Wednesday 20 October 2010

Charities being ripped off to the tune of £700 per tonne of donated goods.


Another day and another "charity bag" through the door this time for the Blind Childrens Charity.

Reading the small print it states that the bag isnt from the Blind Childrens Charity at all but an organisation called care2collect that kindly donate £50 per tonne to the Blind Childrens Charity.
Check the small print on all the bags that come from charities that dont have charity shops and you will see companies offering the same deal of £50 per tonne of clothes being offered to charities.ClothesAid and Cohens are just 2 other commercial companies issuing "charity bags" for various charities.
Most people think that care2collect,clothesaid etc are primarily making money for good causes and donate accordingly because it helps charity .Or does it?.

If I tell you that the going rate for cloth "rags" is £750 per tonne you will see that these companies are making a mint by using the good name (or not so good name in the case of the NSPCC) of charities .They are making £700 per tonne and giving a charity a minimal amount.

In my mind care2collect,clothesaid and cohens are only just above the dodgy eastern europeans that nick the bags from the doorstep and pocket the whole £750 per tonne themselves.

So the next time you have a charity bag come through the door read it carefully and if its from a company that just donates £50 per tonne to charity my advice would be to give them nothing.
Instead give your donations to a charity that has charity shops where they sell the goods and benefit 100% from the value of the donated goods.If you however want to contribute towards Mr Clothesaid or Mr care2collects new Porsche or BMW then carry on but dont say you wasnt aware that you are lining peoples pockets not the charities.
Given time I am going to publish the details of the good,bad and ugly organisations trying to get hold of your valuable cast offs.


*********Update*********

Care2collect is a front for another collection company called i and G Cohen who
"specialises in collecting, sorting and selling into overseas markets the clothing that is deposited in textile recycling banks"

Their registered address seems to be an insolvency practitioner in Manchester.


At the top of this article you will see one of the Directors of I and G Cohens receiving an export award from Blears to recognise the huge amount of business and money they have made from acquiring textiles on the false pretence of giving money to charity.
Please consider these facts when donating items and donate them direct to the charity shop of your choice.
According to their own website they collect 300 tonnes of secondhand clothing a week which by my calculations is £225,000 into their coffers every week.

Dont let them get away with it and donate nothing to these scam artists.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the useful information. Not having known the going rate for textiles, I might have thought that giving GBP50/tonne was a good charitable action - but obviously thats wrong, and the care2collect people are operating a scam.

Captain Swing said...

If you look on the care2collect website you would have no idea that they are pocketing 700 per tonne whilst only giving charities 50 per tonne.
I have to laugh though because there is a whole section on bogus collectors and how to identify them.

n1kcy said...

The £700 price is for rags(rejects).Good clothing, once sorted into types(eg. men trousers, ladies blouses) and baled, is more like £2000/ton. Have a look at Precycle's factory on Google streetview in Portland Road in Reading. Here they process the bags you thought were going to Help The Aged and Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

Captain Swing said...

Thanks for that n1kcy .I stand corrected.

Joey Davis said...

From a commercial standpoint.

£50 to charity
£90 Commercial Diesel for days driving.
Roughly 5,500 bags delivered to equal one ton = £275
cost of delivering flyers = £240

= £655.00 cost to company per ton

Captain Swing said...

Sorry but there is no way you would have to deliver 5500 bags to get a ton of donated goods.Return rates are at least 10% so on 5500 bags you would get at least 2 tons of donated goods.Thats £1400 for the company and £100 for the charity.$1400 less £50 diesel a day and less delivery of bags using your figures still results in £1100 profit for the company -out of which the charity gets £100
which results in a profit for the company of £1000 minimum for collecting 2 tons of goods.

Anonymous said...

I fill my "charity" bags with scrunched up newspaper to make them look full, then leave them out for collection with a salient message attached. That way at least I get to waste the collectors' time & hopefully cut down the number of people they get to rip off. With luck, my "feedback" may also get through to a few of these conmen.

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