Most clothing donations too poor quality to sell, warns charity hospice 

St Luke’s Hospice (Harrow & Brent) is warning the rise in poor-quality clothing donations is putting pressure on funding for palliative and end of life care across Harrow and Brent.

St Luke’s is only partly funded by the NHS, with most services reliant on fundraising and sales through its charity shops.

St Luke’s Hospice recently helped bring national attention to the growing pressures facing charity retailers after highlighting the issue in The i Paper, as poor-quality donations continue to affect charities across the UK.

The hospice is urging people to only donate clean, good-quality clothing that can be resold, and not use donation points for unwanted waste.

Around 60% of donated clothing cannot be sold in shops and must instead be handled as lower-value or unusable items.

Many items arriving at shops are heavily worn, damaged, stained or unsuitable for resale, creating additional handling and disposal costs for charities already under financial pressure.

In the past, unsellable clothing could still generate some income through rag recycling, helping offset these costs.

Although stabilised now, rag prices had fallen by around 70% over the past two years, dramatically reducing the value charities received for clothing they cannot sell.

The combination of poorer-quality donations and rag prices has meant some donations now cost charities money to process and dispose of.

Claire Stockman, St Luke’s Head of Retail, said: “We are grateful for every donation, and much of what we receive helps fund care for local people.

“But we are seeing more poor-quality donations coming through our shops, and with rag prices now so low, some items cost more to handle than they bring in.”

You can find out more about our charity shops here.