Charity shops vital for environment

I was very interested to read Selfridges chief executive

Anne Pitcher’s comments in last week’s Financial Mail on Sunday about why large stores should work with charity shops in order to cut waste.

I have worked as a volunteer at two charity shops for the last five years and I agree with her view.

Charity shops fulfil an important role in society: they take a lot of people’s unwanted goods, preventing them from being thrown in landfill sites; they recycle many products that are not good enough to sell in the shop; they raise money for various charities and sell goods at reasonably cheap prices for those on low incomes.

At the charity shop where I work just now, we have recently received lots of women’s clothes from Marks & Spencer, which was old stock that they couldn’t sell.

And, of cou rse, we have sold most of these goods, so this link-up has worked.

This needs to happen more often in order to stop goods from being thrown away.

George Radley, Warley, West Midlands