The Salvation Army calls on brands and retailers with unwanted stock to help transform lives

The Salvation Army is urgently calling on retailers, brands, and other organisations to donate unwanted stock to the charity to help fund its vital work transforming lives up and down the country, while at the same time helping business cut costs, waste, and carbon emissions.

Through its nationwide network of shops, donation centres, and clothing banks the charity's trading arm - Salvation Army Trading Company (SATCoL) - aims to enable a raft of positive social and environmental impacts through its reuse and recycling services.

SATCoL - which works with community groups, large organisations, local authorities, schools, colleges, and individuals all with a shared aim to help others and help protect the planet - is now stepping up calls for brands and retailers up and down the UK to partner with the organisation.

The charity's trading arm works in partnership with a host of leading brands and retailers to accept excess, returned, and end-of-line stock of clothing and home-goods to be resold in its charity shops across the country.

In doing so, it can support organisations with clothing and home goods reuse and recycling schemes, as well as enable improved stock management for excess, returned, and end-of-line stock.

The partnerships also offer the opportunity for firms to meet their sustainability goals and aspirations, while helping to eliminate business waste costs, divert items away from landfill, and allow more room in warehouses for new stock, thereby saving on additional storage costs.

The charity's trading arm is particularly keen to receive items such as electricals, IT equipment, general merchandise, furniture, bespoke products and more.

The profits raised from the resale of these items will help to raise vital funds for The Salvation Army and its work to help the most vulnerable across the country.

Shaunacy Burne, corporate partnerships manager at The Salvation Army Trading Company, said it had received industry wide recognition for its efforts to support brands and retailers in meeting their sustainability goals and promoting second-hand shopping and a more circular economy.

"We are partnering with businesses to receive their obsolete, end of line and faulty stock to be reused or repurposed," said Burne. "Not only are we helping brands to meet their corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals with our sustainable solutions, but the donations we receive are sold in our retail outlets to help raise vital funds for our parent charity."

Each year, SATCoL reuses and recycles around 250 million items, from clothing and homeware furniture to electrical items, toys and games, including some 67,000 tonnes of textiles.

Through the reuse and recycling of textiles and other items collected, SATCoL estimates it prevents over 453,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere annually.

As a call to action, SATCoL produced a photoshoot with leading fashion industry photographer Camille Sanson and fashion stylist Karl Willet whose work has seen them style A-list celebrities for The Grammy's, The Met Gala, and Vanity Fair magazine, among others.

Behind-the-scenes footage from the photoshoot can be viewed on the SATCol website here.

Willet said he hoped the  images would help to demonstrate the potential of second-hand fashion.

"It was a pleasure to be part of the Corporate Donations shoot, a scheme that is contributing to positive change and sustainability for the planet by diverting more everyday items away from landfill," Willet said.

SATCoL donates millions of pounds a year to help The Salvation Army's work with vulnerable people in the UK, including over £100m in the last decade.

The registered charity has been transforming lives for more than 150 years, and now works in 134 countries worldwide. In the UK and Ireland alone, its works spans more than 650 community churches and social centres.

"We're keen to explore partnership opportunities with retailers, together we can reduce waste and divert more items away from landfill," said Burne. "Please get in touch, we want to hear from you."

For more information on becoming a trading partner with The Salvation Army click here.

The article is sponsored by SATCol.