Social and Environmental Impact
Report 2024-25
Transforming lives, protecting our planet
Supporting and serving our communities
Our West Bromwich donation centre was the first store of its kind and opened in October 2016. The store was recently refurbished and by the end of March 2025, we had opened 57 donation centres across the UK.
Executive Summary
We are Salvation Army Trading Company Ltd (SATCoL) and, as the trading arm of our parent charity, a large part of our work focuses on reuse and recycling. Our core purpose is to ‘enable mission and provide resources to help the work of The Salvation Army’. Repurposing donated items for the benefit of others, and making the most of our planet’s precious resources, sits at the heart of what we do. Our work is broad and far-reaching as we serve and support communities across the UK.
In the Financial Year 2024-25, we raised over £5.4m for The Salvation Army UK and Ireland, and nearly £2.9m for our partners’ charities and other community-based initiatives. Here are more highlights from across the year:
• We were recognised as the Outstanding Charity Retailer of the Year 2024 by the Charity Retail Association and also presented with their Environment and Sustainability Award.
• We collected 77,000 tonnes of clothing and 25,000 tonnes of other items, and diverted them to good uses.
• We served an estimated 6.9m customers, an increase of 15% year-on-year.
• We opened 13 large format donation centres and refurbished 5 high street shops.
• We provided 6,663 free clothing vouchers for those in need, an increase of 28% yearon-year.
• We received 1,500 donated second-hand Salvation Army uniform items, and resold 765, as part of our Take Back Scheme.
• We expanded our in-house tailoring department which makes Salvation Army uniform items here in the UK.
• We were awarded 2 Star Outstanding Employer Accreditation by Best Companies Ltd.
Read more about SATCoL’s impact on our triple bottom line dashboard (page 5) and throughout this report.
We cannot achieve what we do without your help, thank you for your continued support.
Our impact
SATCoL’s social, environmental and financial highlights for the year 2024-25
Triple Bottom Line Dashboard Financial Year 2024-25
People
6,663 (+28% YOY) FREE clothing vouchers redeemed
6.9m (+15% YOY) customers
1,357 paid colleagues
Your impact
Professional footballer Duncan Watmore donated a signed football shirt and football boots, as shown by our Walworth Road shop colleagues, as part of Green Football’s Great Save campaign.
In 2022, we launched a strategic plan under the theme ‘Dare to Care’ with CARE representing SATCoL’s values: Compassion, Accountability, Respect and Equality. The idea of ‘daring to care’ has strongly resonated with our colleagues and customers, and it has become an empowering rallying call for us to seek more ways to help others.
Throughout the year, our customers, donors and partners have continued to engage with our work. It is through your generosity, that we are able to raise funds, provide for those in need and help protect our planet.
Here are just some examples of how people have engaged with us in the past year:
• Over 178,000 people engaged with us online and in stores as part of Green Football’s Great Save, of which we were the official charity partner.
• Members of the community got involved with Great Big Green Week in June 2024; our stores put on incredible displays and we produced a dedicated, and FREE, edition of Restyle magazine.
• People enjoyed taking part in our Repair Cafés at our Gorseinon and Coventry donation centres. By the end of March 2025, 258 items had been repaired.
Want to learn more?
Download our FREE Reuse, Repurpose, Restyle magazine: Restyle Magazine - Salvation Army (salvationarmytrading.org.uk)
Search for SATCoL’s Sustainable Conversation podcast series on Apple and Spotify, or visit SATCoL TV: www.satcol.org/satcol-tv
Support our work in reuse and recycling by visiting your nearest donation point or store: www.salvationarmytrading.org.uk/find-us/
Interested in volunteering? Start your journey with us: www.salvationarmytrading.org.uk/support-us/volunteering
Every donation makes a difference
On your marks, get set, collect! For two years running, SATCoL has been the London Marathon’s official clothing collector.
A large part of our work is in reuse and recycling.
We encourage the reuse and recycling of textiles and other items through our nationwide network of charity shops, donation centres and clothing banks. We work with community groups, large organisations, local authorities, schools, colleges and individuals - all who share our aims to help others and help protect our planet.
We are continuously innovating and introducing new services. In the past year we:
• Hosted two Sally Salvage events at our Renfrew donation centre. These successful events attracted large crowds and rehomed 1,600 items of unwanted furniture for free.
• Further developed our IT reuse scheme, known as GiveItBack, which has seen 4,041 devices collected, and approx. 20% refurbished and resold in our stores (double the previous year).
• Responded to thousands of requests for help with household clearances and collections - our Clothing Collection Division (CCD) helped with over 2,650 house collections.
