You could start up a charity which offers to dispose of unwanted charity bags for people.

Just get some bags printed and post them through people's letter boxes.

That's an excellent idea Lilibet. Perhaps I could also buy a ten year old white transit van with a dodgy diesel engine to pick up the one bag per street?

Why not?

As long as you don't smoke in it!

Shred them and use for loft insulation

Not a particularly green way I must admit, but I use the excess bags (I probable get 6 a month) in place of bin liners for non-recyclable rubbish. I doubt if the bags themselves are decomposable so I doubt if there is a wholly green way of disposing of them.

I don't think the loft insulation is a good idea as birds have a tendency to nest in lofts and I don't think shredded bits of plastic bags would do them any good.

I've often considered this. It's a bit of a moral maze TBH. Somewhere between the fact that they are a charity and I can't bring myself to use 'em as rubbish bags, and the fact that I didn't ask for them and it's a really naff ecologically unsound  way of getting donations, lies the answer.

Turn 'em inside out and use 'em to bag up the stuff for the British Heart Foundation?

Yes! That's probably the short-term answer, although it would still leave lots of 'em.

I keep all my charity bags in a charity bag.
Likewise, when I go out shopping for instance, inside my carrier bag I carry 2 other carrier bags.

Like you Joe I also feel guilty using them for rubbish... so I have loads of them and am not sure how to dispose of them..

Just to complicate matters further, a little quastion to ponder on. What do the charities do with the plastic bags they have received back with clothes in? I doubt if they distribute them out again as the bags we get always look new.

I've just looked at my collection of unused bags and seen the following:
2 say that if you leave the empty bag out they will collect it anyway
1 says that if you put it in a post box, it will be sent back to the charity (though I doubt if Royal Mail would be too happy if everybody put their bags in post boxes)
1 says that if you can't use it, the bag can be recycled
5 say nothing

So there is quite a wide range of possibilities but no consistency, and how many people are going to take the time to read every bag?

  I never read the instructions. That looks like a good starting point. I like the idea of putting them all in the post box.

Thats my evenings entertainment sorted....bag reading...

Do you get on-line groceries? Tesco say they will accept ANY plastic bags to recycle, Just hand them to the driver/deliverer.

But not the one in the 'stamp' pub!  

I used to wonder what to do with them if I wasn't using them to fill with clothes.
Now that I'm recycling my supermarket bags though  I've ran out of rubbish liners.
I don't feel guilty as much now.

That's an even better idea! No-one need never know! (as we say in these parts)

I was kidding, Loro

Thee is nee bords in wor loft.

Just bats in the belfry?

It has been suggested, yes!