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Adam Rothwell
- Monday, September 10, 2007
BOGUS CLOTHES COLLECTIONS are an increasing menace according to almost everyone in the charity world. Unscrupulous geezers will apparently jump at the chance to divest you of your old garments, and will then sell them on for profit.Depending on the technique these scoundrels use, this might break one of a number of laws. On top of this, one estimate puts the damage done to genuine charity collections at £3m a year.
But there are some steps you can take to avoid being caught out:
1. Look for a registered charity number - not just a company number - on the empty bag posted through your letterbox. If there is one, the chances are that the collection will be genuine. Most crooks won't actually run the risk of pretending to be a legitimate charity - if they were caught, they'd be in serious trouble.
2. Do as much as possible to stop criminals stealing clothes you've put on your doorstep. Don't leave them overnight, for example.
3. Engage common sense. No self-respecting aid outfit would dare use the phrase 'third-world clothing collection' on its publicity material - so the extravagant use of bad English or un-PC phrases is probably a sign that something dodgy is going on.
More crime-beating tips from ClothesAid.
The really important thing to remember is that donating your old clothes will never make any charity a lot of money. If you think you've done your bit by leaving your old jumpers to Great Ormond Street (see profile), you haven't. By all means shift your junk - but don't forget that cash is what charities really need.
I think Martin may be missing the point somewhat here. Yes no one notices the impact charity shops have on the economy of this country, but that is because we have a large, complex and sophisticated economy in this country.
The countries that receive the discarded second hand clothes often have fledging textile industries that are driven out of business by the "charities" that are supposed to be helping them "develop". These charities then hide behind the excuse that "this is a complex issue and we are doing what we can" but in fact they are making poor people poorer whilst letting those who donate clothes give themselves a pat on the back for "making a difference". The truth is if you want to help those in developing/poor countries the best thing you can do is to donate money, or if you fancy dressing it up why not send a goat/emu/cow/toilet block. That is much better than giving away those t-shirts that you thought were cool in 1987, because they’ll not only make poor people poorer, you’ll also make them look as ridiculous as you did back in the 80’s.
The charity shops cannot sell everything donated to them in the shops. A hell of a lot gets sold on to companies who then sort, bag and export them. Some charities do ship the clothes abroad.
The result for the countries receiving the clothing either way is similar to us receiving cheap clothing from foreign manufacturers. You as a consumer end up able to buy affordable clothing.
Has anyone noticed clothing sales in Britain being drastically affected by all these charity shops here selling stuff? Anyone noticed or cares about non-charity clothing stores going out of business?
Or a serious hurt to our economy from being able to buy a nice t-shirt for £1.50 from charity shops rather than £20 from a local store?
We could of course simply bin our old clothes. Will that be better for our and other country's economies?
Surely the real scandal here is that charities often ship our old clothes to Africa, where they put local shops and clothes makers out of business?? This seriously hurts the countries' economies, and it's all charities' fault!
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