Charity shops in the UK save around 3.7 million tonnes of carbon emissions a year through their ‘reuse activities’, a new report has found.

Written by educational charity Demos in association with the Charity Retail Association (CRA), ‘Measuring the social value of charity shops...Giving something back’ has estimated that the sector provides ‘significant environmental benefits’ by ‘providing citizens with somewhere to donate their unwanted goods, rather than simply throw them away, and encouraging reuse of goods’.

Indeed, it suggests that UK charity shops reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 3.7 million tonnes per annum – estimated to be equivalent to the entire carbon footprint of Iceland.

The report adds: ‘Only a very small percentage of donated goods are wasted: goods that are not sold in the UK are sold to either textile reprocessing plants or abroad.’

Case study

The ‘proactive’ approach in charity shops in diverting material from the recycling process (and thus saving carbon) is highlighted through a Buckinghamshire case study.

Demos outlines that in 2012, the South Bucks Hospice (SBH) teamed up with Buckinghamshire County Council and waste management company FCC Environmental to divert unwanted and good-condition clothing from being recycled, instead sending it to SBH’s seven charity shops for resale.

Under the partnership, SBH sent designated ‘reuse champions’ to two of FCC’s 10 recycling centres in the area to identify resaleable items and encourage donation. According to SBH, in the first seven months of the scheme, over 33,500 items were sold and a ‘very strong relationship’ was built up between the recycling centres and the community, which in turn has ‘driven up recycling behaviour in the community, and raised awareness of the hospice’.

The report reads: ‘All four stakeholders gain from the partnership: the county council reduces the amount of waste sent to landfill; FCC reduces its costs; local residents benefit from bargain goods; and funds are raised for the hospice.’

Report highlights

As well as benefitting the environment, the report outlines that charity shops have a large social impact, as they ‘act as a life support on Britain’s high streets, providing a number of benefits for local businesses, residents and communities’.

Through conducting a poll of 2,200 members of the public, around 150 charity shop managers and 150 shop volunteers, to gauge their views on the role charity shops play, Demos found that 59 per cent of people believe that charity shops’ presence on the high street ‘encourages people to give to charity’.

Further to this, charity shops appear to be welcome additions to the high street for the role they play in bringing members of the community together. The poll found that one in five members of the public said they had ‘met or talked to someone new’ in a charity shop, while about a third (29 per cent) agreed that they provided a ‘sense of community’, and encouraged different generations to meet (28 per cent).

Indeed, of the volunteers polled, 91 per cent said that ‘socialising and meeting new people’ was a benefit of volunteering, while 61 per cent said they felt their volunteering led to improved physical and mental health.

Report recommendations

Following on from the report findings, Demos has made the following recommendations:

• that the CRA develops a toolkit for charity retails to ‘quantify and present their social value’;
• that charity shops work together with councils and waste management companies to reuse unwanted items;
• that charity shops translate what individual shops’ fundraising means in terms of ‘tangible outcomes’ and advertise this on shop fronts to ‘strengthen the argument for their presence on the high street’;
• that local authorities collect ‘better data’ on the health of their local high streets to ‘take responsibility for high street revitalisation’ and promote volunteering in charity shops at job centres and health centres.

‘Do more to support charity shops’

Ally Paget, researcher at Demos and author of the report, said: "It is a real shame that the multitude of benefits offered by charity shops is so often unrecognised and under-used, especially in this time of austerity.

“Local authorities can and should do more to support charity shops at a business level, and to draw on the capacity of charity shops to spur local regeneration.

“Charity shops themselves must also do more to prove their worth by addressing negative public perceptions and highlighting the huge contributions they make to communities.”

Warren Alexander, of the Charity Retail Association, added: “Charity shops not only raise vital money for their parent charities but they bring huge value to their local communities and this report gives some clear insight into those benefits. Charity shops offer a space for individuals to learn new skills and experience through volunteering and work.

“It is great to see charities using their space in imaginative and resourceful ways to not only be retail operations but act as community centres, bases for service delivery and hubs for vulnerable people.”

Read ‘Measuring the social value of charity shops...Giving Something Back’.