BHF says men are rubbish at recycling
Howard Lake | 17 March 2008 | News
As it launches its Recycle for Life campaign, the British Heart Foundation reports that men “are three times more likely than women to bin their unwanted clothes and shoes”, according to a survey it commissioned.
According to the survey, 15% of men admit that they would leave their unwanted items out for the bin men before considering recycling them, despite the fact that 1 million tonnes of clothing end up in landfill each year.
Almost half of men (48%) do not consider recycling to be very important or part of their everyday routine. A third of the women surveyed shared this view of recycling textiles.
BHF Shops’s Recycle for Life campaign encourages members of the public to make regular charity donations part of their recycling routine. At present, 50% of textiles that are thrown away could be reused.
The survey found that younger people are not as aware as they could be of the recyclabe nature of clothes: nearly a quarter of the people in their 20’s and 30’s who responded to the survey said that they did not consider clothes to be recyclable
Around 25% of men did not consider books or clothes to be recyclable, and a similar proportion of women did not consider shoes to be recyclable.
It was the over 55’s who have the best understand of recycling items. Seventy one per cent of people over 55 viewing recycling as very important.
Diane Locke, Operations Manager for BHF Shops said that in 2007 unwanted clothes, shoes and household items helpd the charity raise over £12.5 million.
“We’d really urge people to stop being rubbish and start recycling their good quality unwanted items, by bringing them along to their local BHF Shop and recycle for life”, she said.
BHF has over 540 BHF Shops and 265 clothing banks. It welcomes good quality clothes, shoes, toys, DVDs, books and bric-a-brac.
www.bhf.org.uk/shops
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.