Charity shops are not ultra-fast fashion dumps, says Traid boss

The charity shop is not a dumping ground for ultra-fast fashion and is still stocked with high-quality goods, says a sector boss.

Traid, a charity working to stop clothing from being thrown away, says it diverted 3,222 tonnes of clothing from landfill and incineration by 2022, reduced CO2 emissions by 30,609 tonnes, and reused more than 11.2 million garments.

The charity’s chief executive Maria Chenoweth said ultra-fast fashions were designed not to last long, but if in good condition they could still be sold in charity shops.

He told the PA news agency: Charity shops don’t want trash. Not a dump or a graveyard for ultra-fast mode.

Please do not take unwearable and unusable clothing to charity shops as it is our expense to handle and dispose of unusable items.

The best thing you can do for charity retail, which is one of the nicest retailers you can get into, is donate clothes that are still wearable and even if it’s fast fashion, that’s fine, as long as someone else can wear it. well, we can still take that.

If it’s torn, torn, the seams are loose, you vomit at night, then we can’t have it. Similarly, people try to take blankets with them, items that are completely unusable.

Not a recycler in that sense. It’s an industry of reusing and spreading stuff and making people happy.

Ms Chenoweth said charity shops were still full of gems, adding that a glance through the rails of Traids Dalston shop in east London revealed pieces from the 1950s and 1980s as well as designer treasures.

You can go to a charity shop, specifically a Traid shop, and find a wide variety of clothing that was originally built to last and still holds up today, she says.

Ms Chenoweth said younger people had returned to second-hand shopping and pointed out that charity retail was up 12% over last year, with Traid sales up 24% like-for-like over last year.

This was driven by an increase in the number of new customers, he said.

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You’re now starting to see school kids coming to the charity shop after school, which is really good, he said.

I think another thing that people don’t realize about charity retail is we have as many stores as your street fashion brands, and we have a lot of people working in charity retail, including volunteers, like street clothing stores.

The thing that charity retail does, you know, there’s all this greenwashing right now and people are trying to find good stories to perpetuate fast fashion, but charity retail really has good stories and we really don’t showcase them.

It is truly a friendly economy, a green economy, and a circular economy in its truest form. I hope some of that also drives this kind of upsell.

Looking ahead to the future of charity retail, Ms Chenoweth said: As for the future, I think I’m still seeing very good quality coming into charity shops alongside not so good quality, and not so good quality, well, it’s selling but selling at a lower price, it just means we have to sell more.

Somehow everything still works together. I hope it continues like that.

Funds raised in Traid stores go towards global projects that improve working conditions and practices in the textile industry.