For elite athletes, wearing Olympic kit represents the culmination of years of dedication and training. Yet substantial quantities of this clothing never leave their packaging, sitting instead in warehouses across the country.
On England's south coast, a warehouse holds boxes of pristine Team GB apparel from Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026. Tracksuit bottoms, jackets, hoodies and T-shirts remain untouched in their original packaging. Opening ceremony garments are among the items that have never been worn by an athlete.
A newly established partnership will now redirect hundreds of surplus Team GB clothing items and unsold merchandise through a specialist resale platform, with revenue benefiting the Team GB Foundation, the charitable arm of the British Olympic Association. The initial phase will feature 700 items from Paris 2024. This initiative represents one approach to extending the useful life of sportswear, but it raises broader questions about why such surpluses accumulate and what prevents perfectly functional clothing from reaching those who need it.
Why does elite sport generate so much excess kit?
The BOA faces a challenge shared across elite sport. Kit wastage represents a significant environmental and economic problem throughout the sector.
According to UK Sport's baseline report, participating organisations purchased 88,131 apparel items in the baseline year: 39,713 non-sportswear items, 25,891 training items, 13,398 sportswear items and 9,129 presentation items. A sustainability consultancy specialising in this area estimates that up to 100,000 items of sports kit end up in UK landfill annually.
Joanna Czutkowna, director of 5thread and a doctoral researcher in sports apparel and the circular economy, identifies several structural causes.
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.She also notes that sponsorship contracts often include provisions called value in kind, which are non-transactional arrangements that can create incentives for organisations to accumulate free product beyond their actual requirements.
Performance demands add another layer of complexity. Athletes require clothing engineered to optimise their competitive performance, meaning that reducing order quantities or substituting materials is not always feasible without compromising functionality.
Measuring the total scale of the problem remains difficult. Surplus kit often remains in warehouses or stored by individual athletes without entering formal waste streams where it can be tracked and counted. The issue extends across all levels of sport, from professional clubs to national governing bodies.
European football's governing body estimates that up to 60% of professional team apparel is disposed of at the end of each season, though this figure has not been independently verified. According to UEFA's circular-economy guidelines, professional team apparel has an average shelf life of just 10 months, and the organisation has set a target of sending no football apparel to landfill or incineration by 2030.
What prevents organisations from simply donating surplus clothing?
The barriers are not rooted in the condition of the garments themselves. Contractual restrictions frequently prohibit reuse of items because sponsors wish to prevent products from appearing on secondary markets, or because they want to preserve certain innovations for exclusive use.
Adam Stevens, co-founder of Kitround, the specialist resale platform now working with Team GB and other organisations, acknowledges that sponsorship and supply agreements remain financially critical to sport. However, he argues that pathways exist to respect these agreements while still enabling clothing to be worn again.
There are an awful lot of people, whatever sport they do, whatever teams they support, who simply can't afford to buy new.
This reality extends beyond professional athletes. Young people entering sport, grassroots competitors and those from lower-income backgrounds face significant financial barriers to accessing quality equipment. Redirecting elite surplus kit could meaningfully expand access to the sport.
How do athletes themselves manage surplus kit?
British kitesurfer Lily Young, who is targeting qualification for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, describes how the pursuit of competitive advantage itself generates waste.
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'.
Athletes preparing for major competitions often trial multiple items to identify marginal performance gains, leaving them with clothing that no longer meets their elite standards. Sponsorship changes compound this problem, as athletes must abandon clothing bearing logos of former sponsors.
Young and her peers have informally passed surplus T-shirts to younger squad members and youth teams. Wetsuits and other equipment can also be transferred when they remain suitable for the recipient's needs. Yet equipment that falls short of an elite athlete's requirements could provide genuine value to someone beginning their sporting journey.
More organisations are now recognising this opportunity. Sail GP and the Royal Yachting Association are among those using specialist platforms to sell second-hand elite kit to the public at substantially reduced prices.
We know that one of the main barriers to entry is cost,Young observes.
Czutkowna emphasises that organisations must think more strategically about product longevity and potential beneficiaries.
A lot of this comes back to common sense. It's kind of a waste not, want not.
What changes is Team GB implementing?
Jen Rouse, managing director of the Team GB Foundation, reports that procurement processes are becoming more precise, resulting in reduced surplus quantities. Team GB is exploring the production of clothing without dates or event-specific branding, enabling items to serve across multiple Olympic cycles rather than becoming obsolete after a single Games.
The organisation is also investigating systems that allow athletes to return clothing they no longer require, creating a formal recovery mechanism. Rouse pushes back against suggestions that excess clothing has historically accumulated unused.
It's not necessarily been sitting gathering dust in storage. It's always found a way out.
The Kitround partnership creates an additional formal channel for surplus redistribution, with proceeds supporting the Team GB Foundation's work. This arrangement exemplifies a circular economy approach to kit: maintaining clothing and equipment in active use through reuse, repair and resale rather than disposal.
Stevens articulates the underlying principle simply.
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.
What broader changes are underway in the sector?
The challenge of sports kit waste is receiving increasing institutional attention. In March 2026, 5THREAD launched a UK Sustainable Sports Apparel Charter, developed with a working group including British Triathlon, British Gymnastics, ParalympicsGB and the British Mountaineering Council. The charter establishes seven focus areas and 15 commitments designed to reduce waste and extend the operational life of sports clothing across the sector.
Existing reuse efforts demonstrate what is possible when organisations commit to redistribution. According to UK Sport's baseline report, Team England has partnered with Kit Us Out to provide surplus kit to para-athletes, young people and grassroots communities. British Triathlon has undertaken a redistribution pilot programme. These initiatives show that infrastructure and partnerships can successfully redirect clothing that would otherwise be wasted.
The Sustainable Sports Apparel Charter remains open to sports organisations at all levels, from grassroots clubs to national governing bodies, to adopt its commitments on procurement practices, reuse mechanisms and strategies for extending product life. As awareness of the environmental and social costs of kit wastage grows, more organisations are expected to join this movement toward genuinely circular systems.
