LONDON: People in the UK have been accused of sending “trash” after it emerged that around 20 percent of clothing donations made to help the victims of the recent earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria are unusable.
Survivors have posted videos to social media platform TikTok of used lingerie, sequinned tops, stained items, and even 10-inch high heels being found in boxes of donated clothes.
A comment under one video commented: “Clothing collection drop-offs are not a place where you can empty your trash. Those people also have pride. Does your conscience not hurt at all? It is enough for God’s sake. Please, enough.”
More than 36,000 people have been killed so far in Turkiye due to the earthquakes, while at least 5,800 are known to have died in Syria.
Casualties have been exacerbated by weather conditions, with vulnerable survivors lacking shelter and basic supplies, and forced to endure sub-zero temperatures.
The CEO of London’s Turkish Cypriot Community Association, Erim Metto, said a fifth of all donations they had received were “inappropriate” or “unusable.”
He told Metro newspaper: “We were very clear about what donations we would accept. We did say we would not accept any inappropriate clothing. For example, no thin-layer clothing, dresses or high heels.
“When donations come through, we do a two-stage cycling system. The first stage is removing any second-hand, no-good-for-anything donations. Our volunteers filter these through and they are discarded — for example, hygiene products that are only half-full and have been used.”
He added: “Once we get through that first stage, anything that is again not appropriate for the location we are gathering donations for, but is still usable, we would package separately and give to Trade.”
Metto acknowledged, though, that the overall level of donations was significantly higher than during previous appeals.
“We have done a lot of donation schemes in the past to help the homeless, people in Ukraine and we supported the community during COVID,” he said.
“But this time the donations were far higher than we expected. By Wednesday, we had already retracted our appeal for donations.”
Metto said financial donations are preferred to clothes as the former have more uses while the latter require sorting and are difficult to transport, which may prove problematic for smaller organizations.
He added that in some cases, lorries were dumping aid donations en route to Turkiye for lack of proper storage and sorting facilities.
“I would say that about 20 percent of the items we received was not appropriate, so we didn’t send any of it,’ Metto said.
“We do not forward if it is not necessary … At the moment, centres are receiving too much of it and are having to stock them in import depots in the countries of origin.
“But we are still sending items. For example, we just did two shipments of camping tents. That is how we are working.”
