May 2025 Charitable Reuse Australia Newsletter

Award-Winning Keynote Speaker for Charitable Reuse Conference

Heidi Dening – Tough Times Don’t Last. Resilient Professionals Do. 

Heidi Dening believes that education changes lives. Combining the insights she has learned from surviving a paralysing illness, a gunpoint kidnapping, a life-threatening tsunami, and petrol bombs with her impressive business and health education background, she has a unique ability to elevate the professional resilience of leaders and their teams. This enables them to make better decisions, be more innovative, have more energy, optimism and empathy, and successfully deal with change, stress, and uncertainty.

Heidi has dedicated her career to inspiring thousands of people globally with practical strategies that improve resilience and self-leadership, from small children on remote Pacific islands to professional teams across 19 different industries.

This has meant she has delivered onstage and online presentations and programs to thousands of professionals from across the globe, including Coca-Cola, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, REINSW, Raine and Horne, Financial Planners Association, Metcash, Insurance Council of Australia and Westpac.

She was named ‘Best International Keynote Speaker’ in the Asia Pacific region and is the author of an Amazon best-selling leadership book called ‘’Her Middle Name is Courage – How Self-Leadership Transforms Pressure into Performance, Chaos into Clarity and Rage into Resilience”.

Heidi is presenting the opening keynote at the 2025 Charitable Reuse Conference – Register now to see her live.

 

 

2025 Conference Agenda Includes Three Unique New Elements …

… Celebratory Inspiration, Resilience and Capacity Building

Check out the Conference agenda at the link below as it’s starting to take shape.

This year, in addition to all the contemporary thought-provoking future-strategies brought to you by the most inspiring, engaging and collaborative speakers, the Sydney Conference agenda incorporates three unique elements:

• Celebratory Inspiration – The 100 Years of Op Shops theme in 2025, the launch of World Op Shop Day and the Gala Dinner activations are designed to celebrate and elevate our sector, and to inspire all Australians to engage with an op shop this year either as a donor, a customer or a volunteer.
• Resilience  – The 2025 year has started with many challenges, not only for our sector in Australia but charity shops globally. This year’s conference builds in more sessions on resilience and leadership, as well as directly addressing all the key challenges with a focus on collective solutions.
• Capacity Building – The Shop Manager Break-In Sessions build on the success of last’s year’s launch to educate, engage and elevate your shop manager teams with powerful bespoke content designed for members by members.

Given the challenges facing the sector in 2025 and its celebratory opportunity to elevate interest in op shops, we recommend that all Charitable Reuse Australia members, partners and supporters attend this Once in a Century event.

In order to share the best-practice educational sessions with as many of your frontline teams as possible, we’re offering complimentary all-staff Livestream access and complimentary Conference Recordings for all organisations that register either four delegates into the Conference, or six Shop Managers into the Shop Manager Break-In Sessions.

You’ll Want to Break Into the Shop Manager Break-In Sessions …

… Build Capacity, Energy and Inspiration for Your Shop Managers

Huge thanks to the NSW member group creating the agenda for the Shop Manager Break-In Sessions to ensure its perfectly aligned with the needs of their shop manager teams:

• Yolanda Saiz, NSW Director (CEO St Vincent de Paul Society)
• Cayte Moxom, Salvos Stores
• Gemma Presley, Vinnies NSW
• Cally Piper, Red Cross
• Mark Jeffrey, Lifeline Harbour to Hawkesbury
• David Ison, Lifeline Direct
• Other NSW Members are welcome to join this group

This is a one-day session on Monday 13 October 2025 so your shop managers don’t spend too long away from their shops, and they can be back running their shops on Tuesday – and preparing for the massive foot-traffic expected on World Op Shop Day on Saturday 18 October 2025.

Conference Proudly Supported by Shop for Shops and re-UP

 

World Op Shop Day – Save the Date

Save the date of Saturday 18 October 2025 and get ready for World Op Shop Day.

