Charity Bags

Photo: BBC

Almost daily we have a 'charity' bag or leaflet pushed through the letter box. Most boast of their giving to a registered charity which benefits by around ?50 per tonne of clothes collected. What is not said is that a tonne of clothing is sold for ?1,000. There is also a thriving 'business' in lifting bags left out for others as illustrated above.

If you have clothes or other items for disposal, please take them to a charity shop. Some will collect if too much to carry. Below are some interesting facts from http://www.charitybags.org.uk/

Next time you receive a plastic bag to fill, check the small print first or go to the above web site.

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How to stop a bogus house-to-house collection...

. . . You need to act quickly - see the hands-on guide below

Charity shops raise 50 times more than house-to-house collections . . .

Taking your unwanted clothes etc to a charity shop raises around  50 times more money for charity compared with giving your clothes to a typical house-to-house 'charity' collector !

• House-to-house collectors:  Most of these are commercial companies - who give the partner charity only £50 or so for each tonne of clothes collected.

That's only  5 pence  per kilogram (35 ounces) - that's the weight of a jacket or winter dress.

[There's a thousand kilograms in a tonne.]

Usually the company exports your clothes (especially to Eastern Europe - eg Lithuania) and they're sold for private profit.  The company sells the clothes for over £1,000 per tonne.

Charity shops:  By contrast, if you take the same item of clothing to a charity shop they'll sell it for around £10, of which over  £2.50 is profit (=net proceeds) for the charity.  Also, you can increase this by 25% by using "Gift Aid"

Do you want your item of clothing to raise only  5 pence for charity - or over  £2.50 . . . ?

Worse still, around 50% of house-to-house collections are misleading/bogus/illegal.

... And fewer than 1 in 10,000 (=0.01%) illegal collections is prosecuted .

... And over 10% of filled bags are stolen before the house-to-house collector arrives.

With CDs and DVDs, around 200 times more money is raised for charity by charity shops compared with typical house-to-house collections (10 cased CDs weigh 1 kilogram):

A house-to-house collector gives only  a half-penny (0.5p) per CD to the charity!

A charity shop makes almost  £1 profit (=net proceeds) per donated CD or DVD

With jewellery, over 1,000 times more money is raised for charity by charity shops compared with typical (royalty-per-tonne) house-to-house collections.

There are over 9,000 charity shops in the UK - including :

• Age UK, Barnardo's, British Red Cross, Cancer Research UK, Children's Society, Extra Care, FARA, Marie Curie, Oxfam, RSPCA, Salvation Army, Scope, Shelter, Sue Ryder, YMCA; local cancer hospices.

However, if you're unable to take your donated goods to a charity shop, some shops are happy to collect them from your house - eg British Heart Foundation (BHF)

For more information on how charity shops raise 50 times more than collections, see the following :

the Charity shops versus house-to-house collections page

the Statistics page