Charity bags

I've just been reading back through the posts and realised I hadn't written about the time I worked for a clothing charity. You know the sort- they put a bag through your letterbox and ask you to fill it with your unwanted clothing and leave it out a couple of days later.

I worked for this firm a couple of times. The first time was when they were still based in Kettering and I was asked by my temp agency if I'd do a few shifts shunting the vans as they returned to the depot. The drivers would return to the depot and park the van in a side street. I'd collect the key, drive the van around the block to the loading bay, put the van on the weighbridge while full, then back it up to the unloading bay where a team would unload it. Once it was emptied I'd drive it back to the weighbridge to be weighed, then fuel it and park it in a compound. Repeat until all the vans were empty of goods, full of diesel and parked.
It wasn't too strenuous although it was sometimes stressful getting thirty vans into a tiny compound. It was just possible if you turned all the wing mirrors in and squeezed through the tiniest gap between the vans. Sometimes I was sure I'd miscalculated and wouldn't get the final van away and the gates locked, but somehow I managed to park them all. Once the vans were parked I could go (and still be paid for the full shift) so there was always an incentive to work quickly.

I was offered a job driving a van but turned it down. There were better jobs going at the tims, but a few months later I was offered the work again. By now the firm had moved to Wellingborough and I had to drive there and get there by 6 in the morning, pick up the van and assistant (who sat in the passenger seat all day without exchanging a single word in conversation, listening to Radio 1 at full blast- o joy!)and then drive to the town where we'd be working.

I'm not sure how many vans there were. I guess there were at least thirty. The firm had a contract with a large charitable organisation, and the bags we distributed all had the charity's name printed on it. We'd drive to a town, buy an A-Z street map in order to keep tabs on where we'd been and where we had to return to, and then we'd start work.

Our brief was to distribute 1000 bags to homes in the morning, have a break, then drive around the streets where we'd left bags two days beforehand, pick up any bags that had been left out, and then drive back to the depot. Simple? Er, no.

Some towns were easy to work, especially those with street after street of terraced houses. In some towns there were over a hundred houses in a street, and you'd soon polish off a thousand bags. But once you'd covered those streets you'd move into the more up-market estates where the houses were set back from the road, and there were fences between the gardens. These streets took much longer. Once you'd done those houses, then you'd move on to the detached houses with the long drives, then to the villages surrounding the town....

Unfortunately the person who allocated the work would tell you that you had say, three weeks to cover the town of Hereford, except that there aren't that many houses, and you'd be scratching around after two weeks. You were expected to return to the depot each night with a full van, and some areas were easy, but others were very hard. I remember being told to distribute 1000 bags a day to Ross on Wye and all the surrounding area. I drove to the area, bought an A-Z and found that there weren't more than a few thousand houses in the whole of the county! There were more sheep than houses to be honest.

Urban areas were good, but the yield from rural areas was always very poor. Why was that?

I expect that people who live in rural areas shop more often. They probably buy more clothes and therefore fill their wardrobes more quickly. Every few months a charity bag drops through the letterbox and the householder sees a way of easing the clothes storage problem, while making them feel they are doing their bit for chariddeee.

My experience would bear this theory out. I was sent to Walton on Thames to cover for a sick colleague, and by the end of the afternoon it was hard to get any more bags in the van, it was so loaded. It really was rich pickings compared to deepest rural Herefordshire.

What else did I learn? I loved the different archtectural styles in the old building wherever I travelled, but I'm sad to say that the new builds were all depressingly similar. I'd walk down a street on an estate near Colchester and realise that I could be anywhere. All the houses looked the same. In a lot of cases they were decorated the same, with the same front doors in the same colours. I really could be anywhere. And that's a shame.

