Do charity shops enable us to justify buying too many clothes?

I buy most of my books secondhand, Not novels, but books about all sorts of subjects that interest me. You will never find me at Waterstones, but offer me a second hand book and I - and the rest of the family, including grandchildren will be down there. The same applis to charity shop books

I forgot to say I also take things that I originally bought from charity shops back to charity shops. If I’ve lost weight as happened last year.

I always wash and carefully fold the items I donate and ask them first if they are accepting stuff. Most will say yes to clothing but are often struggling with other stuff due to space being at a premium. A sign saying NO DVDS PLEASE is common.
As I’ve said before rags make money too.
The people who complain about the poor quality stuff in charity shops are in the one of the following categories:

They are 1. Visiting charity shops in very poor areas (and do remember people are more mercenary since e-bay and the likes came along) they can make money from their own stuff and good luck to ‘em.
2. Accustomed to high end stuff in which case …..you know what to do.🤗

nanna8

No one wants second hand books anymore, even if they are in as new condition. Our op shops won’t accept them. I don’t like chucking them in the bin when there is nothing wrong with them and so one of my groups has started a book swap. You bring a book to swap once a month.( I have to fess up and say I take 2 or 3 there and bring just 1 back.

I very definitely buy second hand books! Most of mine come from National Trust second hand bookshops, with some from various charity shops. I also donate them to one particular charity, where I am registered for GiftAid and they send updates as to the amount they have raised from those - which often is quite a lot!

Speaking for myself only; I personally buy things from charity shops because they are cheap/unusual/unavailable anywhere else.

The lack of shops (two more shops closed last week) in my town (still call it a town) means that very soon there will be zero places to buy anything.

And that includes a screw driver, pot, pans, a tea towel or dishcloth, vacuum cleaner bags NONE M&S clothing, bras, knickers.

All that will be left is very large Primark (who sensibly in my opinion) stayed on the high street instead of moving to the doomed laughably named “shopping centre”.
Locals have started to refer to the “town centre” as burger world

But Primark bras for any person with breasts larger than say a 36c are poorly made and uncomfortable.

Back to charity shops: they exist because enough people are poor enough to need to shop there.
The income they make goes to charities who don’t receive any or insufficient financial assistance.
There would not be one without the other.

I’ve found having worked in charity shops that the vast majority of fast fashion (probably bought online) or from Primark or Sainsburys, Tesco, etc own brands is in the smaller sizes ( and by that I mean 6s 8s 10s) that is why it is still quite rare to find anything in good condition in say size 12/14/16.

I buy things for work because I don’t get payed enough to buy new. I’m capable of operating a washing machine, pegging out to dry, ironing.

Yesterday there were loads of young girls going from charity shop to charity shop, they were aged around 16, 17.
The stigma has gone or for them never existed.

When I was a young parent of two toddlers there was No where to buy second hand or cheap things for them.
I certainly never ever wore anything that wasn’t brand new.

My parents could afford it but many couldn’t and had the misery of wearing the same (often unwashed) stuff day after day. I remember kids in my cohort like that.
Thank goodness that has changed. I say.

Sadly still not enough proper shoe shops for me and my big feet. Charity shop shoes to fit me are as rare as rocking horse poo😏

The doom and gloom for me is the failure to seriously address climate change.
The fashion industry has a huge environmental footprint, and I don’t think we should be tempted to purchase unnecessary clothing as a short lived antidepressant.

Do you actually need that new frock Rosalyn? How much will you wear it and is it then likely to be bought by someone else or sent off to add to the mountain of rags in some third world country?

No one is suggesting that you should not by a new frock Rosalyn69. It is all about buying excess clothes, It is clear that some people are buying clothes they never wear. We hear stories of people with bulging wardrobes, who really do not even know what clothes they own, they own so many.

I never feel even remotely guilty about the clothes I buy, nor feel a need to justify buying them, but I only have one wardrobe in my bedroom because that is sufficient to hold all my clothes and I rarely give clothes to charity shops because they wear out before I chuck them out.

