Charity shops, I apologise

[thedevilinablackdress]

I've loved charity shopping for over 30 years, but like many I've long mixed it with online second hand shopping.
The stories in this Guardian article are not new to those of us who've read threads on here, work in the shops or know people who do.
I never sell online myself and am a very mindful donatter, but my own eBay addiction and Vinted dabbling is contributing to this in a way.
Shops won't want to discourage donations, but it seems more push back on the mountains of crap is needed.

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/oct/13/people-sell-their-best-stuff-on-vinted-how-charity-shops-became-a-dumping-ground-for-unsellable-clothes

Thankfully around here people still donate quality clothing, nearly new (sometimes tags attached) from more expensive high street stores and designer too. The mass market clothes from primark, Asda, SHEIN and similar goes to our clearance store in a low income part of the city where everything is £5 or less (mostly £2 or £3).

Agree - Oxfam used to get loads. We had about 150 boxes of Zara internet returns, nothing wrong with them and it sold really well. M&S used to send a lot of things and that was more hit and miss, some end of sale stock but also things like a 5 pack of pants with only 4 pairs in it. I bought loads of school uniform for my kids from the M&S donations. Also had Ted Baker although that came with SO many conditions - you weren;'t allowed more than X number of items in the shop, you weren't allowed to say on social media you had the donation, no Ted Baker items in the window etc etc etc. Speedo also made a big donation about 2021, think it was stuff ordered for summer 2020 season which never happened. We also had loads of cheap costume jewellery at some point, can't remember where that was from.

On one hand, it's good that Zara aren't just landfilling their internet returns. On the other, it's appalling that one shop out of 500 in the Oxfam chain got 150 boxes and just speaks to the scale of the waste.

That was very much a dismissable offence where I worked, stuff had to be on the shop floor for 24 hours before staff could buy it. Policing it was another matter.

The tons of stuff that doesn't sell in charity shops is 'donated' to countries like Ghana, who are overwhelmed with it and a large proportion ends up in landfill, informal dumps and in waterways. There is just too much produced and I feel sickened by the weekly new trends in fashion and the constant pressure to update your wardrobe

I understand this and have never donated junk myself but it still limits what I can do in the way of donating. I don't know what the answer is though. I do stick the odd thing on ebay but not much. Mostly my stuff goes on a local giveaway group but its not clothes.

Yes, exactly.

It's a particularly UK situation.

The underlying issue is 'charity' and those dynamics. The whole sector is a weird mix of moral/emotional intent and commercial drivers.

Charity shopping and donating is a mix of charitable altruism and self interest, that's pretty much the basis of the whole model.

But everyone blames each other for not being altruistic enough or being too self interested. Which will quickly damage the whole dynamic, branding, and sector.

I like to buy good quality clothes in natural materials that will last a long time. They have become very expensive now. It is a fallacy to say they will last forever, because, like everyone else, I want some new clothes from time to time. The only way I can afford to buy the new clothes is to wait for the sales, buy what I desire and sell off some of my existing ones on Vinted or Ebay. I don't give much to charity shops now because like a poster above I fear that Fold or Brora dress may just end up in landfill when it is beautiful and would make someone very happy. I think this is a good compromise and I do buy some secondhand items too. I do wish that consumers would save for good quality UK made clothing if possible, rather than constantly buy cheap things but that is a matter for them.

Round us, the Sally army have removed their textile bins. They say its because donations of poor quality textiles have got them to the point where the value to the rag trade is such that it no longer funds bin operations so its costing them money to have the bins. I guess the rag recycling business is no longer what it was either?

The article overlooks the fact that there is so much rubbish on Vinted too - huge amounts of Shein / Temu etc stuff, so the problem is the volume of that on the market in general, not just what’s going to charity shops. Then there’s all the stuff that’s listed as good condition which is actually ripped/holey/stained/broken (usually complete with blurry photos, none of which are of the item label, and the seller failing to mention if they smoke/have pets).

I personally really dislike using Vinted because the fees make everything twice the price and the user interface is dreadful, but I use it over going to charity shops because I’m almost always looking for something specific rather than generally browsing and I don’t have the time or energy to go to multiple charity shops every week until one of them gets in the specific thing I’m after. For example, this week I bought a sleeveless brown long cardigan for a Halloween costume which there is no guarantee of finding in my size in a charity shop in time.

Rag is very much not what it was.

"Between 2013 and 2023, there was a 57.5% reduction in price per tonne for textile bank donations and a 41% reduction for charity shop donations, without accounting for inflation."

https://www.wrap.ngo/resources/report/textiles-market-situation-report-2024 and that was before the Iran conflict started and the price of diesel went sky high.

The article overlooks the fact that there is so much rubbish on Vinted too - huge amounts of Shein / Temu etc stuff,

Also a side point, I'd really like a second hand website which lets you exclude brands rather than select the brands you want to search for. So show me all purple dresses, seller located in the UK, price £3 to £30, excluding Shein, Temu, Pretty Little Thing, Boohoo etc.

Tax relief, possibly, and they will have targets to reduce waste, so better to donate 20 'end of line' shirts than send them to rag.

@NagathaCrispy this is really interesting, and I really appreciate the work that volunteers do. In the case where you have an oversupply in some categories, are you able to judge new stock against what’s currently on the shop floor, e.g pull cheaper brand jeans off to rag and rotate in the Levi’s? Or is it just that new donations are over quota?

I try to be careful with my donations and make sure for eg that I’m donating saleable stock to stores with good turnover, but it’s always interesting to see behind the scenes!

