Doorstep clothes-collection bags

We have 5 - 6 charity shops in my town so I never have anything to put in the bags. I find them very useful to line my recycling bin.

You are right about the quantity of bags FB, How can they be making any money, given the cost of fuel?

Its the shear quantity of these bags that puzzles me. In our village we get at least one bag a week pushed through the letterbox and sometimes 2 or 3. The vans collecting these bags must frequently drive round the village without picking up a single filled bag. This must cost the company issuing the bags a significant sum in wages for the bag deliverers, bag collectors, and buying and running the vans that drive round the village in vain. I am sure this experence is common to many other communities in my area.

I understand that a lot of the clothes so collected go to developing countries where there are thriving second-hand clothing markets. Some years ago I listened to a programme about Oxfam. A lot of the clothing that gets handed in to them which they consider unsuitable for sale in the UK is exported to Nigeria and other African countries and sold by the sack load to second-hand clothing dealers. They do not give them away because this would undermine the local second-hand clothing industry. They said there was a high demand for bras and sacks containing them always sold well!!

I take my stuff to a local PDSA shop. They are always grateful and I do see my things on sale when I next go in. Bigger things I take to the Bethany Trust, the money gained from the sales go to help homeless people start up their homes again.

Juts put a bag out for NSPCC with summer clothing that wont see the light of day again this year!

This topic was on the Today prog a couple of days ago. BHF were on and a man from one of those companies that do this for other charities. BHF definitely a good idea. Both of them were agreed there were bogus collectors (like my breast cancer one) but the guy was a bit elusive about how much money went to charity...

I only fill bags for British Heart Foundation, because they have a box printed on the bag to fill in gift aid info. They are also reliable and always collect, so there is no danger of uncollected bags knocking around the neighbourhood, as frequently happens with other charities (or sometimes pseudo-charities, you have to read the small print don't you?).

Well the assistants in these places are volunteers aren't they and us volunteers are a mixed bag...

I do use the local Air Ambulance ones plus any of the other with a recognisable charity name if I have some stuff it saves lugging it into town. On the last two occasions I took things into the local hospice shop (when in N Yorks) the assistant was very rude to me and the same happened hear with Salvation Army so I am not going through that again. You can always check out the charity with Trading Standards if you are doubtful of their provenance.

Well i am sure someone gets some benefit goldengirl. Suspect they get taken to poor areas/places and sold to people who cant afford new. Just a bit dishonest i think as they lead people to think they are giving to charity. If you cant get to Oxfam, fair enough!

Oh dear! I feel quite guilty as I gave away a pile of clothes as a result of one of these bags as I couldn't get it to the charity shop on this occasion and DH wasn't available to help. The room looks a lot better though without a bag decoration

I was a little put off the small local charity shop after taking a lot of stuff that was really good to it, mainly business suits of mine that no longer fit and a few days later popping in to see if they had a hat I had seen there on sale still and none of my stuff was on show. I watched as the assistant took someone in the back room and showed her my suits and she came out with three of them.

I only fill doorsyep collection bags that come from charities that I know will sell the goods in their own shops. As soon as I see the words 'a percentage of the money raised will go to ...', the bag goes straight into my (very large) collection of spare bags!

yes glammanana ...I don't do it anymore. I turn them inside out and put in stuff that I take to my chosen local charity shops. My local council will only take their own coloured bags for recycling.
JessM ...you could put your garden rubbish in them to take to the dump ...we don't have any bins in my area and council will not collect garden waste ...when I get there ...have to empty the bags ...this usually means ripping to get stuff out ...then I put the torn charity bags in the recycling bin

absentgrana I also do gift aid it give's 25% more to the charity,well worth doing.

JessM did you ever see the programme on TV about people stealing from the clothing bank's put out for the collection on behalf of charities,these people raided the clothing bank's and sold the cloth's on to Clothing Warehouse's who paid them X amount of £s per ton and the rest was sent to Europeon countrie's for recyclying,none of the monie's made came to the aid of any Charities.So now I never fill any of the bag's left,I take all donation's to Cancer Research or Help the Aged myself

I don't respond to doorstep collections, not least because I have a registered gift aid number which means that charities can reclaim from the government the appropriate sum of tax I have paid when they sell the items. I do leave the empty bag on the doorstep, as they ask, but it's never collected. I prefer to give items to the shops whose charities I already support.

Our stingy council gave out bags for paper and cardboard when the collection started a few years ago, but won't replace these when they go missing - usually on collection days, blown by the wind or removed for some reason by the collectors. So the 'charity' bags, turned inside out, are useful for leaving my recyclables at the kerbside.