What links royal billionaires to charity shops?
New investigation published.
There is a body of water in my local park that is halfway between a lake and a pond. I ended up sitting by it one very hot day when my partner had kindly ejected me from the house for spending too much time on my laptop.
As I stared at the lake, something began to move fast under the water causing ripples in the green algae. It looked like a giant eel the way it twisted and turned. Round and round it went, shooting forward and causing me to edge back from the water until suddenly a sleek, black cormorant shot up out of the algae, breaking the surface of the murky water with a large fish in its beak.
The fish was bigger than the cormorant's head, causing the bird to jerk around for a while in an attempt to get the fish fully into its mouth and down its thin throat without letting it go.
In my dazed state I felt like that cormorant. Fighting for so long to complete a project only to find you've landed a much bigger catch than you ever expected and its now your job to get it down without messing everything up.
Which is to say that the first of the big catches that I have been working on is finally out:
While volunteers keep charity shops alive, a billionaire prince is profiting
Volunteering in a charity shop to write Charity Shop World I saw everything from the weird and wonderful to the sad and disturbing. I was there to understand what truly happens to the 350,000 tonnes of worn clothes that get donated to Britain’s 9,900 charity shops every year.
When it turned out there is A LOT of money in exports of our old jeans, dresses and t-shirts I also set about exploring where the profits are going. It was a story that took me through tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions to the billionaire palaces of European royalty.
What I discovered was shocking.
Tansy Hoskins
You can read the article here but be warned: The investigation contains major book spoilers from chapter four!
These supply chains are complicated and I'm very glad that editor Louisa McGillicuddy decided to champion this story and help it reach literally millions of people. We need this system to change very badly and that means holding the rich and powerful to account.
I can't really describe the sheer level of collective work it takes to be able to publish investigations like this one. It is anything but straightforward and anything but easy.
I'd also like to thank Gareth Iwan Jones and Faye Williams for the Cardiff photoshoot hastily arranged for a location that worked with my holiday.
There is much more to come over the next few months. I'm finishing off more articles, getting ready for radio interviews and EVENTS around the UK - much of which involves sorting through my own pile of ragbags which I'll be using as props and stage sets. Plus there is one possible thing in the pipeline that I can't talk about yet but which left me speechless with happiness over the holiday. I'm learning to become a cormorant.
In solidarity, Tansy.
P.s. If you haven't pre-ordered Charity Shop World yet...what are you waiting for my friend? All I can offer on top of everything else is this absolutely stellar review by Katya Moorman at No Kill Magazine. The incredible flow of support from friends, colleagues and the wider fashion journalism and garment industry campaign world is making me feel exceptionally supported. Thank you.
Katya Moorman
