Charlotte Liebling was volunteering at a charity thrift shop in London eight years ago when she noticed that many of the boxes dropped off by people were piled high with stuffed animals.
Teddy bears, rabbits and other plush animals in good condition were tossed into a bin together and sold for pennies at the shop, she said, but the majority of the well-loved soft toys were thrown away.
“As somebody with an affinity to stuffies, I knew they had sentimental and emotional value, and I hated to see them just thrown in a bin,” she said. “I was sad to learn most of them ended up at the landfill.”
Liebling, then 20, said she had a favorite stuffed dog named Soppy that she had relied on for comfort since age 8.
“I put him on my head when I’m feeling stressed,” she said. “I could relate that a lot of people felt sad when they brought their stuffed animals in, because I couldn’t imagine dropping mine off somewhere.”
Liebling said she went home to her apartment in Bedfordshire and couldn’t stop thinking about all of the throwaway plushies that were filling up landfills, not only in Britain, but around the world.
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About 80 percent of stuffed animals and other toys worldwide are eventually thrown away, making up 6 percent of plastics in landfills across the globe, according to a 2022 study. Most stuffed toys are made of synthetic materials, and some are filled with plastic pellets that can take hundreds of years, or more, to decompose.
A child didn’t have pajamas for pajama day. His bus driver bought him some.
“I started researching what the big picture looked like, and pretty soon, I had little Post-it notes and drawings all over the walls with ideas about how I could help change things,” Liebling said.
In 2019, she put her ideas into motion with Loved Before, a company she describes as a “soft-toy adoption agency,” which cleans up donated plushies and resells them online for an average of $10 to $15, plus shipping. The renovated stuffed animals are also available at three Selfridges department stores in Britain.
In the past five years, she has collected more than 60,000 plushies that she has cleaned up and sent to new homes, she said.
She has donated 50 percent of her profits to charity, she said, and this year, some of her proceeds will go to Make-A-Wish UK.
Several thrift shops in the London area donate stuffed animals to the company, and thousands of people either drop them off at Loved Before’s offices in Bedfordshire or mail them in.
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About 95 percent of the plushies she receives are usable, Liebling said.
“It doesn’t matter if toys are old or battered or worn, we’ll find them homes,” she said.
If they are deemed unsafe in some way, she’ll recycle them.
Lauren Sergi said she donated her collection of stuffed toys to Liebling’s project after she came across a TikTok video about Loved Before last summer.
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“My family and I were moving, and as I was sorting through my bedroom, I realized just how many soft toys I had accumulated over the years,” said Sergi, 24, who lives in Devon in southwest England.
“I didn’t donate them because I didn’t love them anymore or had grown bored of them — it was because I loved them very much and wanted them to go on adventures with new friends,” she said. “They deserved better than staying in boxes for decades.”
Sergi and other donors are asked to send a brief bio about their stuffed animals, which Liebling and a small group of employees and volunteers use when creating online stories for the toys.
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If a stuffed animal comes in without a backstory, Liebling will give it to a “foster carer” for a few weeks, and that person will then do a write-up.
“Or we’ll pass them over to a school classroom, and the children will take them on adventures and write the stories,” Liebling said.
Before the plush animals are posted for the public, they go through a high-temperature steam cleaning, and some are photographed wearing cucumber eye patches and towel head wraps to show they have been to a “spa,” Liebling said.
“If they need it, some of them will then get extra grooming, stuffing and repairs,” she added.
Between 50 to 100 plush animals are worked on every day by Liebling, three staffers and three volunteers. Each stuffy takes between one and five hours to refurbish.
“They just need a little love so they can be cherished by another child,” Liebling said. “Our stuffed animals help teach children the importance of giving something that’s secondhand a second chance.”
The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, with most toys selling out each Monday, the day new batches are released, she said. Loved Before toys have been purchased by people in more than 25 countries, with the United States coming in at No. 2, after Britain.
“We know this is a real need in the U.S., so we’re making plans to test the water soon and establish ourselves there in some form,” Liebling said.
Consumers spend more than $1 billion on plush toys in the United States every year.
People who adopt the plushies often post photos and thank-you notes at the company’s Loved Again forum, she said.
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Emily Dreimann of Sheffield, U.K., purchased a stuffed pig from Loved Before as a present for a friend’s young daughter.
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“He’s a pirate pig named Captain Porkchop,” said Dreimann, 33. “I’m a sentimental person, with cuddly toys being a particular weakness, and I fell in love with the whole concept.”
After ordering the bright pink plush, Dreimann said she went through her parents’ attic and gathered up about 20 soft toys to donate to Liebling, including “Pink Ted,” a teddy bear that attended all of her childhood tea parties.
“Finding a guilt-free option where I could send off friends has been ideal for a softie like me,” she said.
Liebling said her hope is that each Loved Before toy will be looked after and passed down for decades instead of ending up in a dumpster.
She said she believes that her second-chance toys are made more valuable by the love and adventure they’ve already experienced.
“When I first started doing this, a woman in her 80s handed me her teddy bear because she was going into end-of-life care,” Liebling said. “She wanted to be sure her bear would be loved when she wasn’t here anymore.”
Liebling assured her that the teddy bear was in good hands.
“I love that we can give them a second chance to be loved,” she said.