In the end I had to pack it in. The money wasn't bad for temping through an agency, but the firm wanted me to work for them direct, and to be paid according to the tonnage I collected. I'd seen enough to realise that the area they offered me (half of Essex outside the M25) would never yield as much as the area within the M25 , so I declined. I was also fed up with the 13 hour days. I was leaving home at 5.30 in the morning, leaving the depot at 6.00, driving for anything up to 120 miles before starting the rounds, walking for three of four hours, then driving around picking up bags and then driving back to the depot, arriving back sometime after 5.30 most nights.
By this time the work arrangements had changed so the drivers were now responsible for weighing and unloading their own vans and then parking them. They were also responsible for fueling them and washing them, and I'd not get home until after 7 at night. That's lot of hours and a lot of miles for minimum wage.

I did a couple of days driving to charity shops collecting bags of unsold clothing. That may come as a surprise to you, but charity shops rely on new stocks coming in every day or week, and they don't keep stock for more than a few weeks at most. If it's unsold after that time, it's bagged up and sent back to the depot.

I recall one journey where I had to drive to Brighton and collect some bags. I arrived at about 9.30 and found the shop. Once I'd loaded up I then drove across country to Tunbridge Wells, then on to Whitstable. My last pickup was supposed to be Minster, but I chose the wrong one and ended up driving around Sheerness instead of further east near Canterbury. By this time it was late afternoon and I still had to drive back. I got back at about 9 o'clock, fifteen hours after i'd set off.

One of my colleagues would drive from Wellingborough to Penzance, then to Falmouth and Plymouth and back- almost every day! He'd be on the road for 15 or sixteen hours a day. There's no way I could do that week in week out. Of course there's nothing to stop a van driver driving these hours- there's no tachograph and so no driver's hours regulations.

Looking back I must admit I enjoyed my time on the charity collections. Although there are many shady operators, the firm I worked for did a good job and performed a useful role in keeping people's wardrobes just empty enough to fit a few new clothes in. The clothes we collected were sold on to Eastern Europe and Africa, providing needy people with good cheap clothes and making a few pounds for the charity in the process.

Rubbish

When I was temping a dozen or so years ago I was happy to take any job offered. Some weeks I could only work for a couple of days due to my music commitments, so I was happy to take the odd one or two day assignments.
One May Bank Holiday I was asked to do a day working on the Domestic Refuse Collection at the basic minimum wage, but at double time for a Bank Holiday otherwise I'd have turned it down. It was hard and heavy manual work for someone in his late forties, but I gave it a go.
I turned up bright and early at the Council Depot, climbed into the Refuse lorry and we drove to a neighbouring town where we were to do our round. There were three of us, the driver and two mates who worked on opposite sides of the street. You've all seen how they do it. It's quite hard and there's a knack in getting the bin onto the hoist and then getting the empties away. The lorry is constantly moving and you have to watch out for traffic. You very rarely sit in the lorry and you're always on the go. I wouldn't want to do the job for minimum wage.
We drove up and down the streets which were quiet as it was a Bank Holiday. As we drove down one street in a rough part of town a man came out of a house, saw me and started effing and blinding "Who you looking at? I'll smash your face in", etc etc. Charming man, charming neighbourhood.
After an hour or two the lorry was full so we climbed in and drove off to the tip. This journey comprised my morning break. We returned to carry on the round and filled the lorry twice more before we finished the round in the early afternoon.
I politely turned down other offers of odd days on the bins at single time. The job is worth more than that.

A few months later I was offered a couple of days work at the landfill site that we'd dumped the household refuse. It had been very windy and paper and other rubbish had escaped the netting surrounding the tip and had to be picked up. So I spent a couple of days litter picking from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. I turned up at the gatehouse and they gave me a roll of black bags and told to get on with it. The netting that surrounds the tip is very good at catching any paper or plastic that blows around, but if too much sticks to the netting the net becomes a wall and the rubbish is lifted over the netting, so the first priority was to clear the netting. Pick the rubbish off the net, put it into a black bag. When the bag is full, drop it into the tip. Repeat until all the rubbish is collected. Once that was done I cleared all the rubbish inside the boundary of the tip, then all the fields around the tip for a quarter of a mile or so.

