Ban on charity collection bags shoved through your letterbox
CHARITIeS will be banned from posting collection bags through letterboxes from today – as long as householders display a sign saying they are not wanted.
Families have complained they are ‘drowning’ in a flood of unsolicited plastic bags meant to be filled with old clothes for charity.
Angry householders have accused charities of bombarding them up to five times a week with what is effectively junk mail.
Green campaigners point out that the unwanted bags – which are as tough or tougher than bin bags – often end up in landfill sites, harming the environment. And many bags filled with clothes have been left uncollected outside front doors. Now the Fundraising Regulator from using plastic bags – yet has acted, telling charities at the same time much larger that they should not deliver dustbin-sized bags are being the bags if householders put posted through letterboxes up a sign by their letterboxes right, left and centre by the saying ‘no clothing bags’ or charity sector. ‘no charity bags’. ‘I recognise that these bags
However, it rejected a stricter can have value, but I worry option to classify the bags as about the environmental junk mail. The move was welcomed impact. If people express by Labour MP Toby their frustration that they Perkins, who has campaigned don’t want these bags, these against the nuisance after a wishes should be respected.’ constituent’s complaint. The British Heart Foundation
Last night he said: ‘It got to has warned that many the stage where they had 30 householders who fill the bags in a couple of weeks. charity bags with clothing are
‘On the one hand, we have being conned. In 2011, it carried the Government quite rightly out a survey that found trying to discourage us all only 30 per cent of donated items stand a chance of ending up in charity shops. Instead, most of the clothes are sold abroad for private profit – with charities getting as little as 5 per cent.
A website that exposes bogus charity collections, charitybags.org.uk, has been contacted by many people angry at their doormats being covered in the bags. One person wrote to say that the charities were ‘ effectively trespassing’ because the bags landed in his property ‘without my consent’.
‘Sometimes I can get four or five in a week,’ he said. Another wrote: ‘I’ve roughly worked out that if I filled all that I currently have, I wouldn’t actually have any movable possessions left in the house.’
The new rule, inserted into the Fundraising Code of Practice, follows years of campaigning by the Daily Mail, which has exposed the aggressive tactics of many charities.
Concerns have been raised about cold-callers who hound vulnerable old people into handing over cash, along with so-called ‘chugging’ – in which charity collectors approach passers-by on the street and ask for money.