Choosing the best way to donate your clothes

See also these pages :

• Charity shops
• Re-use and recycling
• Textile recycling.

Introduction

When you dispose of unwanted goods for re-use, you have a choice of three methods :

1. take them direct to a charity shop, or
2. take them to a recycling/re-use centre, or
3. use house-to-house collections.

We describe these three methods below, including the pros and cons.

1. Taking your unwanted goods direct to a charity shop (the best option)

Most second-hand goods sold in charity shops are taken direct to the shop by the public. This method is usually preferable to using house-to-house collections :

• It minimises the costs for the charity (no collection costs), and
• It ensures the goods really do get to the charity - and don't end up with bogus individuals or organisations (a common problem with house-to-house collections).

However some people can't easily get to charity shops to donate their unwanted goods - for example the elderly, disabled, those without a car, or people who are out at work all day.

In these situations, recycling centres or house-to-house charity collections are a good second-best - see details in the sections below.

2. Taking your unwanted goods to a recycling/re-use centre 

There are recycling/re-use centres at many public locations such as supermarket car parks, public car parks and council depots.

Recycling: These centres offer facilities to recycle glass, cans, paper, aluminium foil etc. These waste materials are then taken away and processed (melted down, pulped etc as appropriate). The resulting products are used to manufacture new items.

Re-use: An increasing number of recycling centres now include containers for taking items for re-use, including :

• 'clothing banks' for clothes and other textiles - eg operated by the Salvation Army
• footwear
• books, music (CDs, tapes etc) - eg operated by Oxfam.

Remember, 're-use' means the items are used again in their existing form, whereas 'recycling' means they are processed back into materials and then re-manufactured. So re-use is much better for the environment than recycling.

Taking your goods to a recycling/re-use centre still means you have to travel (to the recycling centre), just like taking them direct to a charity shop.

Advantages of this method include :

• Hours - Recycling/re-use centres are usually open longer hours than charity shops, and on more days of the week (eg Sunday).
• Travelling -It may be nearer to you than any charity shop.
• Parking - is often easier and cheaper/free.
• Shopping - If you do your shopping at the same time, you save fuel and time.

Disadvantages of this method include :

• Often the facilities are unsupervised.
• Occasionally, thieves or vandals interfere with the containers which store the goods - leading to pilfering, contamination, arson etc. Most containers now have special security doors or chutes to reduce this problem.
• Sometimes the containers become full.
• Some of the containers are not operated by charities, but are commercial, such that little or no revenue goes to any good cause.

Q. What happens to the goods put in containers operated by charities?
A. There are three main destinations :

• the goods go to charity shops, or
• the goods are given directly to the needy, or
• the goods are sold to the commercial second-hand clothing market, with the revenue going to the charity.

See the Re-use and recycling page for more on these issues, especially the overwhelming advantages of re-use compared with recycling.

3. Using house-to-house collections

There are three common types of house-to-house collections :

1. Charity collections
2. Royalty collections
3. Commercial collections

Each of these types is described below.

A. Charity collections:
Goods collected house-to-house by charities and taken to charity shops

With some house-to-house charity bag collections, the goods go to charity shops for sale there. In our opinion, this is the best type of house-to-house collection - in terms of the proceeds going to a good cause.

B. Royalty collections:
Goods collected house-to-house by charities/businesses and sold commercially, with a royalty per tonne given to charity

A lot of "charity" bag collections are done by commercial companies, which sell on the goods for a profit. The companies undertake to donate a specified sum of money per tonne of collected goods to the charity (typically £30 to £70 per tonne). We refer to these as royalty collections.

C. Commercial collections:
Goods collected house-to-house by businesses and sold commercially, with nothing given to charity

These collections are completely legal and don't need a licence from government, so long as they make it clear that they are a business and don't suggest that a charity/good cause will benefit.

Commercial collections do ensure the goods are re-used or recycled, but they don't help charities.

So we'd recommend avoiding these collections - instead choose one of the categories higher up this page.

Theft and house-to-house collections

See the page on Theft of collection bags for more details.

All house-to-house clothing collections are vulnerable to certain hazards, especially theft. Fortunately this only affects a minority of bags - but it's still a serious problem.

The problem - On the day of a collection, the bags of donated goods are on (or near) the road/pavement for several hours, unattended, awaiting collection. A worrying proportion of these are stolen by thieves, before the genuine collectors arrive.

We've heard of thieves, driving around in vans on the collection day, pretending to be the official collectors and stealing scores of bags of clothes - then selling them through small ads, car boot sales or Ebay. 

One collector which experiences thefts is Clothes Aid. They've made commendable efforts to alert people to the problem and to reduce the thefts.

Regulating collections - licences, enforcement etc

• Commercial collections don't need a licence.
• Charitable collections do need a licence - see the page on collection law for details.

See the Definitions page for the meaning of the word "charitable".

Bogus and unlicensed charitable collections

Beware of commercial collections which pretend to be charitable. If they haven't got a licence they're illegal :

• Please don't give your clothes to them.
• If you have the time, report them to the licensing department of your local council. Do this immediately if you can - ideally on the day you receive the flyer leaflet or bag. The council can stop the collection and warn or prosecute the collectors.
• See the page on enforcement and prosecution by council licensing departments
• See the page called 'Does it need a collection licence?'

See two examples of prompt action by council licensing departments :

• the page on the prosecution by South Northants Council of 'Third World Recycling'
• the page on the prosecution by Cardiff Council of E&C Export Ltd

See elsewhere on the CharityBags website for more examples of bogus collections.