Charity collection bags.

[Bevan Price]

Am I the only person who is fed up with charities shoving their unwanted plastic collection bags through the letterbox. Sometimes, there are 2 or 3 per week from different organisations. And they never bother to collect unused bags if you leave them outside.

I must get more waste plastic in one month than I get from several years' trips to supermarkets.

Cannot charities get together to coordinate their collections, and ensure that no house receives more than 3 - 4 collection bags every year ? They must have lost touch with reality if they think that every house has enough unused material to fill up to 50+ bags per year. Perhaps one solution would be to extend the "plastic bag" tax to uncollected charity plastic bags ? Currently, all they are doing is polluting the environment / landfill sites with lots of waste plastic.

 

[bussnapperwm]

I use them to put the rubbish in before I put the bag in the black wheelie bi!

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Agree; they save us a fortune in bin liners.

 

[t_star2001uk]

Cannot charities get together to coordinate their collections, and ensure that no house receives more than 3 - 4 collection bags every year ? They must have lost touch with reality if they think that every house has enough unused material to fill up to 50+ bags per year. Perhaps one solution would be to extend the "plastic bag" tax to uncollected charity plastic bags ? Currently, all they are doing is polluting the environment / landfill sites with lots of waste plastic.

Most of these bags are not from the charities that they have printed on them. Have a close look at them and they are from companies that make a donation towards the charities but sell the clothing in europe.

 

[Metrailway]

Not even that t_star2001uk. Some are just companies posing as charities. There is high demand for used clothes from Britain in West Africa.

Many of these 'charities' collect the clothes free in the UK, ship them to Africa, where they can retail them at whatever price the local market can bear.

 

[PaxVobiscum]

So there's "lots of little boys and girls in Africa who would just love to wear these clothes"?

I fear that trying that line on the kids will meet with the same degree of success as the similar one about finishing your dinner.

 

[Flamingo]

Look up BBC iplayer, there was a programme about it on Radio 4 on Wednesday afternoon...

 

[theblackwatch]

Most of these bags are not from the charities that they have printed on them. Have a close look at them and they are from companies that make a donation towards the charities but sell the clothing in europe.

I will put stuff in genuine charity bags, such as those from the British Heart Foundation, but as you mention, a lot are not from actual charities, but from commercial firms such as Retexa. If you go to the effort of reading what is on the bag, you'' find they then donate a small amount to the charity whose name is on the bag (something like £70 per ton - which is 7p per kilo!). I use these bags to put rubbish in....

 

[ATW Alex 101]

Most of the clothes go to fill up your mattress, but I agree with Peter Mugridge, they are very useful in deputizing for a bin liner!