Plastic takes forever to degrade. There's a wood a short distance from my house that is the site of an ironstone quarry. The overburden (the soil and rock that covers the iron ore) was removed with a mechanical shovel and tipped so that it formed ridges and valleys known as hill and dale. These were planted with trees and the gullet was eventually filled with household refuse. It's possible to walk through the woods and see the site of the gullet, and also see old washing up liquid bottles sticking out of the ground and showing no signs of decomposing

I spent a couple of days clearing old plastic bags from the fields and hedges, enjoying the open air and being inspired to write a song or two. The only downside was the fact that my trusty Doc Martens finally gave out and began to leak water after a year of hard use, in factories and three months walking the streets pushing charity bags through letterboxes (but that's another story)

The driver of the Refuse lorry told me that when this landfill tip was opened it had enough capacity for over thirty year's worth of domestic rubbish. It had been in use for just over fifteen years and was almost full, such was the increase in the local population and the amount of rubbish they were throwing away.

Since then the council has introduced a two weekly refuse collection and recycling for domestic customers. We're quite happy to sort out our rubbish, with different bins for garden and household waste, and boxes for glass, paper, metal and plastic containers. What I'm less happy about is this.

I'm responsible for making sure my firm's rubbish is collected. It's a small firm with only a few staff, but even so we can produce a lot of cardboard and waste paper, drinks cans etc. I called the Council to ask if they had any facility to separate the recycleable stuff from the rest of the rubbish. They said that hadn't and had no plans to extend recycling to business customers.
Our business rubbish is collected in blue plastic bags that currently cost about £1.60 each. If I separate out the recyclable items I'm left with one or two blue bags that we have to leave out overnight as the binmen go by before the office opens. At the moment we don't have an urban fox problem and the rats are well fed from the rubbish left outside the many takeaways at the end of the street.

I can see the benefit of recycling. I've worked as a binman and I've worked in the landfill site. I'm happy to separate my household rubbish so that the council can sell the cardboard, cans and paper to offset the cost of landfill.
What I don't understand is why the council can't or won't extend the recycling scheme to their business customers.
I suspect that it's more to do with taking money from businesses than recycling.

Smartly turned out

I have absolutely no interest in fashion. As far as I'm concerned, clothes should keep me warm or cool according to the season, and be reasonably comfortable. End of.

Part of this is down to my upbringing and the time that I grew up. My mother chose my clothes. They had to be hardwearing and functional. I was the oldest, so I never wore my sibling's cast-offs. I did however wear other people's cast offs if they fit. Growing up in the fifties in a small seaside town, there were no washing machines or launderettes. Clothes had to be washed by hand and wrung out using a pre-war mangle. I had one school shirt when I went to grammar school. I'd wear it all week and it would be washed at the weekend ready to be worn again the next week. When the collar wore out from all the scrubbing, it was either unpicked and turned over and resewn, or a patch was sewn over the frayed material. Clothes were basic and functional and certainly not fashionable. My mother insisted in kitting me out in corduroy jerkin and shorts. I wore shorts until my legs got too hairy. It was the norm.
Clothes were expensive. They were expensive compared to how much I earned. A cheap shirt cost fifteen shillings (75p), a good one was a guinea (£1-1s). A cheap off the peg suit cost £10, which was one week's wages.
I needed a suit to work at the bank. My parents paid for my first suit. It cost £10. My second suit cost a bit more. I went to Burtons for it.

There was a Burtons in every town. I went to the branch in Portobello Road. Their buildings are very distinctive. They always occupied a corner site and they almost always had a snooker hall upstairs. The former Burtons site in Kettering is now an Estate Agents, with a night club upstairs.
I went to Burtons one Saturday and was measured for my suit. He asked me if I dressed to left or to the right. He had to explain what it meant. Then I had to choose the style of suit. Finally I paid a deposit and the suit was ordered for me.
Burtons had a huge factory in Bradford or somewhere like that where they made up the suits that had been ordered in the local shops. A week or two later I called in and tried my suit for size.
It cost me £30, three week's wages.
My next suit was off the peg, and cost £18 from Burtons. I never bought another for years.

