Three years in, SwagCycle continues to build momentum, as it helps brands deal with their obsolete promotional products in an ethical and sustainable way.

As of Dec. 31, 2022, the initiative started by Somerville, MA-based distributor Grossman Marketing Group (asi/215205), has kept a cumulative 1.45 million items out of landfills and facilitated roughly $2.67 million in charitable donations, according to its recently released annual impact report.

Ben Grossman is the founder of SwagCycle and co-president of Somerville, MA-based distributor Grossman Marketing Group.

Ben Grossman, founder of SwagCycle, co-president of Grossman Marketing Group and recipient of the Counselor 2022 Bess Cohn Humanitarian of the Year award, has said that SwagCycle was a way to “remove friction from the process” of divesting of unwanted swag.

“We are tremendously gratified by the interest that has been shown in our industry’s first-ever platform of this type,” he notes in his 2022 report. “It’s been thrilling to see the demand from companies looking to donate or recycle their swag with us, as well as the range of charities who have requested to join our platform.”

One of SwagCycle’s largest projects in 2022 was helping Facebook with its Meta rebrand. The marketing team at Meta was looking to donate nearly 20,000 items with a value of nearly $100,000. SwagCycle helped Meta donate items from a warehouse in Georgia to Atlanta-based Caring for Others, an international human services organization that provides food, clothing and services to families in need. Meta also had unwanted swag in the U.K., so SwagCycle partnered with Giving World to help with the donations, some of which went to Ukrainian refugees.

“SwagCycle has been a welcome and much-needed partner for Giving World,” according to Rama Bhalla, projects director at Giving World.

SwagCycle helped Meta donate thousands of children’s socks to the California Kindergarten Association, which used them as part of a “What Can You Do With a Sock?” activity during a recent conference. (Photo courtesy of the California Kindergarten Association)

SwagCycle also helped facilitate the donation of more than 6,000 pairs of baby, toddler and youth socks from Meta to the California Kindergarten Association, whose mission is to foster children’s early learning and development. The organization used the socks during a conference for early childhood educators, asking teachers to come up with creative ways to use socks.

“Many teachers took socks to give to their students to wear, but they also came up with super-fun activities to with the socks, too,” said Gennie Gorback, association president. Among the ways to repurpose socks: puppets, individual white board erasers, hacky sacks, beanbags, stress balls and mystery bags.

Another highlight of 2022 was the rapid growth of SwagCycle’s bespoke recycling services, which help when a company determines their merchandise cannot be donated, due to a canceled event, corporate acquisition, out-of-date information or some other situation. Last year, SwagCycle recycled more than 20 pallets of metal water bottles for a major technology company that underwent a rebrand. It recycled several truckloads of out-of-date stationery items and tech accessories and helped a large alcohol and beverage company recycle items from its warehouse after a brand refresh. In addition to recycling, SwagCycle helped companies upcycle obsolete apparel into industrial wiping cloths, carpet pad fill, insulation materials and the shredded filling for boxing punching bags.

Grossman has said that he hopes SwagCycle’s efforts can be an example to the rest of the promo industry: “We view SwagCycle as almost an enabling technology for other distributors where they can turn to us when they need our support and keep our capabilities in their sustainability toolbox.

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