With over 80 billion pieces of clothing produced each year and with human made stuff now outweighing living biomass, this is the story of the first sorting site for the deluge of items we discard every single day. Having spent decades exploring charity shops for bargains and treasure, Tansy Hoskins decided to dig deep into the world of charity shop volunteering. From used underwear to wolf pelts, Charity Shop World is a personal account of sorting through donations to reveal the entanglement of people and products. This book also investigates the export of clothes to overseas markets and landfill, revealing hidden shareholders behind a multi-million pound business. Taking us to the heart of a country hit by austerity and the cost of living crisis, Charity Shop World reveals surprising places of human connectivity, where local communities struggle to find their way through economic hardship to reach a more sustainable way of living. In a world where ‘broken’ things and ‘unwanted’ people are expelled to the margins of society, this book is a powerful call for a new way of living to rise up from the debris of overproduction and consumption.
