What happens to sports kit that never gets worn?

By

BBC Sport correspondent

For an elite athlete, pulling on Olympic kit can be the reward for years of sacrifice. But some of that clothing never makes it out of the packaging.

Inside a warehouse on England's south coast, boxes are stacked with pristine Team GB clothing from Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026. Tracksuit bottoms, jackets, hoodies and T-shirts sit untouched. Among them are garments created for Olympic opening ceremonies. All of it is unworn.

Commercial constraints can make excess stock difficult to shift at scale.

Now a new partnership means hundreds of items of surplus Team GB clothing and unsold merchandise will be resold through a specialist platform, with proceeds supporting the British Olympic Association's (BOA) charity arm, the Team GB Foundation.

The initial launch will include 700 items from Paris 2024.

It is one way of giving sportswear a second life. But why does that surplus exist, and why can perfectly usable clothing be so difficult to pass on?

Why does sport have so much spare kit?

The BOA is far from the only organisation dealing with excess kit – elite sport in general struggles with kit wastage.

5thread, a consultancy specialising in sustainability, estimates that up to 100,000 items of sports kit end up in UK landfill every year.

"It is a huge issue and it's also a complex issue," says Joanna Czutkowna, director of 5thread and a doctoral researcher in sports apparel and the circular economy.

"A lot of this kit is bought before they know which athletes are going to complete in the sport or the event. So there's a lot of excess stock generated at the point of order.

"Also, the types of contracts that you get for this have something called value in kind, so it's not a transactional contract. There's almost an incentive to get free product."

Czutkowna is describing practices across elite sport, rather than Team GB's arrangements.

Performance requirements also complicate efforts to reduce waste. Athletes need clothing designed to help them compete, so reducing quantities or changing materials is not always straightforward.

The total surplus is difficult to measure. Kit can remain in warehouses or athletes' garages without entering a waste stream where it can be counted.

The issue extends across sport, from clubs to countries.

European football governing body Uefa estimates that up to 60% of professional team apparel, external is disposed of at the end of the season, although this figure has not been independently verified.

Why not just give it away?

The obstacles are not to do with the condition of the clothing.

"Contracts can prohibit reuse because they don't want it on the market or there might be a particular innovation that they want to hold back," Czutkowna says.

Adam Stevens, co-founder of Kitround, the specialist resale platform working with Team GB among others, says sponsorship and supply agreements remain financially important to sport, but there are ways to respect them while allowing clothing to be used again.

"There are an awful lot of people, whatever sport they do, whatever teams they support, who simply can't afford to buy new," he says.

'Basically brand new' - but no longer the best

For British kitesurfer Lily Young, who is targeting a place at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, the pressure to find a competitive edge can itself create surplus.

Athletes preparing for major championships want to leave nothing to chance.

"That does mean that we also end up with a lot of waste, a lot of things where you're like, 'this is basically brand new, but it's not quite good enough to maybe win'."

Changes in sponsors can also leave athletes with clothing they can no longer wear.

Young and fellow athletes have passed T-shirts to younger squad members and youth teams. Wetsuits and other equipment can also be passed on where they remain suitable.

But equipment that no longer meets an elite athlete's needs could help someone else start, and more organisations such as Sail GP and the Royal Yachting Association are using specialist platforms to sell second-hand elite kit to the public at much lower prices.

"We know that one of the main barriers to entry is cost," Young says.

For Czutkowna, organisations need to think harder about how long their products can remain useful - and who could benefit from them.

"A lot of this comes back to common sense," she says. "It's kind of a waste not, want not."

What is changing at Team GB?

Jen Rouse, managing director of the Team GB Foundation, says ordering is becoming more precise and the amount left over is reducing.

Team GB is also considering producing some clothing without dates or event-specific names, so it could be used across more than one Olympic cycle. It is also exploring opportunities for athletes to return clothing they no longer need.

She rejects the suggestion that excess clothing has previously simply accumulated unused.

"It's not necessarily been sitting gathering dust in storage. It's always found a way out," she says.

The partnership with Kitround creates another route, with sales supporting the Team GB Foundation.

The aim is a circular economy for kit: keeping clothing and equipment in use through reuse, repair and resale.

For Stevens, the principle behind finding kit another home is simple.

"A kit was made to be worn. It was made to be out there on the field, on the water, in the pool, and it should be back out there.

"That's really what underpins everything - making sure this kit doesn't go to landfill and that it can have a second life."