After My Collection: What Happens to My Clothes and Shoes?

Every week, Anglo Doorstep Collections collects around 500,000 items of clothing and shoes donations (100 tonnes) of which 95% are re-homed right here in the UK and abroad (Africa, Middle East and Ukraine).  That is approximately 470,000 items of clothing and shoes every week. The 5% which is not re-wearable (damaged or badly stained) are turned into industrial rags called wipers. We do not let anything go to landfill.

Once our drivers have collected your generously donated clothes, they return to the nearest warehouse to carefully unload all of the donations collected that day.  In the image below you can see clothes and shoes are packed into large 200kg botany bags, sealed, and prepared for transport.

After the items have been packed, sorted, and loaded the following stages are Grading, Baling and Distribution.

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Grading Process

All of the clothes that have been donated are inspected by hand and sorted into their respective grades. Typically there are around 500 x grades applied, from male and female to relevant ages, seasons, style and condition. This is a specialist process and is very labour intensive.

Baling Process

Once all the clothes have been graded and placed into their respective bins, they are then baled (compressed and sealed).  This is done to increase the weight of the shipping container to reduce transport costs further. The cost of transporting a shipping container with 30 tonnes of clothes, costs the same as one with 15 tons, a massive saving on price and pollution.

Distribution

For the Distribution process of the clothes and shoes. Markets will order clothes specific to their requirements and desires. For example in winter, markets in Ukraine will primarily order heavy, warm, winter clothing.  At the same time, African markets would require light summer clothing. Markets can order exactly what they need so nothing goes to waste.

One of the big things we are always taking into consideration at Anglo Doorstep Collections is the Environment and all factors surrounding this.

So what does all this mean for our Environment?

We want items to be rehomed for their original purpose and give them a new home. Your unwanted clothes do not need to go to landfill, we can gvie them a new home! The fast fashion industry is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for as much as 10% of global carbon dioxide emissions. To produce just 1kg of cotton would require around 10,000 litres of freshwater. Cotton accounts for around 21% of the clothes we wear in the UK. To find out more about this click here.

Every week we save the planet more than 300,000,000 litres of fresh water from re-homing your un-used clothing. To find out more about Fashion and Water consumption, read here.

That amount of fresh water would fill an Olympic sized swimming pools 120 times, each week!

Our collection and distribution process has been carefully built and managed since 2012 to reduce inefficiency and waste. We are saving our planet significant amounts of fresh water by reducing the demand for new clothes by re-introducing re-wearable clothes back into markets around the world.

You can help put your unwanted clothes, shoes and many other hosuehold items back into circulation for their original purpose by booking your doorstep collection today and donating them. Your donations will also help benefit a charity of your choosing when you book. Not only are we helping our environment, you are supporting wonderful charities.

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