Of course I am only human and do on occasion make impulse buys, bad buys and lose interest in clothes that are still good to wear, but on various threads on GN over the years, some people seem to justify buying lots of clothes on the basis that if they do not wear them they can always give them to charity and I just wondered whether in some cases having charity shops able to take clothes enabled some people to justify extravagent clothes buying because they could pass them on.

I despair when I read some posts and realise just how many cheap clothes some of us buy, just for the sake of it. I buy only what I actually need, which is very little, and as far as humanly possible I make sure my clothes are made in the UK or EU, that cotton is not sourced from China and wool is non-mulesed. What I pass on to charity shops is little, but clean, wearable and good quality; it will find a buyer. I have little doubt that some people assuage their consciences when buying yet more cheap stuff by passing not necessarily very old cheap stuff on to charity shops. I hope some people read this, recognise themselves and reflect.

There’s so much doom and gloom around and I’m not supposed to buy a new frock without feeling guilt ridden?
I’m sure you ladies are very worthy and I admire your stance but I’ll make my contribution to saving the planet some other way and look nice while I do it.

😀

Callistemon21

^According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board^.
10 Nov 2022

There’s lovely 😄

We've still got plastic bags here for the time being, not good, but it does go into separate sections in the lorry.

Callistemon21

^According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board^.
10 Nov 2022

Our recycling lorry (in Wales) has different compartments for different recycling types to match our bins. If you put stuff in the wrong bin you get it back, they won’t take it.

I’m having a massive clean out, I am guilty of buying things that don’t suit me or don’t go with anything, so never wear them, to see the rubbish, our clothes from charity shops, just dumped in other countries turned my stomach.

According to the last global study from Eunomia in 2017, Wales was ranked third in the world behind Germany and Taiwan on the global recycling leader board.
10 Nov 2022

I thought that might be somewhere in Wales and I was surprised, MerylStreep, but it's Canterbury.

How wass the contractor getting away with that!

After seeing this video I don’t think a lot of people will bother anymore 😡

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/angry-residents-catch-bin-men-27433353

I coud not agree more, Monica and do what I can.

The last garments I bought were two linen dresses in July 2021 as we came out of lockdown, really just to cheer mysef up after sixteen months in black scrubs. I’m immuno-compromised so had to lockdown hard until twice vaccinated. Why did I buy them? I didn't need them. It’s the transient dopmaine rush we experience, the short-lived pleasure we derive when we acquire something new. Many psychological papers have been written about why we over-consume, why we are addicted to shopping, food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, phones etc etc.

You make a good point about enabling but it goes further than clothes, doesn’t it? Would we buy so much of everything if disposal wasn’t so easy, if we didn't have other people to get rid of what we no longer want, whole industries built around disposal even when it’s labelled recycling.

The plot of the 2008 Pixar film Wall-E:

In the 22nd century, rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect has caused an ecocide, turning Earth into a garbage-strewn wasteland. The megacorporation Buy n Large (BnL) had evacuated humanity to space on giant starliners, leaving trash compacting robots to clean up the planet.

It’s all coming true isn’t it apart from our ability (yet) to find another habitable planet to trash. Meantime, rich countries dump their trash on poorer ones.

We need to stop producing so much and think very carefully about how conventional societal structures define the way we live and work and more importantly, why. Time for a reread of Bertrand Russell’s 1935 essay In Praise of Idleness. It’s on Gutenberg if anyone is interested.

Well put M0nica . Ofcourse our own part is small but all the drops in the ocean make the sea.

Nothing will change unless we make drastic changes to the way we live and reduce our consumption. Farzanah is right but it’s a political problem as much as it is one of unbridled consumerism. The trade in textiles is part of global trade agreements.

textiles may form part of global trade agreements, but this doesn't mean we have to buy them. We should only buy clothes we know we will wear and wear regularly so that by the time we are finished with them, they are fit only to be binned. All the waste in our area goes to a local incinerator where it is used to produce electricity.

