What really happens to the clothes you donate to St Luke’s?

What happens to clothes donated to St Luke’s that cannot be sold in our charity shops?

And how can you tell the difference between something that can have a second life and something that really belongs in the bin?

As part of our Bag Your Rag campaign, which encourages people to separate their donations and think carefully about what they give, Claire Stockman, Head of Retail at St Luke’s, met Ian Newton from ELT Global at our warehouse in Wealdstone.

ELT Global collects, sorts and grades second-hand textiles and other donated goods from around 1,000 charity shops and textile banks every week.

The company handles around 350 tonnes of goods a week – equivalent to an estimated 50 to 60 million items of clothing every year.

Claire: What happens to clothes that are unsellable in our charity shops but can still be reused?

Ian: There’s a big difference between the words unsellable and reusable Unsellable for you might mean something doesn’t meet the higher grade needed for your shop. Everything else, as long as it’s reusable (and not solied/damaged/wet), we collect and sort for different marketplaces. Around 85 to 90% gets resold for reuse.

Claire: How can someone at home tell whether something is suitable for a charity shop or should go into the rag or waste stream?

Ian: The first thing is deciding what is rubbish. If it’s torn, soiled, damaged, stained, has all the buttons missing, smells or is wet, that’s rubbish. Everything else can potentially be reused at some stage. Even lower-value brands can sell well if the quality is good. So first make the decision between what is waste and rubbish,  and what is reusable (swapped word).

Claire: How do you decide what gets reused, recycled or can’t be saved?

Ian: There’s a huge myth about recycling in the industry. People think that if they donate something to a charity shop, even if it’s torn, ripped or has been sitting in the attic for six years, somehow it can be regenerated into a new product. Unfortunately, that generally isn’t possible. Less than 1% of textiles and shoes going into the sector are actually recycled. The technology doesn’t currently exist at scale to turn many of these things back into new products.

Claire: What happens when people donate those things and you don’t realise they’re unusable until they’ve been collected?

Ian: They go into our waste stream, and we have to pay to dispose of them. We pay about 20p a kilo for that waste, but before then we’ve also had the cost of collecting and sorting it. So if it’s rubbish and it looks like rubbish, please throw it away.

Claire: What surprising or unusual things have you found among the donations?

Ian: We get some great nuggets. We’ve had the odd signed football shirt, which has then been authenticated. Something like that might be sold online, or we have vintage traders who sell through their own shops or online. Unfortunately, we get the other end of the scale too. People sometimes put household rubbish, including soiled nappies, in with clothing. That’s awful for charity shop staff, volunteers and the people sorting it. It can also contaminate perfectly good items around it.

Giving clothes a second life

At the end of their visit, Claire and Ian looked at examples of the different types of clothing received by St Luke’s.

Ian picked out a worn T-shirt which might not immediately look like a valuable donation.

“That’s still got a vintage feel about it and somebody would repurchase that. So that’s got a second life,” he said.

By contrast, heavily stained or damaged clothing has no longer have a useful market.

Then there are the clean, good-quality donations that can be sold directly through St Luke’s shops.

“No stains, no damage at all,” Ian said. “Anyone would walk into a store and the money from that sale would go towards the hospice care.”

The message behind Bag Your Rag is simple: take a moment to think about what you’re donating and separate your items where possible.

Good-quality clothes can raise money directly through our shops, while other reusable clothing can still be given a second life.