If you are looking to donate your unwanted items, our Bedfordshire homelessness charity Emmaus Village Carlton is happy to accept most quality clothing and household goods to be sold in our three shops. We can also take any scrap metal, cardboard, damaged books and textiles (not used duvets/pillows) which we can sell on to be recycled and raise cash for our charity.
Read about how to drop off donated goods or arrange a free collection from the ground floor of your home or business. If you are a UK taxpayer, please ask us about Gift Aid.
Please don’t donate things we can’t accept – it costs us money
Each year we end up spending around £47,000 to pay for the disposal of all the poor quality donated items, so we’d really appreciate your help to reduce this bill by taking a look at our criteria below before donating…
Items we can sell in our shops or recycle for cash
We can stock our charity shops with most clothing and many household items if they are in a re-sellable condition, including clean clothes, linens, furniture, books, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, games, toys, household bric-a-brac, clothes, shoes and accessories.
We no longer accept large household appliances such as fridges, washing machines, freezers, ovens, microwaves, beauty or personal electrical items, vacuum cleaners, speakers, any rechargeable electrical items, extension leads, cables or plugs.
Electrical items we do accept must be less than 5 years old and include: Lamps, small kitchen appliances, sewing machines, laptops, TVs with HDMI+VGI ports and remote control, tablets, music equipment, lamps, heaters and fans.
We can also take any scrap metal, cardboard, damaged books and textiles (not used duvets/pillows) which we sell on to be recycled – please ensure items for recycling are in a separate bag labelled ‘for recycling’.
We can’t accept:
- Electrical donations until further notice to allow us time to safely process the current backlog of items.
- We no longer accept large electrical appliances – fridges, freezers, ovens, microwaves and electrical exercise equipment etc, as detailed above.
- Any goods not in a re-sellable condition (this includes tears and stains), unless they are for recycling (see above)
- Items with an odour from a smoking household
- Dining tables without chairs and chairs with no table
- Baby care equipment; buggies, cots, prams, car seats, high chairs, play pens
- Soft toys with no ‘CE’ visible on the label
- Plastic toys due to the high cost of disposal. We are still welcoming children’s DVDs, books, puzzles and games.
- Upholstered furniture with no fire label attached
- Used duvets and pillows
- Non-flat-screen TVs
- Computers and printers
- TVs and DVD players without a remote
- TVs without an HDMI or VGA lead
- Video or audio tapes
- Carpet
- Flat pack furniture
- Wall display units with cupboards at the bottom and glass doors at the top