When Charlotte Liebling was in college, she volunteered at a store that sold secondhand goods. She observed people bringing in items to donate, including stuffed toys. Liebling could tell that the toys held great emotional value for their owners. So she felt sad when the toys were sold very cheaply, put in the dog-toy section, or — worse — thrown away.
One night when she got home from work, Liebling started doing some research. She realized this wasn’t happening only in her town. Worldwide, she learned, millions of toys end up in landfills every year. All through the night, Liebling drew ideas on notes and posted them on her walls. “If we can change the perception that stuffed toys lose their value once they’ve been loved,” she recalls thinking, “then we can show people they have so much left in them, and give them to others.” That’s how the Loved Before toy-adoption agency began.
The process starts when someone donates a soft toy. People can do so through the mail, or by taking a toy to a local drop-off point in the United Kingdom. That’s where the company is based. The original owner writes down the name of the toy and a story about it. This can include the creature’s likes and dislikes, its favorite things to do, and an adventure it’s been on. Next, the toy is cleaned, photographed, and packaged with its name and story. Every Monday, toys are posted for adoption on the Loved Before website. The company makes a charitable donation of at least half of the profit from the sale of each toy.
Since its creation in 2019, Loved Before has sold more than 50,000 stuffed toys. But the company’s goal is more than “just trying to save some toys from landfills,” Liebling says. “We’re trying to change perceptions on a really wide level.” She explains that Loved Before hopes to teach kids “about the value of loving secondhand things again, in the hope that it will go far beyond the idea of teddy bears.”
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