Calculating impact to show how a charity turns surplus goods into measurable carbon savings

Newlife is a charity with a unique model: it collects surplus clothing, footwear, furniture and other returned goods from a wide range of donors and sells them through its UK retail stores to raise vital funds for disabled children.

By keeping high quality items in circulation, Newlife prevents products from becoming waste while supporting families in need, demonstrating the tangible social impact that can come from applying circular economy principles to value chains for goods.

Of the 1.45 million tonnes of post-consumer textiles generated in 2022, approximately 50% of this ended up being incinerated or landfilled, with only around 21% being reused or recycled in the UK (and the remainder being exported) An additional challenge is that significant amounts of unsold textiles, accessories and hardware goods are also being disposed of; approximately 4% to 9% of unsold textiles are destroyed before ever being worn in Europe, generating 5.6 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

While new EU rules seek to ban the destruction of unsold goods, there will be a greater need for organisations to embrace circular business models via resale, remanufacturing and reuse. Newlife’s model tackles this challenge by extending the life of products through resale and ensuring that any unsold materials are recycled through its onward processing partners.

Understanding Newlife’s impact

Resource Futures has worked with Newlife since 2018 to calculate the charity’s carbon footprint and help it demonstrate the environmental benefits of its operations. With its last calculation covering 2022–23, Newlife needed an up-to-date assessment (for 2024–25) so it could continue to confidently and accurately communicate the carbon savings its operations achieve to its donors, retail partners and supporters.

The updated carbon footprint assessment needed to reflect the scale and complexity of Newlife’s operations, accounting for both the carbon emissions generated and the carbon savings achieved through reuse and recycling.

A detailed, purpose-built modelling approach

To capture this, we used a bespoke carbon modelling tool developed specifically to capture Newlife’s activities. The model calculates direct emissions from Newlife’s operations – which include collection, reprocessing, retailing and logistics – alongside avoided emissions that result from the reuse and recycling of donated materials. The calculations draw on UK Government carbon conversion factors and models Newlife’s three major product categories: clothing and textiles, footwear and accessories, and hardware.

Crucially, the tool goes further, evaluating the carbon benefits achieved downstream through Newlife’s resale and recycling partners. Using actual tonnage and logistics data, the assessment quantifies how Newlife’s operations displace the production of new goods and prevent materials from being sent to landfill or incineration.

Achieving increasing carbon reductions

The carbon footprint assessment results demonstrate the increasing scale of Newlife’s environmental contribution and carbon savings. In 2024–25:

• 1,810 metric tonnes of items were collected;
• More than 9,273 tonnes of carbon emissions were saved: this is equivalent to over 27.3 million road miles being driven by an average UK car.

The net carbon savings achieved in 2024–25 were 12% higher than those reported in 2022–23. This reflects both greater displacement benefits from the sale of reused items as well as increased savings generated by downstream textile partners.

Enabling Newlife to communicate impact with confidence

The findings from our carbon footprint assessment allow Newlife to demonstrate the significant carbon savings it achieves through its activities, strengthening communications with donors, and promoting the wider environmental benefits of supporting reuse. The updated carbon footprint also gives Newlife the ability to apportion carbon savings to individual donors, helping them to understand the tangible value of their contributions.

“A really big thank you for all the support; the experience has all been really positive. Resource Futures has been on hand and available to support and help when needed. We’re happy with how the project worked out.”

Newlife