Good360 Australia says the volume of unsold products received from retailers has increased by 20 per cent over the past year as companies do more to ease consumers suffering from the cost-of-living crisis.

These items, including clothing, homewares, appliances, toiletries, and toys, would have been discarded if Good360 had not been able to redistribute them.

Good360 has also disclosed that as the cost-of-living problem intensified, demand for its services has skyrocketed, with the charity now distributing fresh unsold products to 3000 Australians in financial trouble every day.

The growing demand for assistance and donated unsold items has corresponded with 12 interest rate increases by the Reserve Bank and a sharp fall in retail expenditure, and businesses are wasting and sending $2.5 billion of unsold household goods to landfills every year. According to the ABS’s retail data for July, discretionary spending on products such as clothing (down 7.2 per cent) and household goods (down 8 per cent) has declined dramatically since November.

Despite transferring goods worth millions of dollars to disadvantaged Australians, Good360 Australia’s founder and MD Alison Covington warned that many more unsold consumer goods could soon be heading for landfills, potentially posing a serious environmental threat.

“The cost of living crisis has created record demand for our services – we are supporting twice as many people today as we were during the Covid-19 pandemic,” she said. 

“The increased cost of living is not only creating higher demand on charities providing relief to people under economic distress, but as retail sales decline there are untold volumes of unsold products heading for waste.” 

Good360 is a nonprofit organisation that donates unsold new consumer goods to more than 3700 organisations and underprivileged schools.