Textile collections
from the UK's largest
charity shop collector
We are the UK’s largest charity shop collector. We offer a tailor-made recycling service to charitable partners looking for a trusted, full-cycle disposal programme to handle the huge variety of items that come their way every single day.
Our partners receive a first-class service based on trust, compliance (and, of course, competitive rebates), whilst guaranteeing that their charity’s good name, trustees, staff and supporters are all protected.
Make a quick enquiry
Here’s a snapshot
of our capability:
``CTR has provided collection services to Sense for nearly 10 years. Their levels of professionalism and service resulted in Sense awarding CTR our whole estate in recent years. We have also been able to recommend CTR to other charities as the textile recycler of choice, based on our experience.``
“Cats Protection have worked with CTR since 2016 to support our shop’s recycling needs and we have always been highly satisfied. In particular, the communication from CTR is always completely transparent… and there is always a quick response and remedy to any issues that arise. We look forward to our continuing partnership with CTR.”
What do we take?
Everything. From textiles, books, bric-a-brac and toys right through to hangers, cardboard and plastics (which help reduce waste costs for our customers).
Each week we collect, sort and process 1300+ tonnes of varied products. We’re able to process pretty much anything that comes our way. We’ll either repurpose or reuse it, or break it back down to core components ready for remanufacturing.
This means we can offer you a trusted and sustainable ‘closed loop’ solution that sends zero to landfill. We are also the only collector to carry out electrical testing on all items, so we can ensure you meet current legislation as well as your corporate social responsibilities.
What we
offer
- Pre-agreed, regularly-scheduled collections
- Competitive rebates
- Collection reports
- BACs payment
- Zero-waste-to-landfill promise
- Dedicated account manager
- Branded collection vehicles with tracker systems which pinpoint vehicles whereabouts
- Uniformed staff
- Working partnership agreement
- Provision of bags and tote boxes for bric-a-brac and books
What do we collect?
Data in the palm of your hand
Meet our ACTRA technology platform, the first of its kind in our industry. Our partners in the charity sector use it for everything from checking the volumes collected to all their payment data.
When we wanted to offer our charity partners a fully-integrated, end-to-end tracking and management system for their stores, there was just one problem. Such a system didn’t exist. So we built our own.
We’ve designed and built it to be bespoke to the charity sector. It lets you see everything that’s happening in real-time, from the big picture to the tiniest detail. You can see how much is being collected from your stores and clothing banks down to the last kilo, and how often it’s being picked up.
That means we can calculate collection payments immediately and you can rest assured that there is total transparency and accuracy.
Going the extra mile on waste
We know that our charity partners’ sites generate plenty of dry recyclable waste like cardboard and plastic waste. Most of it is created by a well-meaning public, who bring in donations in boxes and bags and leave them in-store.
Managing this waste on a shop-by-shop basis can be expensive, and it’s a cost we can remove from your business. We are the only organisation in the sector who offers free collection of cardboard and plastic bags from shops.
Zero means zero
We also run the only bric-a-brac collection line in the UK. Because we sort every single item by hand it means we can identify and recycle whatever’s not fit for reuse or repurposing.
Glass and porcelain are turned into aggregate, electrical items into reusable plastic and metals, and our on-site granulators can turn waste into materials that can be used to manufacture new products. All of it means that when we say ‘zero to landfill’ – we really mean it.
