A NEW pop-up Green Shop is opening in Ilminster High Street for one day only.

The Great Big Green Swap Shop will be open from 9.30am to 2pm on Saturday June 8 at the Sweet Surprise on Silver Street.

Inside you’ll find everything from clothes to books to toys and bric a-brac during the Ilminster Midsummer Experience Festival.

By recycling clothes visitors can help tackle climate change by collecting together your unwanted items to bring along to the Swap Shop. 

You bring along unwanted clothes, toys, books and other good quality bric-a-brac to the Swap Shop and exchange them for a voucher at the door. You can then take your voucher into the Swap Shop and ‘spend’ it. 

While you’re there, enjoy a cuppa, a biscuit and a sit-down; all they ask in return is for a donation to Butterfly Conservation. 

The idea is that your good-quality unwanted cast-offs can be ‘swapped’ for anything that catches your eye.

The shop will be run by the Ilminster Quakers to celebrate this year’s Great Big Green Week theme – ‘Let’s Swap Together for Good’.

The Quakers say that 'swapping is a great alternative to buying clothing and other items new, helping reduce the disastrous environmental impact of cheap, mass-produced fast fashion.'

"British shoppers buy more clothes than anyone else in Europe, the fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions – that’s more than aviation and shipping combined, a single shirt and a pair of jeans can take up to 20,000 litres of water to make, the average Brit has 57 unworn items in their wardrobe and one million tonnes of clothes are thrown away every year in the UK – and 20% of that ends up in landfill."

The Great Big Green Week: Now in its fourth year, the Great Big Green Week is organised by the Climate Coalition, the UK’s largest group of people dedicated to action against climate change. 

Ilminster Quakers meet for worship every Sunday at 10.30 at Sweet Surprise for about an hour. For more information visit their website.