Here’s a sneak peek into what’s in store:

• Purpose of World Op Shop Day – To drive foot-traffic, donations and sales for all our members, and elevate awareness of charitable reuse.
• Call to Action – An invitation for all Australians to engage with an op shop either as a donor, a customer or a volunteer on World Op Shop Day.
• Frequency – An annual event timed for the third Saturday in October.
• Brand Owner – Charitable Reuse Australia on behalf of all our members.
• Marketing Plan – We’ll prepare a foundational marketing plan including collateral for all members to use.
• 100 Day Countdown – The social media countdown to World Op Shop Day commences from 10 July 2025, where we will also celebrate all member and partner anniversaries happening in 2025.
• Logo – A compelling and engaging logo for World Op Shop Day is coming soon.

We’d love to see the Aussie term ‘Op Shop’ gain global traction with the other nomenclatures of ‘Charity Shop’ in England and ‘Thrift Shop’ in America – and to accelerate our collective global customers and donors together with our wonderful peers and peak bodies overseas.

Look out for more details coming to all members soon.

Charitable Retail Benchmarking Stats Revealed

Charitable Reuse Australia has been collecting quarterly Retail Benchmarking data from over 1,200 op shops and reuse shops since 2022.

We are pleased to publicly share the top line National Averages for the first time, based on the December 2024 Quarter:

• $4.90 – Average Item Price
• 2.9 – Average Items Per Sale
• $14.27 – Average Transaction Value
• $116,160 – Average Shop Revenue
• $1,568 – Average Sales Per SQM

The full datasets, including drilldowns by state, shop size, regional v metro locations and staff v volunteer run shops are available to participating members to help them compare like-for-like shops and improve retail performance.

Huge thanks to Ian Moore, State Manager,  Save the Children who originally suggested the idea of a Retail Benchmarking tool to Charitable Reuse Australia back in 2019 and created the metrics and data sheets we are currently using.

In 2025, we will be expanding the Retail Benchmarking metrics based on member needs. Look out for an invitation for all participating members to a collective meeting discuss what additional metrics they would like included for the future.

NSW Reuse Calculator Video

Provide Feedback for Queensland’s Waste Strategy 2025 to 2030

The new Queensland Government is seeking feedback on their draft Waste Strategy 2025 of Less Landfill, More Recycling which seems to be focused only on boosting recycling to try and reduce waste. They also want to support jobs.

Reuse, repair and other higher order interventions for waste avoidance don’t seem to be prioritised at all so far.

The Queensland Government’s Consultation Process and Feedback Survey presents an important opportunity for all reuse organisations, councils and advocates of the Waste Hierarchy to provide feedback on the power of reuse to help inform their strategy.

The Power of Reuse in the Waste Hierarchy

• Reuse is second only to reducing consumption for environmental benefits.
• We can minimise waste if we can get into the habit of reusing items.
• Most of the carbon footprint of items are created in manufacture,  so it makes sense to prolong their use and spread this impact over a longer time.
• The longer we keep things; not replacing them; the less waste we produce.
• The more we reuse, the less we waste.
• Nothing should be recycled unless it’s been reused or repaired first.
• The future is reusable.

The Power of Reuse in Job Creation

• Recycling creates 9.2 jobs for every 10,000 tonnes processed in Australia.
• Reuse creates 25x more jobs than recycling per 10,000 tonnes in NSW.
• Reuse creates 34x more jobs than recycling per 10,000 tonnes in Tasmania.
• The job creation multiple for reuse over recycling in Queensland is likely to be within this range.

To provide feedback for the Queensland Government’s consultation, please click their website link below.

‘Famous Campaigns’ on LinkedIn highlighting AI artist Emanuele Morelli taking a powerful swipe at ultra-fashion brands like Shein.

‘OceanCare’ on LinkedIn cleverly highlighting the plastics crisis in our oceans.

And a wonderful message from ‘1 Million Women’ to curb our impulse buying and encourage us to become more conscious, ethical and sustainable consumers.