There is so much each of us can do in our own lives to reduce our planetry foot print and while each person's contribution may seem small seen globally. When you add up 5, 10, 30, 50 million peoples individual contributions, it amounts to an awful lot.

I trawl the rails in our charity shops but rarely see anything i would wear.

The fabrics are usually thin and inferior so wouldn't even be useful for craft projects.

I remember seeing a newspaper photo of a vast container ship at Felixstowe and the caption was something like
"single use plastic rubbish arrives in the UK in time for Christmas"

Maybe a slight exaggeration but the reality is far too much tat both clothes and household items arrive on our shores constantly.

Safe waste incineration which creates energy is on my wish list. Along with a rethink on why and how we consume so much stuff.
Over consumption is a bit at odds with the cost of living crisis which has hit average and below average salaried households. Also I wonder if the obesity crisis has worsened as cost of living increases paradoxically?

WWM2. They are Muntaka Chasant’s pictures which were taken in Accra, Ghana and show mountains of clothes piled up on beaches. The photos are copyright so I shan’t add them here but they are easily found.

Chile’s Acatama desert is the same. This BBC film:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyHgY2O__fY

This is similar to all the “recycled” plastic which is dumped on other countries such as Malaysia and Turkey. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall reported on this in his series War on Plastic.

The only way to get rid of the waste is to burn it, which poisons local populations with the toxins.

Nothing will change unless we make drastic changes to the way we live and reduce our consumption. Farzanah is right but it’s a political problem as much as it is one of unbridled consumerism. The trade in textiles is part of global trade agreements.

I’m reminded of the 1970s TV series Bill Brand which is still available to watch on YT. A key theme of that was the loss of textile jobs in the north west of England. The UK took cheap garments from India and Pakistan as part of a trade deal to sell arms to those countries.

It’s ten years since the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh. 1134 workers died and another 2500 injured when a sweatshop factory collapsed. The owner had added extra floors to the building to meet the demands being placed on his business to produce more and more, cheaper and cheaper clothes. The structure was not strong enough to bear the weight and vibration of heavy machinery.

Among the retailers sourcing those clothes were C&A (before it went out of business), Benetton, Bonmarché, Matalan and Primark.

This Guardian article about compensation:

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/primark-payout-victims-rana-plaza-bangladesh

One of the slogans of the Clean Clothes Campaign is No Worker Should Die for Fashion but that’s only addressing part of the problem. The world needs to me making less and buying less but that means finding other work for the estimated 430 million people thought to be employed in fashion and textile production. Of the global workforce, roughly one in eight workers works in the industry.

I’m not sure where the statistic came from but I recall Sewing Bee’s Patrick Grant saying, a couple of series ago, that there are already enough garments in existence in the world to cloth the next six generations. Those pictures in Ghana and Chile would seem to confirm that.

that must make a nice change though from dirty socks, and worse, that charity shops get given.

Whaaat? Do charity shops actually get given that sort of thing?

I have volunteered in a fair few charity shops. The Oxfam books and music shop were ruthless about what they’ll accept and not.

Examples of the items that were often rejected were National Geographic Magazines, Atlases - since the internet arrived.

Often if a large donation was made, during the sorting of, popular contemporary paperback fiction- think Dan Brown/50 Shades of….etc if we already had several copies of them; they were sent to be pulped, the ones in best condition were kept, or any slightly unusual editions.

It was a space issue too. But mainly what could be sold to customers for the best price, and maintain the”brand integrity”.

People would often arrive with box loads after clearing the garage. This would reveal many mouldy/foxed items- straight into the dustbin or “for pulp”
Some items had a niche value such as old maps, posters, local history and related, usually Oxfam had enthusiasts to consult regarding vinyl records etc.
Ragging and pulping should make money for the charity - how much, depending on the current market conditions.