Worn Once, Never Again? Tiverton Shoe Pickup Is Free

Between the school run, work and everything else, a jumble of outgrown shoes by the back door is easy to walk past for weeks on end. Tiverton households collect an impressive amount of footwear over time — school shoes a child has sprinted through in a single term, trainers replaced the moment a newer model catches the eye, wedding heels worn for one afternoon and wellies that saw a single soggy walk on the Grand Western Canal. Anglo Doorstep Collections picks all of it up completely free, straight from your doorstep, as part of a wider effort to keep donating shoes, trainers and boots circulating rather than heading to landfill.

There’s no trip into town required, no awkward bag-juggling on the bus to a charity shop, and no need to load the car for a run to the tip. You book online in a couple of minutes, we text your allotted time slot the evening before collection day, and a driver collects directly from your doorstep — whether you’re in the town centre, out towards Blundells Road, or in one of the villages we also serve including Cullompton, Bampton, Sampford Peverell and Halberton.

Free doorstep collection, no trip to a charity shop or the tip required
Your collection time slot is sent the evening before, so you know roughly when to expect us
A genuine alternative to paying the council for a bulky-waste collection, and a large percentage of proceeds goes to charity

Book a Free Collection

Shoes, trainers, boots, sandals, heels, slippers and wellies are all welcome, whatever the brand. A pair of walking boots bought for a Tarr Steps weekend that never quite fitted right, football boots a child has outgrown, or heels worn once for a wedding at St Peter’s — all of it counts, as long as the pair is still wearable.

Leave them by your front door, porch or wherever you’d normally leave a parcel for collection — there’s no need to wait in. Bag or box footwear separately from clothing and mark the bag “shoes” so the driver can see straight away what’s inside.

Please tie laces together or pop an elastic band round each pair so they don’t get separated before reaching their next owner. A quick wipe to remove mud and a check that they’re completely dry is all that’s needed — there’s no need for anything more thorough than that.

If a pair is genuinely past its best, with soles hanging off or beyond realistic wear, it isn’t something we can pass on to a new owner. Those are better handled through your household waste route — Tiverton’s waste and recycling collections, run via Devon County Council’s household waste guidance, can take worn-out footwear that no one else could use.

Yes — our collection is completely free, whereas a council bulky-waste booking typically carries a charge. It’s also quicker to arrange for a few bags of shoes than waiting on a scheduled bulky slot, and the items go on to be reused rather than treated purely as waste.

Absolutely — a footwear clear-out is often the moment people also sort out clothes, linen and towels, books, toys, household items and kitchenware. It’s all collected on the same visit, so there’s no need to book separately for each category.

Yes — alongside Tiverton we also collect from Cullompton, Bampton, Sampford Peverell and Halberton. You can check the full list of places we cover on our collections near you page, or see everything we collect across Devon.

Why a shoe clear-out is worth doing properly

It helps to think of it as starting a donation pile rather than a single bag — a box by the understairs cupboard that the whole household adds to whenever a pair gets outgrown or replaced, ready to book in once it’s a decent size. Tiverton has a population of around 21,000, and across that many households, plus the surrounding villages, the cumulative effect of everyday footwear donations adds up to something far more useful than any single pair ever could on its own, keeping good shoes in a local circular economy rather than each one being thrown away in isolation.

Roughly 23.9 billion pairs of shoes were manufactured worldwide in 2024, and a typical pair is glued together from leather, rubber, foam and various synthetics — layers that are notoriously difficult to separate again. That’s a large part of why fewer than 5% of worn-out shoes globally are ever recycled, and why an estimated 85% of the pairs thrown away in the UK end up in landfill rather than being given a second life. Against that backdrop, a child simply outgrowing a pair long before it’s worn out is almost always the real story behind a donated pair of shoes, not damage — which means a barely-worn pair can comfortably give another child months of further use. Being worn again, rather than recycled or binned, remains by far the best outcome available for most footwear, and choosing reuse over buying new also avoids a fair share of the roughly 14 kg of CO2, plus the water and raw materials, that go into manufacturing each fresh pair. Reducing consumption in this way, by getting full value from shoes already made rather than replacing them early, is one of the more straightforward everyday changes a household can make.