Collecting donations through selling used clothes and textile is not something new for the Red Cross and has been practiced throughout the world. In the English capital city for example there are special stores, where donated clothing is sold and the money is used for charity initiatives. It is paradoxical that production of clothing exceeds the needs of people. However, more and more people rely on the help of others in order to have clothes for their children and themselves.

Until recently, the Bulgarian Red Cross was the initiator of temporary campaigns that called on citizens to donate clothing and home textiles for residents of areas affected by natural disasters and other catastrophes. Hundreds of people took part in the campaign and after its end many kept asking where they could leave their donations. This way in March 2016 collecting clothing and textiles became a year-round activity. It was at that time when the first containers with the logo of the Red Cross were placed in Sofia. The initiative was realized with the help of Hyumanita Company from the city of Plovdiv, which deals with processing of textile waste.

The content of containers is periodically collected, disinfected and sorted out according to the season and the type of clothes left there. The charity initiative has undisputed environmental impact as the unusable part of the donations is recycled. Containers in Sofia collect up to 300 kg each, but their number is insufficient, as there are no other places in the city for collecting textile waste. This explains the great interest in the initiative of the Red Cross among supporters of humanitarian and environmental campaigns in Sofia. "Collecting of discarded clothes is an old idea and an old problem in Bulgaria," says Spaska Tasseva, Deputy Head of the Sofia branch of the Bulgarian Red Cross.

"For half a year 15 such containers have been placed in key locations in Sofia. Our plan is to collect clothing, textiles and everything that could be of help. People bring us clothes that are thoroughly cleaned. Some of them are kept for the Disaster Reserve of the BRC. They are used as needed when there are crisis situations in the country. There are many such cases, including during this cold winter when we are trying to help people in refugee centers and people living in the street who need warm clothes. Moreover, each kilogram of fabric that is placed in these containers brings the BRC 5 cents from the processing company. For us this is a new kind of investment that we put back into humanitarian causes."

For half a year since the Red Cross started the campaign in Sofia they have collected more than 185 tons of textiles. This shows that processing companies should start paying more attention to the capital city. Experience gives reason to think about expansion to other major cities, where currently no fabrics are recycled and old clothes go directly to the landfill. Currently the containers for used clothes in front of the Red Cross in Sofia are the most popular ones.

Every day Spaska Tasseva sees people on their way to work in the morning, leaving collected old clothes.

"My personal impression is that many people come here and I see how quickly these containers get full. The initiative definitely has an environmental effect, because things that cannot be used by other people are recycled. Textiles that are produced after processing of clothes are used for fillings, cleaning cloths in automotive workshops and others. We hope that the number of containers would grow but even now the company that collects and transports the clothes cannot keep up to the pace, and sometimes containers stay overfilled for days.”

English: Alexander Markov