• Continued our collaboration with HMP Five Wells which has seen over 9,400 denim bags made from unwearable jeans, by prisoners, and 750 pieces of furniture upcycled and sold in our stores.
• Collected approx. 19 tonnes of clothing from the London Marathon in April 2024, and we continue to be the official clothing collection partner for London Marathon Events.
8,350+ clothing banks
55+ donation centres
4 processing centres
365+ corporate partners
1,357
195+ high street charity shops employees
2,650+ CCD house collections
6,091 volunteers
Changing lives, every day
How we help others
Using local networks in communities across the UK, our parent charity operates food banks and delivers essential food supplies to those in need all year round.
In a world where many people despair, The Salvation Army is a beacon of hope, working every day to make the world a kinder place. We are privileged to play our part in raising funds and providing resources to help the work of The Salvation Army. Below is just a small snapshot of our parent charity’s work across the UK:
• Provided nearly 3,000 beds every night to people experiencing homelessness
• Attended over 300 incidents, providing respite and comfort to Emergency Services
• Supported nearly 10,000 survivors of modern slavery
• Ran programmes with families and children
• Distributed thousands of food parcels
• Helped over 1,100 people back to work
• Distributed food and toys to struggling families
• Supported thousands of older people in our community Watch The Salvation Army’s Year in Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDlNlx_QZ0s
At SATCoL, we ‘dare to care’ in everything we do. In addition to the funds we raise, colleagues in our Central Support and Processing Centres, as well as our Collectors and shop colleagues, work closely with Salvation Army churches and community projects across the UK offering other direct support. Here are just some of the ways we help:
• Last year 6,663 FREE clothing vouchers were redeemed in our stores by people and families in need – an increase of 28% on the previous year (and a 125% increase compared to two years ago).
• Our Clothing Collection Division supported bereaved families and friends by responding to 475 requests for home collections.
• We engaged with over 140 fashion students through lectures and visits to our Processing Centres in Kettering.
• Over 600 of our volunteers are active learners on our award-winning eLearning platform, The Learning Booth, and 170 volunteers moved into paid employment.
170 volunteers moved to paid employment
6,663 FREE clothing vouchers redeemed 6.9m customers served in our shops £5.43m raised for The Salvation Army £2.87m raised for our partners
Sustainable solutions
How we help protect our planet
SATCoL is uniquely placed in helping donors, corporate partners and community groups to reuse and recycle:
• Our nationwide network of clothing banks and stores provide easy access to donation points.
• Our 260+ charity retail stores, which includes our growing network of donation centres, offer good quality products at affordable prices for communities, and a ready-made market for corporate partners who want to repurpose items responsibly.
Working with organisations and local authorities, we offer professional and trusted services:
• Our Corporate Partnership team respond quickly to requests, delivering solutions in all aspects of overstocks, customer take-back collections, returned and end-of-range stock management.
• Our large nationwide network eliminates transport and logistics costs.
• Our investments in modern processing centres and new technology mean we are able to offer new ways of reusing and recycling textiles on a commercial scale, never before seen in the UK and unique to SATCoL.
We have introduced successful and innovative new reuse and recycling schemes:
• Our accredited ITAD (IT Asset Disposal) scheme, known as GiveITBack, provides a secure service to organisations who can also give back to the community.
• Our Take Back Schemes offer partners in-store and online options for their customers to donate unwanted textiles in a convenient way.
• Our Flooring Reuse Programme provides affordable carpets to people and a sustainable way for organisations to divert unwanted and good quality flooring from disposal.
Below are some highlights from SATCoL’s work in reuse and recycling:
77,000 tonnes
77,000 tonnes of textiles collected in our shops and clothing banks last year.
505,000 tonnes
Through our reuse and recycling schemes, we helped to avoid 505,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.*
This is the equivalent to taking 270,000 cars off the road.
This also helps avoid 64.4 billion litres of water used in clothing manufacture, equivalent to 644 million bath tubs of water.
25,000 tonnes
25,000 tonnes of nonclothing items collected and repurposed each year.
* You can find our avoided emissions methodology on our website: https://salvationarmytrading.org.uk/how-we-help/sustainability/
Closing the textiles loop
Behind the scenes: BBC 1’s The One Show Lucy Siegel visits our Fibersort and Project Re:claim innovation projects – The One Show feature aired in March 2025.
