East Yorkshire charity pays £45,000 to dispose of unsellable items

Dove House Hospice runs 32 shops across Hull and the East Riding

An East Yorkshire charity paid out £45,000 last year to dispose of donated items that it could not sell.

Dove House Hospice, which has 32 shops across Hull and the East Riding, provides care for people with life limiting illnesses.

The charity said some items are broken or cannot be resold because of safety issues.

Head of retail Jennifer Rowan said: "It does cost us a lot of money to get rid of items that we cannot sell.

"That money is money that wouldn't be able to go towards caring for patients in the community."

Ms Rowan said that shop sales brought in around half of the charity's £10m per year operating costs.

She said they were grateful for all the donations they received, but wanted people to ensure items were in a "good sellable condition".

"Obviously, if things are broken we can't sell them," she said.

"From a legal point of view, anything that is upholstered without a fire label we cannot sell. Children's car seats, children's helmets, that's from a safety aspect, we can't resell."

"There are some items such as CDs, DVDs, which at the moment aren't popular in our shops.

"There's a cost implication of disposing of those because from a sustainability point of view it's plastic and it's landfill."

Jennifer Rowan said the charity was trying to be as sustainable as possible

Dove House Hospice say anything they cannot resell, they recycle as much as possible and where they are unable to it is disposed of as commercial waste.

"We're really trying to push how sustainable we are as a charity and the impact that the items we unfortunately can't sell does have on the environment", Ms Rowan added.

The Charity Retail Association said if people were unsure about their donation they should check with the shop beforehand.