Home > Talking Pants > Talking Pants – March 2026

Total underwear collected is 2,448,758

Thank you for sending us a pantastic 1,730 parcels in February.

Since our last Talking Pants, we’ve provided new pants and new & gently worn bras to 7 organisations:

  • 665 pairs of pants to the Little Green Sock Project, a charity supporting families in the Greater Manchester area.
  • 340 pairs of pants to Carefree Kids East Lothian, a school uniform bank.
  • 150 pairs of pants to Release Mates, a charity providing support to people leaving prison, helping with reintegration and resettlement.
  • 165 pairs of pants to Glasgow City Mission, a city centre project supporting people experiencing homelessness, poverty, addiction and isolation.
  • 455 pairs of pants and bras to Refuweegee, a charity providing assistance to refugees as they arrive in Glasgow.
  • 420 pairs of pants to The Harbour Centre in Plymouth, a charity providing community support and recovery services for people affected by drugs, alcohol and other substances.
  • 214 pairs of pants to the Community One Stop Shop in Edinburgh for the homeless who visit their support/care van.

We received a lovely message last month from supporter Rachel which left us lost for words – it’s 10 years since she began donating pants to us every month – how amazing is that?! Thank you, Rachel, once again, for the huge difference your kindness has made to so many.

Coincidentally, we have another 10-year anniversary to celebrate. In March 2016, we began our partnership with ethical family-run recycling company LMB Textiles. We love working with them for many reasons. Let me tell you just a little bit about them.

None of the clothes/lingerie they work with goes to landfill – their focus is firmly on reuse first and then recycling. So, the news reports you see about second-hand clothing from Europe ending up dumped in developing counties? You can be sure none of it came from Smalls for All or LMB.

  • LMB were the first company in the sector to be awarded the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement, back in 1997.
  • They process over 1,000 tonnes of textile waste each month and boast a high reuse/recycle rate of about 93%.
  • They’re known for their partnerships with local authorities, charity organisations and major fashion brands. They were the first UK company to partner with Circulose and have partnerships with a number of companies in the burgeoning fibre-to-fibre recycling area which helps the fashion industry transition to a circular business
  • They have a long-standing partnership with the Ministry of Justice and are the largest provider of work within prisons. This is a key part of the program to reduce reoffending and actively provides employment opportunities for people on release.
  • Beyond general textile recycling, they operate LMB Supplies, which manufactures industrial cleaning wipes and rags from recycled textiles. And Reskinned which runs innovative takeback and reuse programmes.
  • They’re regarded as a pioneering, sustainable firm that focuses on keeping textile waste out of landfills and supporting a circular economy.

Getting back to Smalls for All, you may be wondering what it is we do with LMB.

As you know, we collect new pants, and new and gently worn bras with plenty of good wear left in them. We pass on the new pants and new bras to people in need for free. Sometimes we receive items that aren’t suitable to give to the people we help (e.g. thongs, basques, strapless bras or bras with no support). When this happens, we try to sell them in our eBay or Vinted shops which helps us raise the vital funds we need to support our work.

So what happens to the gently worn bras? They’re either given for free to people in need, or we sell them to LMB. We do this because:

  • It helps us raise funds to cover our running costs so that we can keep providing people in need with the dignity of underwear.
  • LMB send the bras on to Tunisia in North Africa where two sets of people benefit:
    • Sellers – the people who buy them wholesale to make a living out of re-selling them.
    • Customers – the people who buy them because they can’t afford locally manufactured bras.

Tunisia needs to import second-hand clothes, even though they do have their own manufacturing, because this provides an affordable alternative for locals. The market is well regulated and closely controlled to make sure there’s not too much.

The bras LMB send over follow a specific journey through the massive, well-established second-hand clothes industry known locally as the Fripe. This is a critical part of the national economy, providing a livelihood for over 200,000 people. What happens to the bras is determined by their quality and the country’s unique sorting regulations.

Second-hand clothing, including bras, primarily arrives in containers. Imported bales must be processed in authorised factories where they’re graded by quality. High-quality or designer bras are separated for premium markets, while lower-quality items are destined for standard street stalls. Items that are ‘beyond redemption’ (torn or heavily worn) are often dismantled. Pure cotton components may be recycled into industrial cleaning rags, while synthetic blends are sometimes used as secondary fuel for incinerators. (None of these bras will be ours though, because Smalls ONLY sells – and LMB only sends – gently worn bras.)

Once sorted, bras are re-baled and sold to wholesalers in districts like Ezzahrouni and Hafsia. They eventually reach Fripe shops and open-air souks, where the vast majority of Tunisians shop. Second-hand bras from the West are often preferred over new, cheap imports from Asia because they’re perceived to be of higher quality and offer a wider variety of brands, and shoppers can pick up beautiful bras at a fraction of their original retail cost.

So, as you can tell, our partnership with LMB is a winner all round. We’re very proud to work with a company that not only shares our values – of reusing, regifting and recycling – but helps us achieve our goal of providing as many people as possible with the dignity of underwear.

Thanks as always for supporting Smalls.

Maria

P.S.

If you’d like to donate money, you can do so here: https://bit.ly/money-sfa

Or Donate pants the easy way: https://bit.ly/give-sfa