Charity retail is facing a crisis, flooded with high volumes of low-quality goods and struggling to justify a business model that sends swathes of unused items to countries that do not have the right infrastructure to process it. It’s exacerbated by rising costs and competition from online resale sites like Vinted and Ebay, which lure consumers’ best items away from being donated and sold instead.
Now, the disconnect in secondhand sales is becoming impossible to ignore: while McKinsey predicts that the global market for secondhand fashion will grow up to three times faster than that of new fashion in 2027, many of the UK’s 9,900 charity shops face closure. In October 2025, for example, Cancer Research UK unveiled plans to shut 90 stores by May 2026 and a further 100 by April 2027.
In June 2026, the British Heart Foundation said it would close 150 stores, which are “no longer financially sustainable”, over the next two years. Meanwhile, many of the so-called textile recycling companies charity retailers relied on to shift unsold stock (which tend to sort and export textiles rather than actually recycling them) face a similar fate.
There is a similar shift at play in Europe, too. The region is among the three largest exporters of worn clothes, alongside the US and China, but unlike the US — where charity resale continues to grow — charity retailers in Europe have struggled to meet changing consumer demands in the digital age, losing ground to newcomers like Vinted, which became the biggest fashion retailer in France (based on volume) in 2025.
How has it come to this? Globally, shoppers donate tens of millions of tons of worn clothes to charity shops every year, much of which is unsuitable for resale (Goodwill alone says it recirculates more than two million tons of household and clothing waste per year).
But the value in unsellable clothes is waning — to the extent that European ‘recycling’ companies have been sounding the alarm about an inevitable collapse. A little over a decade ago, recycling companies in the UK would buy a kilo of these unsold clothes for £0.45, just enough to keep volunteer-run charity retailers afloat.
Today, the Charity Retail Association (CRA) says this price has plummeted to £0.15 per kilo. CRA CEO Robin Osterley describes it as a “very significant decline”, but explains that today, charities see these collections as a way to clear vast quantities of donated clothes rather than generate income.
With such a low price for a kilo of clothing, these bags of unsold stock now represent wasted potential — every item in the bag has the potential to generate far more value than an entire collection, but only if the retail spaces dealing with them are fit for purpose. In a bid to find a path forward for charity retail, Vogue Business looked to the communities around the world doing things differently.
Could a shopping center in Sweden or an upcycler in Ghana hold the key to a charity shop revival?
What if reuse were as easy as buying new?
In the Swedish town of Eskilstuna, around 100km west of Stockholm, sits ReTuna Återbruksgalleria, the world’s first recycling mall. Inside, specialist shops sell clothes, electronics, sports equipment, furniture, and building tools. There’s even an Ikea. The difference is that every single item is secondhand and has been donated by the public — often dropped off at the drive-through donation point.
Once a city in decline, Eskiltuna decided to reverse its fortunes by transitioning to an innovation hub for recycling and opening ReTuna in 2015. The mall is owned and operated by a municipal-owned management company called Eskilstuna Energy and Environment, which has an emphasis on organic waste management and biogas production, explains manager Simon Glimtoft.
ReTuna was part of a broader effort to move up the waste hierarchy, as experts recommend treating recycling as a last resort. (The waste hierarchy framework — which underpins EU legislation — prioritizes preventing waste, followed by reducing, reusing and recycling, and only then does it advocate for waste recovery or disposal.)
At ReTuna, clothes are laundered, dishes go in the dishwasher, electronics are repaired, and books are categorized. There is even a wishlist board, where people can ask for specific things they need and then be notified when one arrives, whether it’s a mustard-colored sofa, a wedding dress, or a set of golf clubs.
The public can tour the sorting facilities, and ReTuna even has a school, where cohorts of 20 adults study Recycle Design. Many go on to start circular businesses in carpentry, textiles, furniture, and metal work.
ReTuna’s efforts to commercialize repair and normalize secondhand means that 70% of everything donated gets resold. The remaining 30% goes to the recycling center located just outside Glimtoft’s window. By comparison, in 2024, the Charity Retail Association estimated that only 53% of the donated clothes collected by UK charities are sold, in-store or online.
But remodeling UK charity shops in ReTuna’s image would take serious investment, and would likely mean employing full-time staff rather than relying on volunteers. Asked what makes ReTuna successful, Glimtoft points to its rigorous categorizing and visual merchandising operations, which he says are essential ways to stop shops from overwhelming customers, along with having lots of storage so that stock is strictly seasonal, and clear pricing to increase trustworthiness.
In addition to digital marketing, ReTuna runs an auction where successful bidders come to the mall to collect their purchase, increasing footfall to the shops. One challenge Glimtoft hopes to solve is the implementation of a 100% fossil-free delivery system from the mall to people’s homes.
Historically, charity shops have been closely associated with the thrill of the hunt — you often have to dig through rails of clothing to find hidden gems. But hidden gems are no longer guaranteed, and Glimtoft says ReTuna’s success lies in making the secondhand shopping experience as convenient and appealing as buying new. “First and foremost, make it commercial,” he says. “Normalize secondhand for customers who stumble upon thrifting for the first time.”
Could charity shops get better at upcycling?
While ReTuna focuses on reuse and recycling, others are homing in on upcycling, hoping to rehash existing materials into more desirable products.
