Island ladies bin their bras for charity

Sandown resident Sarah Tyroll-Jones has become known as ‘The Bra Lady’ after amassing a huge collection of used bras for charity.

Sarah is the Island’s community fundraiser for national charity Breast Cancer Care, and over the past 18 months has raised over £9,000. She decided to talk part in the bra recycling scheme run by sister charity Against Breast Cancer, a pioneering scheme that takes unwanted and unloved bras and recycles them in countries such as Togo, Ghana and Kenya where bras are too expensive to produce locally.

As well as keeping bras out of landfill the scheme provides support – in more ways than one – for ladies in developing countries, as it employs local people to recycle and distribute the bras. The charity also receives £700 for every tonne of bras collected.

Sarah set herself a three-week collection period with a target of 50 bras. She put out pleas for bras on Facebook along with suitcases to transport them in. She said: “Bras came flooding in from all over the Island and from friends on the mainland. I was handed them in the street, at work, on the train, in cafes – wherever I went people gave me bras. I soon realised that I could collect 500, but in the end I had 1,109 bras stored in my spare bedroom.”

On Wednesday, along with five other volunteers, Sarah travelled to Portsmouth to deliver the bras. Hovertravel providing free travel for them and their charitable cargo.

Sarah thanked Hovertravel, everybody who has donated and her volunteers for all their hard work ‘particularly Carly Forder who has been a great help. She added: “I loved every minute of it, but next year I think I’ll collect stamps – they take up less room.”