Standards you can check for yourself

The Textile Recycling Association (TRA) is the UK trade body for collectors, graders and processors of used clothing and textiles. It sets a code of practice for members, speaks for the industry to government and regulators, and publishes honest analysis of the sector’s health. In April 2024 it warned that collectors are operating near capacity. Sait Recycling is a TRA member. You can check that for yourself at textile-recycling.org.uk.

TRUST (the Trader Recycling Universal Standard) is an independent certification for textile merchants. Auditors go through the whole business: licences and insurance, health and safety, how workers are treated, environmental controls including due diligence on exports, and transport standards. It exists because charities were being asked to take collectors’ claims on faith. Certification replaces faith with an audit trail. You can check ours at trustmerchants.org.uk.

Under section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, a charity that hands over waste textiles has a legal duty of care for them. In practice that means three things. Check your collector holds a waste carrier registration. Get a transfer note that describes the material and says who took it. And keep that paperwork so you can show it if the regulator asks. The duty sits with you. But a good collector makes it easy to meet.

Any collector should hand you these documents without being asked twice. If yours won’t, that alone is a reason to look at switching.

Transfer paperwork travels with the material we take. Our waste carrier registration and certification evidence come as one audit-ready compliance pack, on request. We put it together for trustees, auditors and contract managers, not as an afterthought. And because every collection is recorded in your portal, the paperwork and the numbers always tell the same story.

We won’t tell you everything gets reused. Nobody honest can. What we can do is show our workings. Textiles we collect are graded and sorted in the UK. Onward destinations include family-run facilities overseas. Each movement is documented, and we’ll explain the chain without jargon or slogans. So if your board or your donors ask where the clothes go, you’ll have an answer you can stand behind.

That evidence habit is about to matter more. The EU formally adopted extended producer responsibility for textiles in 2025, and UK policy is heading the same way: producer-funded and heavy on evidence. When the rules land, chain-of-custody paperwork stops being a nice extra and becomes a requirement. We’d rather you were ready early.