I wish ALL websites would do this (e.g. boots £10 Tuesday, don't show me pampers and teething rings as my kids are well out of that phase)

Absolutely this!

I still use Ebay but stopped Vinted because it seemed awash with really cheap clothes (in both senses) and no way to avoid it.

I love dipping into my local independent charity shops as they nearly always have something interesting to find unlike the big name charity shops that are wall to wall Chinese produced polyester.

Most of my wardrobe is second hand and good quality and mostly, purchased in person. I like finding something someone no longer wants and treasuring it. Buying online is okay if you have something specific in mind but its not designed for browsing.

I admit, I don't need more clothes and I'm careful about what I donate to the tiny shops I do visit.

I can understand why the books were refused and why the lady didnt even look at them.
Our shop sells books at 30p each. Lee Child and the like fly out. But, we also sell all hardbacks at 30p and we cant sell ten a week even if they are new. No-one wants them and they cost money to dispose of. The number of times people come in with a 'really good' set of Encyclopaedias or gardening hardbacks thinking we will get a very good price for them.
They would be so offended if we told them that the books would be sent in bulk to the disposal company

I think charity shops have had their day. I don't think they are able to make a significant amount of money for their cause any more.

They grew out of the failure of other retail - moved into the butchers and the greengrocers, the hardware store of book shop. More and more and more of them.

If those shops couldn't make it work, why should charities expect to? Retail is struggling, so charity retail will be too.

Better for them to have centralised warehouses where they can check all donations at the entrance, refuse any rubbish and then sell on ebay or vinted themselves - or they can set up charity shops virtually. We have something similar - and you can't dump stuff because it is a fenced enclosure which is padlocked. People may not like refusal of their donations, but they have got used to it - and it means they don't bring rubbish/ the charity doesn't have to pay to get rid of rubbish.

I'd love to see the death of fast fashion, TEMU, SHEIN and places like B&M who sell things that simply shouldn't exist - badly made thin plastic that breaks within a week and then clogs up our environment.

I’ve just done a huge wardrobe clear out and have taken 6 of those enormous B&Q bags to various charity shops.

I was very particular; anything with a pulled thread or hemming issues or similar has gone to the Rag Bag and I’ve only donated clothes in good condition. I also washed and ironed them first. Lots of Zara linen, French Connection, Reiss, Massimo Duti etc. And towels - I made sure sets were together and again, they are in decent condition.

I probably could have sold a lot of it but I just can’t face traipsing back and forth to the Post Office etc.

It’s because of cheap retailers - Primark, SHEIN, H&M, the supermarkets in the UK.
essentially people want to buy cheap clothes, they then ‘donate’ them because they want something new / the clothes don’t wear well (for the reasons they are cheap) and then the charity shop cannot resell these because no one wants them. The rag trade then also refuses to take them; unless they can sell them as export rag; which is what washes up all over Ghana and other poor nations.
There is nothing charitable about donating fast fashion.

One small positive is that some fast fashion retailers resell their own pieces now. Zara in Europe has preloved. Kiabi (like Matalan in France) also resells used clothing. Of course it’s a drop in the ocean of what they make new and continue to sell/pollute the world with.
Consumers are to blame for shopping cheaply and not appreciating the true value of goods, materials and human labour. This is all a result of the choices consumers’ are making and have made over the last ten years.

the twist to this article is that actually It’s not sad that people are starting to realise the value of clothing. It’s been too cheap and too throwaway for too long. It’s cost all of us immensely in climate change. Not to mention the underpaid labour that these manufacturers use. It’s actually very positive if people in the west become more conscious of what they’re buying and the value that is hanging in their wardrobes - that’s where the change has to happen; in the heads of British consumers.

The absolute travesty is that clothes that are well made using natural fibres are now only available (new) to the rich.

I found an oasis leather bag I had kept from 20 years ago recently and remembered being able to get leather, wool etc (and by wool I don't mean 'wool blend' with 3% wool content) in high st stores in ye olden days.

Now youu would need to remortgage your house every season to have any hopes of buying stuff that wasn't all recycled poly.

Yes, some of these natural fibre clothes may trickle down to the charity shops but they will get fewer and further between as time goes by .

Blimey jeans are something I would pick up in a charity shop if they had them! Don't rag them for goodness sake! Get rid of some of the other tat you put out instead! This just shows that staff have no idea.

I did buy a pair about three years ago for £3 in a charity shop in Devon and wore them around the house until they wore out. And they weren't a "label" like Levis or Lee. If they had been, I'd probably still have them (obviously wuoud have probably paid more too but that's ok).

I think it’s a change in attitude too. We didn’t buy new clothes every season - we paid more (relative to income) and bought fewer items. As children we were bought new clothes when we had grown out of items. Clothes shopping was not a weekly activity.
Now we want more: we want new clothes every time we go away, we want Xmas pyjamas etc so it has to be at a cheaper price point

As someone who volunteers in a charity shop this wouldn’t work either as 95% of the stuff donated is cheap rubbish that wouldn’t sell on vinted.

I work in a charity shop and have worked in others. It's mostly just bags of filthy crap.
People come to us because there are no local public skips.

I think it's unreasonable to expect to buy new clothes 'every season'.

You don't need them. You just want the hit of buying and wearing something new.

Better to go backwards in time to when you had very few clothes and likely, they were second hand, or if they were new they would go to a relative when you outgrew them. You repaired them, cleaned and polished them, patched them.

That's what we need again - just a handful of clothes that we keep until they cannot be used anymore, replaced only when necessary.

Not just clothing, everything - especially pointless decorations and gifts that no one wants.

The video 'The story of stuff' (below) is enlightening as to why our stuff is destroying us all.