Every morning on my way to work, I drive past a Vinnies op shop. Every morning – rain, hail or shine – there’s a pile of donated goods spilling out over the footpath.
If it’s a weekday, there’ll be volunteers in hi-vis sorting through the mountainous mass, tossing some items into giant crates destined for the garbage and whisking others away to a place on a dry shelf where they’ll hopefully being passed along to loving homes. If it’s a weekend, though, the pile will have only multiplied by the time I pass the shop on my way home.
Sure, most people who donate clothes and household items have good intentions – to pass along their no-longer-needed items to someone who may benefit from them. But material sofas aren’t designed to withstand the harsh elements of a Queensland wet season. Timber coffee tables and wooden bar stools rot and splinter by the time they’ve been doused in 40mL of heavy rain. Items of clothing that end up sprawled across the road, shredded between wet asphalt and dirty car tires, can’t be sold or passed on. They’re as good as rags by the time they make it to the next pair of hands.
Most people don’t see their local Vinnies as a tip, yet illegal dumping occurs there every day.
Illegal dumping refers to the unlawful deposit of waste material 200 litres or more in volume. That equates to about as much as you can fit in your garden wheelie bin.
Data collated by Charitable Recycling Australia suggests that 1,005,952 tonnes are processed in charity shop donations every year, with 86% of that collected and reused. The remaining 14% is destined for landfill. If 14% doesn’t seem significant, think of it instead as 43,444 tonnes of often non-biodegradable products being buried in the earth.
Vinnies will happily accept clothing, toys, furniture (depending on the store), homewares and some electrical goods. Their website suggests you bring your items in during business hours. It further mentions you can drop items in their donation bins, provided they are not over-filled by doing so.
One day, on my way home from work, I saw a man picking up loose clothing items off the footpath and trying mercilessly to stuff them into any remaining space inside the donation bins. I pulled over to give him a hand.
“It ends up all over the road, and once it rains they’ve got to throw it all out,” he said. He informed me he is there “every week” to tidy it, as he’s sick of seeing the mess.
He continued moving his way through the piles and, after seeing a perfectly intact brown leather duffel bag, suggested I take it if I liked the look of it.
“Anything outside the gates and bins is fair game the way I see it,” he mused.
Attempting to reason with the guilt of what I deemed theft, I left the bag amongst the abundant clutter.
Vinnies have taken extra measures to deter the public from the continued dumping, including CCTV, extra signage and even turning the bins around so they are physically inaccessible after hours.
When I asked the volunteer staff at my local store whether this has helped, nothing could hide the defeat on their faces. One of them even collapsed over the countertop with her head in her hands.
“It’s just the way of the world.”
There are 146 Vinnies stores in Queensland, and 655 in total across Australia. On top of that, there are thousands of other op shops in the form of Salvation Army, Lifeline and RSPCA stores, plus many other chain and independent charities.
When I spoke to manager a Salvation Army store, she told me that she arrives at work hours before it opens to begin sorting through what’s left at the doors. Instead of finding neatly stacked bags and intact furniture, the plastic is often ripped into and things are strewn across the carpark. Table legs are ripped off and left there. Sofas are slashed and things are even set on fire. She refuses to let volunteer staff go through the piles before she arrives, because people leave food scraps and needles around, and often urinate and defecate on the items.
“People don’t know any of this because we can’t say anything, but it’s not about being naive – people just don’t know,” I’m told. No one wants to speak with their names on record.
Charity shops help to take pressure off other sectors and provide economic, social and environmental relief, yet some people look to them with unwavering disrespect. Staff have picked up that members of the public even take items left outside and sell them at markets.
“They take advantage of the resources,” another volunteer explains. My mind wanders back to the man I spoke to outside Vinnies and that leather bag.
The people working at the charity stores speak to me of the abuse they receive from those who deem the stores “ungrateful” for not accepting goods while they’re already filled to the brim. On top of this, along with the vandalism they have to deal with every day, they’re left out of pocket from trips to the tip to dump the junk.
Landfill sites are designed store garbage, with the intended purpose being to minimise the impact of trash on people’s health and the environment. But electrical appliances can leach toxins into the soil. Synthetic fabrics used to make clothes prevent the decomposition of such items. Chemical pollution can result from the erosion and flooding that occurs at old dumpsites – not to mention the connections that exist between toxic landfill and the climate crisis.
Of course the charities we donate our used goods to are crucial to the survival and wellbeing of many people around our nation, particularly given that on any given night, more than 116,000 people across Australia are homeless. It’s great that we are trying to do the right thing by taking our unwanted items to the local charity shop rather than putting them straight in the garbage, but we need to be more mindful with how we do it.
The next time you host your own spring clean, consider calling ahead to local donation sites to see whether they have the capacity to take your items. You might even want to have a garage sale or sell your things for pocket money instead. At the very least, aim to donate usable items during opening hours, and reconsider if it’s forecast to rain.
This will allow charities to continue putting valuable donations towards a good cause, rather than using that same money to pay for trips to waste centres. It also eases the burden of risking health and safety threats that shouldn’t be faced by anyone, let alone those volunteering their time.