Most Australian charities opened their first recycling outlets in the early 1900s.
Vennies has a very proud history of recycling.
And we opened our very first shop in Newtown in Sydney in 1922.
Selling bags of horse manure.
I think for most of the charities, the OP shops were established as a vehicle to fundraise.
The Brotherhood of St. Lawrence was born within the Church of England.
Today, it's a social service agency.
Here to, is the Brotherhood salvage division.
A major enterprise which brings in one quarter of the Brotherhood's Funds.
The Brotherhood's social workers, have first claim on clothing, furnishings, electrical goods to
provide for people you needs urgently.
After that a use is found for nearly everything.
Your local Op Shop is playing a big part in keeping tonnes of clothes out of landfill.
The secondhand economy is growing faster than the new economy.
There's a really increasing interest in buying secondhand instead of new.
The beauty of coming to an Op Shop is you can just browse amongst shelves and shelves and racks and
racks and, you know, a lot of it will be garbage.
But it's more enjoyable because when you do find the item that you're after, it's more fulfilling
than just googling it and picking add to cart.
if you'd asked the general public 10-15 years ago, do they buy pre loved products from an Op Shop?
I think a number of people would have been embarrassed to say that they did.
I think most people would have been comfortable saying that they've donated product to us.
But they wouldn't have been comfortable saying that they purchased product from us.
Oh, that's so cute.
That position has changed dramatically over the last decade.
I think now it's a bit of a badge of honor to say that you shop at an Op Shop.
And the buttons are really nice on that as well.
I think there are about 3000 charity Op Shop outlets in Australia.
So collectively, we are far and away the largest secondhand proportion of the market.
And we are Australia's largest retailers in terms of our footprint.
We just got some fantastic DVDs in.
From one donor?
One man had all of these and he said that they were all brand new.
We're selling them three for $10, the've been selling like hotcakes.
We also work with a number of corporates who generously assist us with donations.
Putting out some great new sunglasses that we just got in.
Where we can't use donations. We have to pay to dispose of them.
It's estimated that across Australia $13 million a year is spent by charities
sending un-usable, damaged dirty donations to the tip.
I think the future of the charity shop is very rosy.
But I think that we need to embrace the urgency with which Australians are concerned about the
environment.
Our future lies in being part of the circu ar economy.
Which supports our environment.