The Iconic has launched a new initiative to encourage customers to donate old clothes to charity, rather than allowing them to end up in landfill.

Together with The Salvation Army and Australia Post, the fashion site on Thursday announced the launch of Giving Made Easy, an online portal where customers can download a pre-paid postage label to send their pre-loved clothes to the closest Salvos store.

The Salvos will then distribute the clothes to its network of 330 stores where they will be sold to help raise funds to support those experiencing homelessness, addiction, emergency situations and domestic violence, as well as those impacted by the current bushfires.

The initiative is part of The Iconic’s 2020 sustainability and ethical sourcing strategy, which also saw the retailer launched its Considered filter, enabling customers to shop by their personal sustainability values, and introduce Aere, a private-label brand focusing on a more sustainable approach to materials.

Giving Made Easy targets one of the more visible ways the fashion industry impacts the environment: textile waste.

“Australians discard 23kgs of clothing per person every year – that’s a whopping six tonnes of textiles and clothing to landfill in Australia every 10 minutes and a huge number to comprehend,” Jaana Quaintance-James, The Iconic’s chief sustainability officer, said in a statement.

“As a leading player in the Australian fashion industry, we have an important responsibility to reduce our impact on textile waste and to influence customers’ attitudes and behaviours when it comes to clothing disposal.”

Susan Mizrahi, chief sustainability officer at Australia Post, said the initiative reflected changing consumer attitudes.

“We know that customers are choosing to purchase more sustainable products from companies that align with their personal values,” she said.

“We are pleased that in collaboration with The Iconic, we are able to provide sustainable solutions across more of our services”.

The launch of Giving Made Easy comes one week after The Iconic opened Bushfire Relief Donation Drop-Off Hubs at its headquarters in the Sydney CBD and its fulfilment centre southwest of the city.

The hubs aim to provide long-term support to charity organisations grappling with the inundation of donations for bushfire relief. The Iconic will work with these charity organisations to accept, safely store and distribute donations in partnership with its logistics partners as and when needed.