Charity shops in the UK are more popular than ever as the cost of living crisis continues to worsen, but there is one issue that is causing major problems for shop workers
An experienced charity shop worker says there’s an issue with the industry which is as bad as she’s ever seen it.
Charity shops in the UK are arguably as popular as they have ever been – both with customers and with people donating to them. The cost of living crisis, with household bills shooting up, mean this trend is likely to continue
This is having an unexpected consequence though, according to charity shop staff. Shops are increasingly been used “as a stop on the way to the tip,” workers have claimed.
YouTube and TikTok accounts promoting the virtues of charity shops have made the industry more fashionable. Shops are struggling to cope with a huge increase in donations they need to deal with. And while donations are increasing, the quality of products stores receive often leaves a lot to be desired.
Claire Stockman is head of St Luke’s Hospice. She told the I: “The quality of donations over the last year has also diminished rapidly. If I go back a couple of years, we used to get pretty much everything that people didn’t want because most people couldn’t be bothered to try and resell them.”
Claire puts the diminishing quality of donations down to resale apps like Vinted, an online marketplace selling second-hand items.
Now they are receiving many items from fast fashion brands like Primark and Pretty Little Thing. Often their clothes are only £5 when new meaning the charity shop can’t sell them for more than £2.
She added: “We try to sell them but because of the brand and the quality, people won’t buy it. Sixty per cent of what comes into us is not sellable.
“It’s soiled, it’s damaged beyond repair, it’s smelly beyond belief. We have stock that comes in where the crotch has been cut out of the jeans or the pockets have been ripped off the back. I’ve been in charity retail for a while now and I have never, ever seen it this bad.”
Charity shops still need to find a way to process the influx of donations, which can be a hard task. They are run by volunteers but people don’t want to spend their time dealing with soiled and smelly items.
Sometimes charity shops refuse donations or close a day to sort through all the items, which has an impact on how much money they can raise.
But shops don’t want to discourage people from donating, which is what keeps them going. They do want to urge people to prioritise donating quality items rather than just using charity shops to avoid a trip to the tip.
Louise Dawtry, who works for Mind, says a good donation looks like anything with tags on, anything that hasn’t been opened or higher quality items.
