This charity shop in St John's Street, Bury, not only takes in items and clothes to re-sell but also 'rags' type clothes and materials for recycling, for which they collect a fee direct from the larger recycling organisations. I can't say this often enough - please be careful who you place charity bags outside the house for. There are many organisations who have well known charity names on the bags they leave but only give a small percentage of the proceeds to them. Please, please, please don't give good clothes to such collectors. They could end up shredded. I believe it should say on the bag who receives what, but generally speaking if you know of a local charity shop e.g. Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Age Concern and so on, then the shop will benefit directly from the clothes etc that you donate if you leave the bags out for collection.
Today I walked into town specifically to deliver a bag of 'damaged' clothes to each but I did point out that there was a pair of young men's jeans in there with a small tear in, which they might be able to sell in the shop. They agreed - on the basis that many jeans are sold from shops like that
4 comments:
Good point, Julie.
I gather that a bag of 'rags' is worth about £1 to a charity, whereas individual items will of course be worth much more.
Taking the time to separate rags from gladrags could make your cast offs worth ten times as much, or even more, to your favourite charity.
Roy
Last year I went on a visit to the Oxfam warehouse in Milton Keynes. Their clothes are fed onto a long conveyor manned at intervals. First staff pull off the best stuff for shops and eBay. Then there is the “Festival Sales” container for bright, oddball, but not very robust clothing. A bin for stuff going to Oxfam’s African partner, a special bin for cashmere which has a high recycle value, and finally the remainder goes to rags or fabric recycling.
In the Bury shop we do a similar process but we separate out high value and unusual for eBay sale, then stuff for the shop (generally steamed before sale), stuff to pass to other shops, and finally the remainder goes to a recycling company with a process similar to Oxfam MK. We do all we can to wring every bit of value out of the donations. It helps a lot if you are a taxpayer if you tag the bag with a Gift Aid label – it’s a lot of admin for us as that number has to follow every item in that bag right to the point of sale but the Government gives us an extra 20%.
I remember a time when there was indication that charity collectors only wanted sound items, and there was someone I spoke to in a charity shop at the time who said they were fed up with having rubbish dumped upon them. Things have obviously changed - well, Oxfam at least seem to be doing a brilliant job. I think more of the public would be benefit from knowing what happens to the contents of their bags.
To be honest we would much prefer good saleable items - the stuff for recycling creates a lot of effort and takes up valuable space for little gain. In fact I think we get nothing for it - but the recycling company does not charge to remove it, in the hope that they can sell for enough to support the roving trucks.
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