Popularity of charity shops with young people

Following an increased awareness of the climate crisis that our world is currently facing, one of the biggest polluters is fast fashion, companies will mass produce micro-trends every couple of months and teenagers will be encouraged to purchase due to the pressures of keeping up with trends. Fast fashion companies have taken advantage of the influential teenage mind and in the process caused lots of damage to the planet and our bank accounts. The term fast fashion means inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by mass-market retailers in response to the latest trends, this causes a huge amount of harm to workers in the factories making the clothes – a source from ‘Fashion Checker’ revealed that 93% of brands don’t pay garment workers a living wage’ and ‘it takes 2,700 litres of water to produce one single t-shirt'. So essentially, a lot of waste is involved with the creation of garments in the fast fashion industry and the way to combat this is investing into slow fashion

This means purchasing items from environmentally friendly brands and sources, one of the easiest and cheapest means to do this is purchasing from charity shops. Recent trends on social media have encouraged young people to take a look in their local Charity shops. There has been an influx of second-hand / charity shops hauls on platforms like Tikok that has gained a lot of attention from viewers. It seems as if charity shops are the new way forward for cheap and eco-friendly clothing.

-Charity shops are often in local towns, so they are easy to get to without the means of a car or transportation 

-From each purchase the Charity will gain funding to help people and at checkout buyers can make additional donations

-Charity shops have an abundance of sock in storage rooms and with people clearing out their wardrobes, there are often lots of donations very frequently 

-For the buyer, the clothes are cheap and often to their liking as shops owners will put the most wanted items on the shop floor. (Very similar to fast fashion retailers but without the mass producing and waste) 

-Through government funding, charity shops gained an additional £1million or more through retail, hospitality, and leisure grants.

Before the rise in popularity of these shops' people have said that they would feel embarrassed to purchase from a charity shop but thankfully through this rise in interest for the shops, charity shopping is a norm and is excepted (like it always should have been).

This is one of the positive things have come from social media, young people are impacting the planet less and saving their money as well as helping the Charity. As part of the plan to prevent climate change, purchasing from second-hand/charity shops has been strongly advised so it seems as if this is a beneficial change for everyone.