I have been treated this morning to one of those periodic leaflets we all get through our doors. This one tells me that 'Collection Day is Thursday', for the "Third World Clothing Collection". Readers of blogs on this site will recognise this inspiring sounding phrase from a follow through from a post by Eggbod on 28 June 2007, entitled 'Pseudo Charities'.
The firm which is currently trying to appeal to the altruism of the good people of Walthamstow, SCH Collection Ltd, does not feature on the watch list provided by her link-though to the Headington site about these scams, though the language does seem similar.
Now, SCH Collections may not be engaged in a 'scam'. There is nothing on their leaflet that actually says they are a charity, and in fact, they do specifically provide information indicating that they are a trading company. They have not given an address on their leaflet, but it is possible to find out from a search at Companies House that they are indeed a private company, registered at 260 Bowes Road, London, N11 2JH. They were incorporated on 26/11/2007 in the UK, with no details supplied as to the nature of their business. No company accounts have been supplied as yet. This, by the way, is not that suspicious in itself: there are plenty of bona fide new companies being incorporated all the time without defining their exact nature of business from the outset.
But SCH Collections Ltd do not tell us on their leaflets all that I would like to know. For instance, they do not say what they mean by 'Third World'. Where these clothes, should they be given any by residents, will actually be going to, is therefore left to a very wide interpretation.
The leaflet states prominently that such spare unwanted clothes will be 'carefully sorted and worn again'. All very laudable. But in between the sorting and the wearing, will there be a sale? It looks like it to me. The leaflet says that 'SHC Collections Ltd is a collecting company who provides people in the third World countries with clothes for their families they can afford' (sic). That to me sounds very much like there is a price being attached to the clothes, rather than them being given away. The word 'afford' may give some comfort, but like 'natural' or 'traditional' on products in supermarkets, it's pretty much a meaningless advertiser's tease these days. Of course the people who buy the clothes will have to be able to afford the clothes: anything sold on this planet that has been sold to someone other than on credit has been sold to someone who has decided to make themselves afford it.
So, what happens to the profits? I have no idea about those. They do say on their leaflet that their company pays the people collecting the bags door to door, and provides 'business for UK export, for transport companies. It provides employment in the UK factories grading the clothes'.
People may feel that they don't care what happens to their own old clothes and if someone can make some money out of it, then this is a good thing. If thrown out in the rubbish, they could well end up as landfill. Second hand clothes, clearly sold as such, are a market like any other: they can generate wealth and value (tourists who have visited the famous Chatuchak Market in Bangkok may not have noticed the large numbers of popular second hand jeans businesses there patronised by fashion conscious local students and Isaan farmers alike.) Such businesses abound all over the world, and even on our local market, where I have seen second hand clothes for sale on a commercial basis. Although they don't see it like this, charity shops compete for such local business in the UK. They do it with each other and with such stalls here in Walthamstow. They do it in places with big flea markets like Camden and with more high-falutin' second hand 'designer clothes' specialists (its called recycled retro chic or some other such nonsense) as well as those selling brand new, made in the Third World imports on our market in Walthamstow, [though sometimes not that successfully, in the case of the now shut British Red Cross shop].
What some object to about these door to door collection leaflets, though, is the pitch to our altruism, making it look like the business is in some way saving the planet when they are simply out to make money out of their knowledge of a market for a commodity they can pick up here for nothing if householders' heart-strings are tugged enough. People say, why should someone be able to make money from nothing- they resent the idea that money can be made for old rope. The tugging at heart strings is something which goes on all the time in the hard-nosed world of business: look at the way oil companies don the clothes of the environmentalists to say how green they are or supermarkets put on the clothing of development charities to try to convince us they are working for the benefit of their 'third world' suppliers and not just out for their shareholders. Or, as in the case of Waitrose, those staff who have a stake in the very lucrative John Lewis partnership. Actually, such firms could be green or strike fair deals with suppliers and say nothing at all to us about it- simply offering us a good or superior product at a more reasonable price. The 'third world' or 'green' angle is not a very dissimilar, though less clumsy, pitch than that being made by SCH Collection and their ilk to the people of Walthamstow. Is it more or less of a deception, is the question that I ask?