Charity Donations (at the Goose Green Hospice)

[leon parker]

Charity shop donations and dumping-

I am volunteer in the Hospice shop.

The first point is correct that if people only dumped stuff when shop is open.

You can never stop it and all sorts of people have a sort through? Some a shops next door like the flower take stuff in for and save it for us. Some people do pop money in the letterbox if they take something.

The most annoying part is people just leave stuff thrown all over the place once they have had their fill. What we need is tidy people to help themseveles. The other prospect is that if it has been raining and all the bags have been soaked is not much fun or if a dog has been by and pissed over the left donations.

Couple of general points about donations is this shop is very small and limited for help and safety reasons can only take so many donations at one time. Also it is not open as long as the Mind shops. The fact is we have to pay for the rubbish to be taken away and sadly many donations actuary do fall into the rubbish category. When we turn those nice charity minded people away with their donations because we are full. The abuse received is much the same as the lady who stopped and asked about why this person took the clothes from outside a charity shop. Volunteers being abused by the public because we can?t take donations is not nice! Also for example we now getting hundreds of old videos as people clear them out and it has got to the point where we will now refuse large donations of videos because in finical terms they are just not worth the effort.

Perhaps we need an international dump for videos to be sent to other parts of the world. This is already being done with clothing. This is wider issue about recycling and waste management but this country like in many other social responsible areas is way down the bottom of league.

[Loz]

Leon,

I always thought there was a market for "rags" that charities could make use of, which is why I've never been too choosy about what goes into the charity shop bag. Obviously that was mistaken. As someone who lobs things your way occasionally, what are the best things to drop off?