The civil society minister Nick Hurd is set to chair a round-table meeting next week bringing together commercial textile recyclers, charities and enforcement agencies to address concerns over bogus and misleading door-to-door clothes recycling collections.
In particular, there are concerns over fake charities adopting the names of real charities for collections to mislead householders and also over organised criminal gangs routinely stealing material that has left out for collection by legitimate charities or their commercial textile recycling partners.
With recovered textiles currently fetching at least £450 a tonne domestically – and more when they are then sold on overseas – charities are believed to be losing as much as £15 million a year as a result of the issue.
The issue was raised in a parliamentary debate in October 2010, prompting Mr Hurd to agree to the round-table meeting, which is now scheduled to be held in the Cabinet Office, in London, on Monday January 10.
Among the organisations attending the meeting are the Textile Recycling Association, the Charity Retail Association (CRA, formerly the Association of Charity Shops) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), as well as the Institute of Fundraising, which is in the process of including clothing collections in a revised version of its House-to-House Collections code.
Enforcement bodies including the City of London Police and Trading Standards are also understood to be set to attend the round-table event, as well as the charity sector’s independent regulatory body, the Charity Commission.
The need for a meeting was highlighted by Mr Hurd during October’s debate, when he said: “The challenge will be for the people around that table to think afresh, review what we are doing and consider whether we could take cleverer, more co-ordinated and more robust actions to get on top of the problem.
“There is clearly a significant risk that the problem will undermine the confidence of the British public in giving to charity, at exactly the time when we want them to give more.”
And the fears over loss of revenue are further borne out by figures from the BHF, with the charity claiming that it has contributed to a 25% drop in household collections, losing it £1.2 million last year and an expected £6 million this year.
TRA
This is organised crime by gangs and could follow on onto other issues which could be considered more high profile crimes by the general public
Alan Wheeler, Textile Recycling Association
Ahead of Monday’s meeting, Alan Wheeler, national liaison manager for the TRA, revealed that the association had already secured meetings with the City of London police before Christmas to bring them up to speed with the scale of the problem.
“On the day the Parliamentary debate took place, we met with the police to convince them that thieving from door-to-door collections and textile banks is always a crime and should be treated as a priority,” he told letsrecycle.com.
“Before Christmas [the police] agreed there was a problem and we had an intelligence gathering meeting with charity stakeholders, commercial companies and several members of the City of London police to give them an overview of the level of crime being committed so we’re already going down that avenue.
“They clearly recognise this is not just a group of men in vans being opportunistic – this is organised crime by gangs and could follow on onto other issues which could be considered more high profile crimes by the general public.”
His sentiments were echoed by David Moir, of the CRA, who called for a concerted publicity campaign to make sure the public were aware of what was and wasn’t a bogus collection.
“It’s important people realise these are not victimless crimes,” he told letsrecycle.com. “They should be chased. We know that public awareness campaigns can work but they are short term, so we need a real commitment to have an ongoing campaign.”
Collections Code
Alongside next week’s meeting, the IFR has welcomed the level of response to its consultation on a revised House-to-House collections code, which closed on December 21.
For the first time the code is set to cover collections of goods, including textiles, with charities that are members of the body and the Fundraising Standards Board – a body set up the IFR to police the codes it develops – being expected to adhere to the code as a condition of their membership.
A spokeswoman for the IFR noted that, while it could not take action against illegal collectors directly, the code could help to make it easier to differentiate between bogus and legitimate collectors.
“Bogus collectors are criminals who copy the look of collection bags. Obviously we can only provide guidance for charities and householders but we’re hoping to raise standards, to raise the barrier,” she said.
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