What Happens to My Donated Items?

You may be one of the 1000s people who has sorted through your homes and garages clearing out unwanted or unloved items that are perfect for selling on to others or donating to a good cause. If you’ve decided to do the latter, then we’d like to share some info of what actually happens to your donated items.

With tonnes of perfectly useable items being thrown out each year, it’s no surprise that there is a big push to try and urge people to donate high quality, unbroken items to charities like ours. Whether it’s quality clothing, furniture or toys, people often wonder whether their donation has gone to good use, so we’d like to take you through our process.

There are four main channels that we get our core donations;

• Kerbside collections from our bags and stickers
• Prearranged kerbside collections
• Donation Banks and Stations
• Store Drop offs

Many of these go through a sorting process to determine which stock is worth reselling and which stock isn’t suitable due to damage, soiling or missing parts. Once this has occurred, then they are looked at the best place for buyers, including;

• Online sale on eBay
• Shop stock

Once we know where items belong, stock will be spruced up and possibly even dry cleaned before being passed on for resale, making them like new and perfect as a gift to yourself or others. For items that aren’t suitable for reselling, these are sent on elsewhere, recycled or disposed of. For unsuitable electronic items, disposing of these can actually cost our charity so we urge people to dispose of these themselves as this help saves our charity money to put towards our lifesaving mission.

It’s important to note that just because we need quality donations to sell on, doesn’t mean we always get them. There’s a myth that charities will take anything that is thrown in their recycling banks or left outside stores but the truth is, if we can’t sell it on then we have to dispose of it which can be tricky to do, meaning we’re only able to sell items that are clean, tidy and complete.

We’re grateful for all the amazing stock we receive and urge anyone having a clear out to support our stores but donating high quality items to us through one of the main options available.  You can find out more on what we take and where to donate from our specific Reuse and Recycle information.