What don’t I wear anymore?
Lindsay Lohan, the new face of Visa Swap, will soon be smugly starring down at us from the sides of buses and overhead billboards, in an attempt to remind us that charity really does begin at home.
Yes, the 21-year-old actress, who recently stood trial for thieving a fur coat, and is by no means an eco-warrior, has been chosen by Visa to front this years Swap campaign, and will be ‘displaying her wares’ in a very un-LiLo series of ads. By that I mean she’ll be photographed actually wearing some clothes.
The idea behind the campaign, which starts next week, is to get people to bring their clothes to the swap in exchange for Visa points (the better the bounty, the more points you’ll receive…), which can then be redeemed for others’ swap items.
The phrase “one person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure” springs to mind…
Clothes that fail to sell will be donated to TRAID, a charity that raises money to support communities in developing countries, through recycling second-hand clothing.
However, if you’d rather not stifle through your wardrobe looking for things you no longer wear, then there are plenty more, stress-free alternatives to help you “do your bit.”
There’s the obvious, donating bric-a-brac to your local Oxfam. You’ll feel warm and fuzzy inside because you know someone somewhere will want to buy your dusty old lamp or your rusty old watering can, and that the money they part with will be helping the needy… However, like Visa Swap, this too involves effort.
Then there are the aptly named ‘chuggers,’ the charity huggers that accost you in the street and pressure you into signing on the dotted line, so £10 of your pay packet every month disappears off to Botswana… This involves no real effort, but it is really annoying.
Finally, my preferred option, there are charity credit cards. Charity credit cards give money to your chosen charity when you sign up, and then after that a percentage of each transaction that you make on the card also goes to the charity. Effectively the more you spend, the more you give.
The best bit is you don’t have to use your charity credit card for every purchase you make, just when you’re feeling generous. As a 21st century Robin Hood, you’ll be thieving from the rich (i.e. the credit card companies) and giving to the poor, or the National Trust, or WWF, or the British Heart Foundation… The list is endless - just choose your charity and start spending.
And as for Miss Lohan, we shouldn’t expect the party-loving actress to suddenly go “green”. I see a paycheque behind this move by Visa, rather than anything of real substance. When she’s not thieving them, I wonder if she pays for her fur coats using her WWF Visa Card?
