#Trash it donation drivers#
Some cities and municipalities were upset when donated items were left outside the stores, so Goodwill had to assign truck drivers to haul them away, said Brian Itzkowitz, an official at Goodwill Industries International. Other agencies, like Fink’s in Charleston, also received such donations when they were closed. Donors were still dropping items off while stores were closed, which resulted in some donations, like couches, becoming moldy after being caught in the rain, said Barbie Parker, Goodwill Houston’s vice president of fund development and community relations. The increase, workers say, was driven in part by temporary store closures during the pandemic. So they put the bill on us instead of them.” or in the middle of the night or run behind the store and drop off a ripped-up sofa. “If we don’t take something and they know we don’t take something, they don’t come when we’re open,” said Rolf Halverson, director of operations at Goodwill Industries of Houston, which has 61 retail stores in Texas. Thrift workers note that many donors already know what sorts of items they should avoid contributing yet dump their trash at the stores anyway just to get rid of it. Informing donors of this fact won’t necessarily solve the problem. “I think it’s important to educate donors that we can’t repair items.” “We’ve had all sorts of donations with people cleaning out their house,” Deming said. Those items increase the stores’ costs because they must be be disposed of by a waste removal company in an environmentally friendly way, said Julie Deming, a merchandising director at Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin, which operates 100 Goodwill stores in southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicago metro area. In Wisconsin and Illinois, stores have reported an influx of flammable and hazardous donations, including lead acid batteries. The spikes in trash expenses can divert money away from other services the agencies could spend in their communities, like workforce development programs. “It actually ends up costing Goodwill rather than helping them,” said David Courard-Hauri, a professor of environmental science and sustainability at Drake University. The stores need time and staffing hours to process them. They also magnify their garbage-disposal costs.
“But we are trying to educate.”įor the thrift stores, such donations aren’t just a hassle to dispose of. “I’m careful not to shake my finger at donors because without them, we wouldn’t have a business model,” said Megan Fink, a marketing executive at Palmetto Goodwill, which operates 31 stores in South Carolina.
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