Because clothes were expensive you tended to wear clothes until they wore out. The habit tends to stick with you.
In the early 70s I used to wear loon pants. They were made of cotton and were died in bright colours. They cost about £2.50 a pair. A nice grandad tie dye T-shirt cost about the same.
It wasn't until the late eighties that clothes started to come down in price. And as they became cheaper, people began to throw them out before they wore out.

About ten years ago I had a job working for a recycling firm. I'd clock in at six o'clock in the morning at the site in Wellingborough, and together with a driver's mate would drive a white van to the designated collection area. I started off in Colchester, which was about a hundred or so miles away and took about two hours to get to. We'd buy an A-Z map and choose an area to work in. We'd spend the morning walking the streets putting bags through the letterboxes. Our target was 1000 bags per day, assuming we could find 1000 houses that hadn't been visited. After a month or more we'd walked every single street in Colchester and every village within ten miles.
Every afternoon we'd drive to the location that we'd visited two days earlier, this time we drove around looking for the bags that had been left out. Once we'd collected all the bags we drove home, had the van weighed on the weighbridge, emptied the van and clocked out. The next day we did more of the same.
Our target was one ton of clothing per van per day. Some vans went to areas that produced more. Others produced far less. It must have made money, even with all the miles involved.

Some of the clothing was packed into large canvas bags that were sewn shut and loaded in an unsorted state into lorries and transported to eastern Europe, where the clothes were sold to a poor population. This was prior to the enlargement of the EU. Some clothes were sorted into types, eg cotton, silk, wool and went to be recycled. Some customers would order say, a hundred pairs of used denim jeans, or fifty large ladies overcoats and these would be packed and despatched. Clothes that were given away to charity found their way to market stalls in Africa. The Organisation that gave its name and added credibility to the operation received a percentage of the cash raised in this way.

We performed a vital role in the economy. Many people (but not me) love shopping for clothes. Inevitably they run out of storage space. A charity bag would be posted through the letterbox and it would be filled with unwanted or unloved clothes, thereby releasing space for more purchases and keeping the tills ringing in the high street. A small fraction of the clothes collected would find its way into the charity shops of the organisation named on the bag, but it tended to be the very best stuff. Once a week we'd send a van to these retail outlets to take away the unsold clothes and bring fresh stock in. Almost all the clothing collected got reused, resold or recycled.

Until now. The problem is that clothes are now too cheap. I paid £3 for a pair of jeans from Tesco. If prices had risen in line with inflation that would have been around £90 based on 1960s prices. I don't do fashion, I don't do designer labels, I do do comfort,and they're uncomfortable I'll throw them into a charity bag. Most clothes are produced in the far east. Most of them are made from man made fibres, which can't be recycled. Clothes that sell for a pound or two when brand new have no resale value and can't be recycled so go to landfill. Transport costs mean that the foreign markets have dried up. It costs too much to send our unwanted clothes to Africa. The Africans can buy their clothes direct from the factory, as we do.

I stayed with the collection vans for about three months. Inevitably the longs hours took their toll. I was being paid by the hour, so I was earning well enough. However, I was supposed to be a musician and songwriter and while I found that walking the streets was a great way of working out song lyrics ( I wrote one of my favourite songs while tramping the streets of Wivenhoe in Essex), I didn't have any time to get into the studio to record the songs. I wanted to record another album, so in the end I packed the job in.

I'd walked every street in Colchester, Haybridge, Malden, Mersea and all the surrounding villages. I also walked the streets of Hereford and Ross on Wye. I discovered that every new housing development looks the same, irrespective of local architectural styles. Bland bland bland.