Charity Retail Ireland Processed 1m Bags of Unsellable Clothes
Unwanted clothing waste generated in Ireland reached 31 kilograms per head last year, according to a Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment report cited by RTÉ.
Charity Retail Ireland said that its 43 member groups processed over 11 tonnes of unsold textiles across 2025. That volume equals over one million bin bags of clothing not fit for sale.
The representative body reported that member shops handle approximately 18% of the country’s waste textiles, which it said is “a resource-intensive process that detracts efforts from the causes charitable organisations were established to support”. Charity Retail Ireland described the processing load as resource-intensive.
“Every charity sorts through what they receive as donations,” Sweeney told RTÉ on Morning Ireland. “We’re very grateful for every donation we receive. It’s what keeps our charities going.”
The Natex 2.0 report found that Ireland generates nearly double the European average of post-consumer textiles per head. The European average sits at 16 kilograms.
Charity Retail Ireland published its annual Impact Report on Wednesday. The document showed that 407 charity shops generated €73 million in sales last year.
Member shops sold more than 10 million items of second-hand clothing during the period. Organisations running these shops include Barnardos, the Irish Cancer Society, Simon Community, and SVP.
The resale process prevented over 106,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. It also diverted 21 tonnes of waste from landfills. The report suggests the “scale of this impact is comparable to removing 17 million cars from the road for a day, saving 33 billion litres of water or the carbon that 4.8 billion trees could absorb in one day”.
Shops recorded over 10 million customer transactions last year. Operations relied on 5,000 volunteers, 800 full and part-time employees, and 1,000 community employment workers.
Charity Retail Ireland said that the sector operates under pressure from rising operational costs and unmanageable volumes of poor-quality donations. Sweeney advised the public to consider if a garment is suitable for a neighbour before donating.
“For decades, the sector has shown what a practical circular economy looks like, delivering real social, economic and environmental value,” Mark Sweeney, Chair of Charity Retail Ireland said. Charity Retail Ireland
Unsellable items undergo sorting through partner organizations for remanufacturing, recycling, or downcycling. The representative body plans to work with policymakers to secure necessary support.