Inside the charity shop crisis: What really happens to your donated clothes

Inside the charity shop crisis: What really happens to your donated clothes Fashion

As charity shops become a dumping ground for fashion waste, much of which ends up blighting African beaches, private equity is benefiting from the system

As the heatwave raged over the summer , so did headlines spelling doom for charity shops . The British Heart Foundation announced that it would close 150 shops by March 2028, while Cancer Research will shut down almost 200 stores by April 2027 with plans to open 12 out-of-town ‘superstores’ across the country. Few made the environmental connection.

Charity shops are viewed in paradoxical ways; for some a lifeline for affordable secondhand clothing, a way of raising money for key causes and a handy place to drop the stuff we no longer want. Equally, they are often regarded as a blight on the high street, emblems of decline and dissatisfaction. It’s unusual for anyone to speak of withering town centres without using charity shops as an example of the sadness at the core of a struggling area.

But what is missed is that they have unwittingly become the de facto first port of call for a tsunami of clothing waste. Without them, even more of our “stuff” would head straight to landfill. They provide a critical service in recirculating the fabric fruits of our gluttonous shopping habits.

Its volunteers are the first hands to sort through the expelled in a convoluted chain which extends across the globe. You would not presume that private equity gains from our donated clothes . You would hope that it wasn’t your old jumpers clogging up beaches in Ghana.

“You never forget the first piece of worn underwear you have to unpack,” says Tansy Hoskins, author of Charity Shop World, a starkly compelling investigation into what really happens to the bags-for-life we donate. It is a book which anyone who has ever bought clothes should read.

Now anything worth something is probably being flogged on Vinted, leaving charity shops with our fashion dregs

As research, Hoskins spent a year working in an undisclosed charity shop in London. Clothes were donated by the sack full, often stained or damaged, single worn out shoes, broken plastic toys. As a volunteer the shift work is hard graft, pulling out what’s saleable and piling up what isn’t to be sold off to rag “recycling” companies. The amount paid for ragbags has been steadily decreasing, alongside the slide in the quality of our clothing. While once there were plenty of proverbial diamonds in the rough, now anything worth something is probably being flogged on Vinted, leaving charity shops with our fashion dregs.

“From the first day,” Hoskins recalls, “the amount of stuff was astonishing. It’s overwhelming. I was amazed by what horrible condition much of it is in and how physically draining the work is. Those bags of textile waste are really heavy.” She found the experience relentless and emotionally exhausting. “Everyone has that horrible junk drawer in your house that you don’t want to face. It was like facing that over and over again.”

The global fashion industry produces about 100 billion items each year.