Clear Wardrobe, Clear Conscience

With a change in seasons, many people in Wales will be reaching for warmer weather clothing.

As well as unearthing old favourites from the back of wardrobes and the bottom of drawers, there’ll be a few new things being bought via High Street stores.

But then comes the dilemma – the average person buys 35 kilos of clothes per year but how in all conscience can you throw out those clothes you don’t have room for anymore? Some of them are almost brand new…but you just know you’ll never wear them again. And doesn’t burning them or burying them at a landfill site contribute to global warming?

That’s where Noah’s Ark Appeal comes to the rescue – now you can chuck the clothes and ditch the guilt.

Picture credit: Nick Treharne

The Noah’s Ark Appeal are asking for clothing donations to be given through Clothes Aid who are one of the leading companies fundraising for charity in the clothes collection industry. Clothes Aid raises hundreds of thousands of pounds for a number of major charities – including the Noah’s Ark Appeal – by converting clothes into cash. .

Keith Edwards, Clothes Aid operations manager in Wales, explains: “We will be delivering collection bags to 1,000s of homes a day to be filled and left out by householders on pre-arranged collection days.

“The collected bags will be taken to a warehouse to be loaded onto a 16-tonne container lorry to take them to Eastern Europe. We intend to fill one a week but as the average bag only weighs five kilos, it will take a lot of work!”

They will be delivered to wholesalers who sell them on to special shops in countries such as the Ukraine and Lithuania where the clothes are highly prized.

Charities get paid for every tonne of clothes collected and in Wales in 2008 Clothes Aid have guaranteed to raise a minimum of £100,000 for the Noah’s Ark Appeal.

Apart from raising money for charity, Noah’s Ark Appeal hope to prevent 1,000s of tonnes of textiles being dumped into landfill sites or incinerated in this country.

The public are being urged to give to the Noah’s Ark Appeal by allowing Clothes Aid to collect their clothes - it’s such a great way to reduce textiles going to landfill. Last year over a million tonnes of clothes were tossed straight into people’s bins but by simply donating them to the Noah’s Ark Appeal instead of dumping them, you will be helping to reduce global warming and Wales’ carbon footprint.

While clothes from the UK are extremely popular, clothes from Wales are some of the most sought after in Eastern Europe.

Keith says: “As strange as it may seem, people from this area give away stylish, great quality and up to date clothing. As far as Lithuanians are concerned, this region is the Milan of the UK.”

There is one problem, though. When it comes to the amount of clothing donated to charity, the area is close to the bottom of the league. We give less than many other regions.

“When it comes to donating clothes to charity we are about 10-15% below England’s best regions” says Keith. “We are not sure why that is. Clearly, we are not stingy in Wales. Statistics show we spend as much if not more on clothes than other regions. “Maybe it’s the guilt factor – but now you can ‘recycle’ your unwanted clothes with a clear conscience we should do much better.”

If you have any concerns about whether a clothing collection is genuine, please telephone our fundraising office on 029 2033 5016.