Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 5th November 2026 Issue no. 1233
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Leader continued
... continued from Leader...
Shortly after my granddaughter was born, I found a charity shop specifically for baby & children's items. I bought a fair bit of what she needed from there whilst delivering good items she no longer required. I went in regularly and it was the busiest shop around, so there was clearly a need for the service. Sadly, the charity which ran it went into administration after 90yrs of excellent fundraising and service, and there's now nowhere local that enables those who aren't well off, (or who wish to do their bit for the planet!) to buy what they need for their little ones while unloading - for others to use - what's no longer useful. In this case it was a 'win-win-win' situation, until something went wrong.
We ran news last week on an initiative dubbed 'Outgrown, Not Wasted' designed to persuade parents to sort children's outgrown clothes and toys and pass them on - before Christmas and thus at a time when the less well-off will be searching for toys and clothes to give as gifts. Most of us will either have growing families or have neighbours, friends and colleagues and my plea is for you to let them know about this initiative and thus help do your bit to reduce the mountains of unnecessary waste created by those who simply dump things that are still in great condition. I realise it's a UK-based initiative but there are ways to pass on unwanted belongings all over, so please help get the message across that if families don't want to keep items, they should pass them on to another family, donate them to a charity shop or sell them. And if the items are no longer serviceable, recycle them responsibly rather than simply send them to landfill.
I'd also go as far as to suggest that you encourage people to do as we did, and ask those wishing to donate gifts to newborns and growing children, to buy second hand. We need to remove the stigma of championing 'second-hand'!"
I recall back in the early days of Cleanzine, (almost a quarter of a century ago!) writing about how some reprobates had been caught damaging a Church lychgate which required rebuilding as a result. I said that, given the chance, I'd have cemented the lads' feet into the ground beneath it and encouraged passers-by to throw old food at them. I've had similar thoughts more recently, having seen the way so many of our war memorials have been desecrated by vandals - often those on the growing number of 'protest' marches. Why on earth? And what do they get out of it?
Someone notified me about the social media post that included the attached illustration. Scrolling through the comments I saw that lots of folk are as angry as I am about the disrespect shown to our war memorials and the brave people they were erected to honour. I say 'disrespect', but it goes way beyond that, doesn't it?
The fact that the UK government's releasing physically dangerous individuals to free up space in our prisons for social media posters and speech now deemed unacceptable, means that while jail time would perhaps be a valid punishment, (as some commenters suggested) it's not viable. What I'd like to see is the culprits not only having to pay for the clean-up/repairs, but being forced to do the work themselves, too - and preferably with the event having been given pre-publicity locally so those as troubled as I am about such vandalism can go along and jeer. We need to do something to prevent this growing type of abomination - and to tackle environmental vandalism in general - particularly so now, bearing in mind that those with a bent for it are being summoned to join the 20th November rallies.
Your thoughts please?
5th November 2026