About
How it works
The actual path, including the parts that are unglamorous. If you have ever wondered what happens after the bag leaves your hands, this is it.
- 01
You give what you no longer need
Four ways in: a pickup from your door, a drop-off you visit, a drive your school or masjid runs, or a Hot Point in your neighbourhood. All four end up in the same place.
Whether we can send a truck depends on how much there is, where you are and what it is. We tell you in about a minute rather than making you wait for a call.
- 02
We collect it and log it
Every donation gets a reference, and every item is recorded against the donation it came from.
That link is what lets us tell you later what happened to what you gave, rather than saying something vague about how it all helps.
- 03
We sort, grade and check it
Sorted by category, graded by condition, and checked for safety.
Some categories always get a human look — children's items against recall lists, electronics for data and function, anything luxury or collectible for authenticity.
- 04
Each item is routed to its best next use
A shelf, an online marketplace, straight to someone who needs it, or textile recycling.
This is the decision that determines how much a donation actually raises, and it is arithmetic rather than instinct — see below.
- 05
What cannot be reused is recycled
Worn-out fabric goes to textile recyclers rather than landfill, where it becomes insulation and industrial cloth.
We say this because it is what the recycling market does with it. We do not currently measure our own diverted tonnage, and we will not publish a figure until we can.
- 06
The value becomes funding
What an item sells for, minus what it cost to collect, process and sell, is what reaches the work.
Fees, shipping, labour and disposal are all real costs. Reporting gross revenue as if it were impact would be dishonest, so we account for the difference.
How we decide where an item goes
The same jacket can be worth a few dollars on a rack, considerably more on a resale marketplace after fees, or almost nothing as salvage. Getting that decision right, item by item, is where the money in this business actually is.
We weigh 15 possible destinations against each other using the expected value, not the headline fee: what the channel realistically pays, how likely it is to sell at all, the commission and payment fees, shipping, the staff time to photograph and list it, and how long it sits in storage first.
It is a recommendation, never an automatic action. 8 of our categories always go to a person first, and anything valuable, uncertain, luxury or collectible is priced by a human being before it is listed anywhere.
Where we are now
We are setting up. The system above is built and running; what it does not yet have is a warehouse, a truck and a first route. That is why our impact page has no numbers on it, and why the drop-off finder is empty.
The most useful things you can do today are check whether a pickup reaches you and offer your place as a collection point.