Every Monday morning the volunteers at St Vincent de Paul in Isabella Street Wingham have to wade through bags of ‘donated goods’ dumped on their front steps.
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Every Monday morning they have to move it all to the footpath so they can get to the front door to open it – the doors open outwards.
It is not just on Mondays – it happens on average two or three times a week.
“We do appreciate the good stuff that comes out of it. But you would think that it would be considerate of people to think ‘well, there’s a doorway there, somebody’s got to enter or come out’, and it’s absolutely chockers,” said Vinnies Wingham co-ordinator, Joy Obajdin .
There are two types of people making the mess. One are the people doing the dumping, despite there being a bin chute in the stairwell right next to the steps. It is not because the bin is full that the mess is there – it is just that they don’t bother to put it in.
The other group of people are scavengers stealing from charity – the ones who go through the bags looking for something they can take for free, and strewing the mess all over the place in the process.
It’s great working here, but when you see that mess at the front door at times, you think ‘this is just so low’.
“It’s just disgraceful. As soon as we’ve shut the door in the afternoon, somebody could be counting the cash and you hear thump, bump, bump and somebody starts putting stuff on the stairs. And that’s at 4.30 in the afternoon – they’ll start doing that because they think ‘oh there’s nobody there now, the door’s shut’,” Joy said.
They have similar problems at the Vinnies bins behind St Joseph’s Primary School, and at the Mighty Bull Service Centre on Murray Road. The worst dumps get left at the school.
Quite often what is dumped is not resellable or even reusable. They cannot take electrical goods or baby furniture and prams for safety reasons. Yet people still dump their broken electrical goods on the steps, along with dirty and unusable clothes, and a lot of broken children’s toys.
“We’ve got a sign saying what we can and can’t take, but it’s out on the footpath. There’s quite a big sign there, and it’s quite legible, quite easy to see,” Joy said.
People are also dumping their household garbage in and around the clothing bins, including kitchen scraps.
The stuff that is dumped at Vinnies takes a lot of sorting and a lot of cleaning, A lot of it has to be taken to the tip, which costs them money. They average one or two trips to the tip a week.
“There’s just no consideration at all - ‘dump it at Vinnies, they’ll get rid of it’. And we get some absolutely filthy things at times,” Joy said.
“It’s great working here, but when you see that mess at the front door at times, you think ‘this is just so low’.”