Charity shops, re-use and recycling
Charity shops contribution to sustainable development
The Government’s Waste Strategy for England 2007 re-inforced the widely-accepted “waste hierarchy” (above), and noted that “most products should be re-used or their materials recycled”.
Charity shops generate funds for charity by selling on unwanted items – i.e. providing a reuse opportunity for them.
As well as the public donating items to shop, through large-scale door-to-door collections, charity shops collect over 15 million sacks of textiles and other materials from UK households every year.
In total 1.9 million households are given the opportunity to reuse and recycle unwanted items every week.
Over 250,000 tonnes of textiles are sent on for reuse and recycling by charity shops every year (1).
It is estimated that only 6% of materials donated to charity shops end up in landfill (2).
Re-use of clothing saves 29kg CO2e per Kg of clothing compared to recycling and 33kg CO2e compared to disposal.
UK charity shops and textile recyclers help reduce CO2 emissions by 8 million tonnes per year from their recycling and re-use operations.
Charity shops are providing a second life for an increasing range of items, including books (with more specialist charity book shops opening every year), CD’s, Videos, Toys, Furniture, Bric-A-Brac and Electrical items (where these can be tested first).
As they are attributed as the place for reuse/recycling, they are also now playing a role in collecting recyclable goods to help with fundraising, e.g. mobile phones, print cartridges. As many as 9 out of 10 people agree that charity shops are a good way of recycling and reusing unwanted items.
Charity shops’ contribution to local authority recycling targets
There is increasing recognition of the contribution charity shops make in reducing the volume of items that go to landfill, and a number of local authorities are now counting the volume of textiles sent for reuse and recycling that can be measured, towards their recycling targets. In return these authorities support the charity by paying recycling credits for this volume. The Association is keen to encourage other authorities to adopt this approach.
Without the opportunity charity shops provide for large-scale reuse and recycling, these unwanted items would inevitably find their way into the waste stream to be treated by local authorities as household waste.
On average 36 tonnes p.a. of textiles alone are passed on to Textile Merchants by each charity shop for recycling or reuse or are sold in the shop.
This grosses to around 250,000 tonnes across all Charity Shops in the UK.
Based on 2007 landfill tax value at £24 per tonne, the value of textiles reused or passed for recycling by charity shops in terms of savings in landfill tax is £6,000,000 pa.
An early estimate of actual landfill costs1 was of an average £40/tonne. Based on this, the savings represented by the volume of textiles re-used and passed for recycling each year by charity shops could be as much as £10,000,000 p.a. However, recent anecdotal evidence suggests that actual costs are now much higher (including increases in landfill tax) and that the contribution of the sector to these savings is considerably more than £10m.
1 Based on data from the Charity Finance ‘Shops Survey 2007’ and Association of Charity Shops Quarterly Market Analysis 2006-2007
2 Association of Charity Shops: Textiles Acquisition and Disposal in UK Charity Shops (2001)