We are on a mission to educate the next generation of fashion workers on the challenges we face around overconsumption and the importance of designing for recyclability – often referred to as designing for circularity. SATCoL has invested heavily in innovations including FibersortTM, the UK’s only automated sorting process that accurately identifies and sorts second-hand items by fibre type, and Project Re:claimTM, the first commercial-scale polyester recycling plant designed to recycle end-of-life textiles. Project Re:claim is a joint venture with Project Plan B, and our technology partner PureLoop (part of Erema Group).
Both Fibersort and Project Re:claim are based in The Salvation Army’s Processing Centres in Kettering, Northamptonshire, UK, and are operated by SATCoL.
Here are some of the highlights and milestones achieved this year:
• Fibersort surpassed 1.7 million items automatically sorted.
• Extended Fibersort’s capacity by adding extra infra-red cameras and 10 additional sorting cages (we now have 20 cages capable of capturing 20 different fibre types and mixes).
• Project Re:claim successfully reprocessed used (postconsumer) materials into pellets which have then been melt blown into a polyester filler material which has enormous potential to be used for padding or stuffing for cushions, pillows, duvets etc.
• Post-industrial material pellets have been spun into a yarn which has been woven into a material.
• 195 tonnes of waste polyester material processed and over 135 tonnes of pellets produced.
• We welcomed key industry figures and stakeholders – 65 separate visits from retailers, professional bodies, members of the press, Universities and other organisations.
• Our Project Re:claim site hosted two Circular Textile Foundation (CTF) Design for Recyclability workshops for brands and retailers.
• Project Re:claim won Recycler of the Year at the Plastics Industry Awards held in London in December 2024.
Being accountable
Reducing our own carbon emissions
As part of Great Big Green Week and other initiatives, we planted trees as part of The National Forest’s ambitious scheme to grow a greener future.
Our own carbon emissions are relatively small. Especially compared to the amount of carbon emissions we help our customers avoid through enabling them to purchase second-hand items, rather than buying new. Nonetheless, we need to play our part and we have set stretching targets to reach net zero and reduce our carbon emissions by 90% by 2040. You can find our full sustainability strategy on our website.
Over the past year we have made some great progress against our targets. Here are some of the highlights:
• 6% reduction in operational carbon emissions*
• 4 of our Donation Centres have solar panels.
• 68% of our company cars are electric and 27% hybrid (total 95%).
• 11 more electric vans added to our shop fleet, taking the total to 27 vans (33% of retail fleet).
• We continued the EV trial in our Clothing Collection Division based on 5 vans. The trial results are informing our use of EVs in the future to support our carbon reduction goals.
• 99.6% of our shops now have LED lighting installed. We have just one shop left to convert.
• 100% of our electricity continues to be sourced from certified renewables via Ecotricity, one of the UK’s greenest electricity suppliers.
• To promote fuel efficient driving behaviours in our van fleet, we use leading technology in our Retail and Clothing Collection Divisions, providing in-cab driver feedback.
• We introduced a Cycle to Work scheme in 2023 and, so far, 28 colleagues have purchased a bike through the scheme.
• Around 40% of colleagues have completed our three environmental training modules. In January 2025, we hosted a ‘Save Energy Week’ blog series to share top tips for saving energy at home and at work.
Priority actions planned for next year:
• Further progress our solar PV installation programme
• Introduce a green travel policy
• Continue the roll-out of our procurement sustainability programme
*This covers energy use in our buildings, own fleet and business travel by car, compared to our 2019/20 baseline
6% reduction in operational carbon emissions* 68% of company cars are electric 99.6% shops converted to LED lighting
100% electricity from certified renewables
Read more about our targets and progress online: https://salvationarmytrading.org.uk/how-we-help/sustainability/
Our work
A small snapshot of our broad and far-reaching work in the past year
Main picture: SATCoL was awarded a 2 Star Outstanding Employer Accreditation from Best Companies Ltd, leaders in their field who undertake independent and benchmarked colleague surveys. 739 of SATCoL’s paid staff and 1,174 of volunteers responded. Opposite (clockwise from top left): Our Mansfield donation centre hosted 24 Days of Mission in the run up to Christmas 2024, engaging customers in how the store supports other local causes and community projects. Our in-house tailoring department (part of Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, a division of SATCoL) continues to fulfil one of our key environmental objectives as we shift production of Salvation Army uniforms to the UK. Salvation Army Trading Company won the award for Best Benefits Launch/Relaunch at the 2024 Appreciation Awards hosted by Reward Gateway, a leading employee experience platform. Our Hinckley donation centre hosted 10 SEN pupils from a local school, who were learning about recycling, as part of our Great Big Green Week celebrations.
For more examples of our work, visit: https://salvationarmytrading.org.uk/how-we-help/news/
24 Days of Mission In-house tailoring
