Ban on charity collection bags shoved through your letterbox
‘I get four or five a week’
CHARITIES are to be banned from posting collection bags through letterboxes from today – if householders display a sign saying they are not wanted.
Families have complained for years about ‘drowning’ in a flood unsolicited plastic bags for donations of old clothes.
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 has acted, telling charities that they should not deliver the bags if householders put up a sign by their letterboxes saying ‘no clothing bags’ or ‘no charity bags’.
However, it rejected a stricter option to classify the bags as junk mail. The move was welcomed by Labour MP Toby Perkins, who has campaigned against the nuisance after a constituent’s complaint.
Last night he said: ‘It got to the stage where they had 30 bags in a couple of weeks.
‘On the one hand, we have the Government quite rightly trying to discourage us all from using plastic bags – yet at the same time much larger dustbin-sized bags are being posted through letterboxes right, left and centre by the charity sector.
‘I recognise that these bags can have value, but I worry about the environmental impact. If people express their frustration that they don’t want these bags, these wishes should be respected.’
The British Heart Foundation has warned that many householders who fill the charity bags with clothing are being conned. In 2011, it carried out a survey that found 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, charity-bags. org.uk, has been contacted by many people angry at their doormats being clogged up with the deliveries. 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-calling that hounds vulnerable old people into handing over money, together with so-called ‘chugging’ – approaching passers-by on the street to solicit donations.