St Raphael's Hospice charity shop in Cheam, south London, receives 30 to 50 donation bags daily on average, but sometimes over 100, store manager Colin French says. The volume has become the shop's biggest operational challenge, leaving floor space so cramped that staff can only "tiptoe" through the stockroom.
The donations increasingly consist of unsaleable items. Commercial manager Caroline Worley identifies examples: soiled bathrobe, worn trainers, heavily bobbled jumpers, old socks, empty jewellery cases. "Absolutely typical," she says of the quality.
Charity shops face a fundamental shift in donation patterns. Worley attributes the change to the rise of peer-to-peer resale platforms like Vinted. During Covid lockdowns, when people spent more time at home, those with higher-quality items chose to sell their best goods on Vinted rather than donate them to charity. This left shops flooded with lower-grade fast fashion and damaged goods.
The problem reflects diverging incentives. Vinted and similar platforms allow sellers to recover cash value. Charity shops receive the residual stock. The effect concentrates better inventory on commercial resale sites while shifting disposal costs onto nonprofits already straining under volume.
St Raphael's Hospice operates on donated goods. The operational burden of sorting, storing and discarding unsuitable items diverts resources from the shop's core function. Worley and French describe the situation as "daily avalanches" of donations, many destined for landfill.
The article questions whether donor intentions remain aligned with charity shop capacity. Worley suggests the problem accelerated during the pandemic but persists as a structural issue tied to the availability of consumer resale platforms.