All our actions to help you Use Your Money for Good. Colour in a smiley face every time you've done an action.

• Charity shops help the environment: Reuse of textiles saves 33kg of CO2 equivalent per kilo of textiles compared to disposal, and 29 kg compared to recycling. Charity shops' reuse activity alone saves around 2.5m tonnes of CO2 each year. Recycling of textiles by charity shops also saves substantial amounts.
• It is estimated that the charity shops sector re-uses or recycles well over 250,000 tonnes of textiles each year. This represents some 30% of the total volume of textiles being recycled in the UK. Without the work of charity shops this material would end up going to landfill at the expense of local authorities.
• Traditionally, charity shops used to occupy unlet or unpopular shops but the majority are now not only permanent, but are often in prime trading locations in high streets and market towns. They also function as a way of raising awareness of the parent charity.
• The first Charity shop: In the 19th century the Salvation Army ran second hand clothing shops to provide the urban poor with cheap clothing. Other charities also operated shops during the Second World War to raise money for the war effort and relieve hardship. However, modern charity shops as we understand them - retail units selling overwhelmingly donated goods to raise as much cash as possible for the parent charity - did not appear until after WWII. The first of these was opened by Oxfam in 1947/48 and is still in operation today. Oxfam had been swamped by donations from the public (mostly blankets and clothing) following its appeal for aid to alleviate the post-war situation in Greece. The success of this appeal yielded so many donations that it was decided to set up a shop in Oxford to sell a portion of these and to use the profits to further fund aid in Greece.
• There are over 7,500 charity shops across the UK.
• Although there has been an increase in the number of paid staff in recent years, the majority of people working in charity shops are volunteers. There are more than 120,000 volunteers nationwide, and some shops are run entirely by volunteers.