The Salvation Army, Young is among a number of op shops in the area who are facing the costly issue of people dumping unwanted goods outside their stores, particularly over weekends.
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Young Salvation Army store manager, Mark Wells, said while donations are always welcome, up to half of the goods left outside the store cannot be reused.
“It looks like a bomb exploded,” he said yesterday. “In fact, it’s 12 o'clock now and we’ve only just finished bringing things in and we still need to sort through half of it.”
He said up to half of the estimated two tonne of second hand goods left outside the store weekly should be taken to the tip, although the burden is left to the charitable organisation who is forced to fund the costly trip.
While Mark believes it’s a result of expensive council fees, he asked the community to consider the repercussions of dumping rubbish.
“Close to 50 per cent – some weekends even more – of the donations should be dropped to the tip instead,” Mark said.
“The situation is that, particularly on weekends, people use us to dump dirty and broken goods which should be going to the tip and of course at the end of the day we have to dispose of that,” he said.
“It costs us money through our waste disposal service three times a week and on top of that we’re probably going to the tip three times a week ourselves.
“It’d be costing us between $250 and $300 a week.
“It’s two people out of our work force, plus the truck, plus the fuel, so instead of our delivery truck out doing deliveries and pickups, our time’s being used going to the tip.
He said it slows the process down within the shop as well as volunteers have to physically sort through the goods before it goes to the tip.
Heading into the Christmas period Mark wishes to remind residents to only donate re-usable goods.
”It’s coming up to Christmas and obviously we need the donations, but we get a lot of clothing which is unusable and in some cases it’s so dirty you have to throw it away,” he said.
“If you wouldn’t pick it up and use it yourself you shouldn’t be dumping it here.
“We do appreciate everyone who drops things down to us, and we need everything we can get, but it just has to be clean and usable.”
The Salvation Army is currently in need of blankets, pillows and toys. They also have a giving tree in their Milvale Road store and are taking nonperishable food and cash donations for families ahead of Christmas.
