Designed to keep sports kit in play, kitround is a marketplace for reselling and redistributing kit.
Sport has a major role to play in reducing consumption and promoting sustainable behaviours. Through this new partnership, Loughborough and kitround will work together to:
- reduce textile waste from unused or discarded sports kit
- extend the lifespan of equipment through better circulation
- support community clubs with access to organised, good-quality kit
- use data to understand and quantify environmental impact
- encourage more sustainable behaviours across the sporting community.
This partnership aligns strongly with Loughborough’s sustainability and social value priorities, helping create solutions that benefit University clubs and the wider local sport ecosystem.
This partnership also enables Loughborough to:
- Track recycling and reuse more effectively, allowing us to accurately measure carbon savings and environmental impact.
- Generate genuine community value, ensuring kit reaches clubs, teams, and players who need it most to participate in sport.
- Integrate our academic community, using student expertise to measure the social and economic outcomes of the project.
- Embed sustainability into student opportunity, as the project will be managed and delivered by the Coaching and Volunteering Academy (CVA), adding a critical sustainability dimension to their work.
- Feed into wider institutional initiatives, with the ambition that this programme becomes a key outcome within the Climate Cup.
The partnership will begin with a campus‑wide Inventory Drive, inviting students, staff, and clubs to donate any unused or unwanted sports kit and equipment. This campaign will allow us to build a clear picture of the volume, condition, and types of items currently circulating across our sporting community.
CVA volunteers will sort, categorise, and log each donation, creating a detailed dataset that enables accurate carbon‑saving calculations and forms the foundation for long‑term sustainability reporting. From the collected items, we will establish a Loughborough kitshop, ensuring high‑quality kit is recirculated back into the community. This shop will help reduce waste, support equitable access to equipment, and channel resources directly to clubs, teams, and individuals who need them most.
Elliott Brown, Sustainability Manager at Loughborough University, commented: “This collaboration with kitround demonstrates how sport can lead the way in tackling textile waste and reducing carbon impact. By working with kitround, we’re able to turn unused kit into genuine environmental and social value, while engaging our campus community in practical sustainability.
“None of this would be possible without the collective effort of our Partnerships team, Loughborough Sport, and the CVA volunteers who are driving this work forward. Their commitment is helping us build a more sustainable future for our university and the wider sporting community.”
The project has now launched in the following sports facilities across campus:
- Tennis Centre
- Holywell Fitness Centre
- Sir David Wallace Sports Hall