Oxfam, the 67-year-old Oxford-based confederation of multinational organizations, spends more than $600 million a year around the world fighting poverty, famine, climate change and discrimination. $32 million of that budget comes from book sales at its 130 second-hand bookshops in the UK, making them the second largest retailer of second-hand books in Europe. Now, independent booksellers are beginning to speak out about the competition. On the BBC, in the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the New York Times, some British booksellers are questioning the wisdom of charities using chain stores to raise funds. Are they “destroying lives here to save them elsewhere” as they’ve been accused of by one former UK bookseller, or is this the logical economic result of “the English town with the secondhand bookshop everybody loves but most people never actually go into.” as David McCullough, director of trading for Oxfam recently speculated?
posted by Toekneesan on Sep 9, 2009 - 40 comments

The Afterlife of American Clothes. "From 2003 to 2007 [filmmakers Hanna Rose Shell and Vanessa Bertozzi] visited rag yards in Miami, dug through archives in London and Washington, D.C., and traveled to Haiti to see the international secondhand markets for themselves. The result is the recent documentary Secondhand (Pepe), which explores the global trade in used clothing."
posted by Knappster on Aug 17, 2008 - 12 comments

Sudden capricious friendship with secondhand books -- a lovely little tribute to quiet expansive pleasures by Virginia Woolf. Where do used books find you? [via the ever-marvelous wood s lot]
posted by digaman on Mar 30, 2006 - 33 comments

Second hand smoke doesn't cause cancer I am shocked that an organization would withhold information that is damaging to their cause.
posted by jonny rook on Mar 26, 2001 - 35 comments