About 40 per cent of donations to charities in NSW are unusable, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, with illegally dumped waste burdening charities with millions of dollars in disposal costs per year.

That figure is echoed by Vinnies Taree president and store manager, Tony Pettit and recently he spoke to the need for people to really look at the condition of clothing, shoes and the goods they to donate to op shops.

“You might look at a pair of shoes and think a homeless person or someone with a limited income would be glad to have that pair of shoes.

“The problem with that donation is that we are not happy to belittle them by giving them a really crappy, horrible pair of shoes.

“We will bring a homeless person into our store and say - chose from what’s in our store - and they will be offered as good a quality items as anybody else. We don’t send them out the back and say, shuffle through this or pick out stuff from the rubbish. We don’t belittle people like that and the people who donate goods, well, we would like them to think that way. 

“It’s not just whether or not they think somebody needs a product. Ask the question, would you give that to a friend or a family member? If the goods are in such poor condition then the only thing we can do with them is to send them to the tip - and that’s what they should be doing them.”

The burden of waste disposal is an additional cost that Vinnies Taree must manage but Tony says it’s not just the disposal fees that impact on store revenue, he says there is also a cost in running the trucks that must take the items to the tip.

“We try to recycle as much as we can. About 60 per cent of it is useable, of which about 30 per cent we sell in the shop and then the other 30 per cent, well, it is worn out but we send that to Lismore which is one of our distribution centres that sends stuff overseas or shreds it, actually it does heaps of things with the items that we send. The other 40 per cent we have to take to the tip and unfortunately Vinnies has to bear the cost of disposing it.”

Vinnies Taree is also working to recover a 20 to 25 per cent drop in revenue caused by Pulteney Street being closed for months to enable major road improvements.

Tony says the store “noticed a considerable drop in sales but it’s back up now.”

“It would have been a drop of between 20 to 25 per cent and that’s purely because of people not being able to park in the street to easily access our store.”

Tony says op shops in the Manning Valley serve a good and an important purpose in our community and urges people to donate good quality pre-loved items to their store in Pulteney Street, Taree.