores, or taken to the company’s Barnsley site to be repaired or recycled.
Through the brand’s new Repairs for Life initiative, customers will also be able to access free repairs on eligible products bought new from the company for as long as they own them, only paying for the postage costs for the item to be sent and returned.
Members of the company’s free Comfort Club scheme will be eligible for the service.
“We’ve been doing Re:Yak since 2023, but I felt like we could go further, and that was where repairs for life came from,” said Mr Renwick.
“I wanted to do something that really rewarded our loyalty customers. Something that wasn’t just points for this and points for that and early access this, early access that, but something that really rewarded them.”
Taking place at Sheffield’s Peddler Warehouse in Neepsend, from October 23 to 25, Lucy & Yak’s Circular Fashion Fair will feature live repair demonstrations, talks from fashion and sustainability experts, creative workshops and an independent marketplace showcasing Sheffield organisations and small businesses.
Speakers will include former ASOS sustainability director Simon Platts, BBC Great British Sewing Bee’s Nicole Akong, sustainability consultancy Circular Earth founder Rachel Kan and representatives from Lucy & Yak’s leadership team.