Salvation Army is now only accepting donations when the store is open.
Photo by
Lua Ikenasio
According to Charitable Reuse Australia, charities around Australia dispose of over 80,000 tonnes of ‘donations’ to landfill every year due to illegal dumping and unusable donations.
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Local charities are struggling with similar issues as charity bins are defaced, damaged or filled with defunct donations.
Salvation Army volunteer Sonia Edwards said their charity bins are often ill-treated.
“More than occasionally we have people defacing the bins or dumping stuff all over the place or dragging them out of the bins,” she said.
“We’ve had people break the locks on the bins and so we’ve had to replace locks on several occasions.”
The Salvation Army donation bins on Ogilvie Ave are no longer in use.
Photo by
Lua Ikenasio
As a result, the Salvation Army is only accepting donations when the store is open.
Donation bins are no longer in use and have signs on them informing customers to not leave donations on the ground.
Ms Edwards said the charity cannot accept certain donations and end up having to dispose of it themselves.
“We prefer people to drop them off to the shop during opening hours and there are bins there,” she said.
“We can’t accept (donations) if they’re really damaged or anything that’s stained, particularly with the electrical stuff that’s not working.
“The tip costs a lot of money and they’re already donating stuff so that’s an added stress to them, I understand that, but we can’t accept it and then we have to take it to the tip which costs us money as well.”
The Echuca Resource Recovery Centre accepts a number of items free of charge including:
Clothes
White goods (washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves)