Titus Nartey Doku is the founder of Calcul Studios in Ghana, and a specialist in using upcycling and natural dyes to transform textiles from Kantamanto Market in Accra. He sources stained white shirts, bedsheets, denim, and lace (usually from curtains or tablecloths), overdying them with natural dyes and upcycling them into more fashion-forward items he can resell.
Charity retailers could try and implement similar techniques to deal with the unsold stock piling up, he says. “You should see clothes as parts of you and not just as objects.
If it’s stained, you can do like I do with tie-dye. If it’s torn, you then mend it.
Or use it to make a bag, or downcycle it to become a cleaning rag.”
In Gloucestershire, one UK charity shop is road-testing an upcycling service, but it’s far from straightforward. At the Linc Blood Cancer Charity shop, a team of 15 volunteers meets regularly to upcycle men’s shirts into womenswear, rework vintage dresses into two piece co-ords, and tie-dye stained T-shirts and hoodies.
The next step is to start selling the upcycled pieces online as well as in store, but upcycling is time-intensive and damaged clothing arrives faster than volunteers can upcycle it.
“A lot of what is donated is really dirty or can’t be worn in its current state” says Linc’s marketing officer Angela Barnes. To make upcycling work in charity shops, the people donating the clothes need to also play a part, she adds.
“Ask yourself: would I wear this, or give it to a friend? Or can I repair it, or even wash it first?
Sometimes, that’s all it takes to get it clean and in a good condition.”
Upcycling is unlikely to be the whole solution, but it can be a good opportunity to engage customers in charity retail again, and provide a reason to travel in-store. At the Charity Retail Consultancy, senior consultant Vicki Burnett is encouraging charity shops to build community initiatives around upcycling as well as providing on-site repairs for customers.
Alongside tackling waste, she says it “creates excitement and interest that's beyond just walking in the shop and choosing something. Customers get to see the nuts and bolts of clothing repair as it happens.”
Could local loops be the answer?
For decades, charity retail has been a core pillar of the circular economy, but the way it receives and sells donations is still relatively linear. In Amsterdam, photographer and sustainable fashion entrepreneur Nichon Glerum has been trialing an alternative, which is a more circular model than dropping off bags at the charity shop: local loops.
Founded during the Covid pandemic, The Clothing Loop invites people to form closed loops based on location and garment size. A large sturdy bag is filled with unwanted clothes and dropped off with the first person on the Loop’s list, who takes any items they like before refilling the bag from their closet and taking it to the next house in the loop.
The bag goes round and round the loop — either as an alternative to charity retail, or a complementary addition that keeps more clothes in local communities.
“The beauty is if a loop is going well, then it’s an upward spiral,” Glerum explains. “Because when people get something amazing, that creates an energy where they think, ‘I have this nice item but I never wore it. It hurts to give it away, but maybe now is the time.’”
Because members are in a community and come to know each other, Glerum says there is also more accountability than dropping off a bag at a charity shop: “It’s less anonymous, so you wouldn’t behave in a way that you otherwise would if it was more anonymous with the sad things that are handed into the donation bins. If that social responsibility grows because you know these people, the loops start to run better.”
The concept could be integrated into charity retail, says Burnett. “In terms of donating behavior, the closer somebody is to the donation, the better quality it tends to be.
The loop picks that up because the donations are more associated with you as an individual,” she explains. “A subscription-based version might work for charities, depending on the cost of the logistics.
Convenience is the biggest driver to donate and this is very convenient if someone is collecting it from your home.”
ReTuna is already running a similar model. “We have an Ikea secondhand shop that puts new barcodes on all the items that are donated here,” Glimtoft explains.
“If that unique product comes back to us in six months or a year, they can count how many times they sell the exact same product.” If they notice that an item never comes back, Ikea investigates whether that is because the customer loves the product and wants to keep it forever, or if there is something else preventing it from being recirculated. If that is the case, then Ikea iterates on the new product to improve its future circularity.
But loops have limits. Ultimately, Burnett says the major issue is that the public are transferring their waste onto charities.
“Charity shops are trying to do as much as they possibly can in the circular economy and trying to be as ethical and green as possible. We can say, ‘these are the things we can’t take’, but that doesn’t make that waste go away, it just makes it not the charity’s problem anymore.” The bigger challenge is preventing clothing from becoming waste in the first place.
The problem of fast fashion
While alternative models around the globe offer some hope for how charity retail could be reformed, they cannot address the fundamental issue driving charity retail’s decline: the influx of fast fashion that, while it has given charity retailers more trend-based stock, has driven down quality and turned some charity shoppers off.
“We put a big chunk of the blame for this on fast fashion, and particularly ultra-fast fashion,” says Osterley, adding that CRA members “have complained bitterly.. about the decline in the quality of the donations that they’re receiving”.
Everyone Vogue Business spoke to for this article had the same message for the brands producing billions of pieces of clothing every year: reduce production and make what you produce better quality.
In Amsterdam, Glerum is worried that local loops could meet a similar fate if the quality of new goods doesn’t improve. “I feel like in the next few years there is going to be so much trash clothing that the whole act of swapping — well, I’m honestly not sure how much longer it can continue,” she says.
“I think for the next decade, we’ll be fine, but if brands keep going and keep degrading the quality like they are now, what will be left to swap?”
Osterley makes similar a public appeal on behalf of his members: “We’re happy to take as much stuff as you’d like to give us, but if you can find it in your hearts to to put some high-quality stuff in the bag rather than sell it on Vinted, that would be extremely helpful.”