Summerside thrift store pleads with public to stop donating garbage

The Salvation Army Thrift Store in Summerside, P.E.I., is asking people to be more conscious of what they donate to the charity.

Store manager Anna MacDonald said the store is noticing a troubling trend: people donating broken, unsellable items and literal garbage. About a third of what is donated to the store is winding up in the trash — on the Salvation Army's dime.

"That just really takes away from what we can do as the Salvation Army," she said.

"When something is dropped off that is not in good repair or is just not sellable at all, we have to throw it away and we have to put it in a bin, and that costs us money when we have it emptied."

MacDonald said she has seen it all in her years of running the store, from broken furniture to smashed dishes to appliances missing crucial parts to dirty diapers.

The Salvation Army offers community services within the city and the surrounding region, including operating a food bank, soup kitchen, offering Christmas hampers or occasionally covering the cost of rooms for those experiencing homelessness. 

The store is organized and packed with goods in a series of sections: clothing, linens, decor, toys and games, books and music.

"For every single thing that we have in the store, we would have at least an equivalent that has come in that's garbage," MacDonald said.

Due to the pandemic, all donations have to be held in a container for 72 hours before they can be handled by staff. From there, the goods are transferred by truck to the back of the store, where the usable goods are sorted from what needs to be thrown away.

"There's not a load that we bring in that we don't have to what we call 'purge,'" said MacDonald, adding her staff have spent up to two hours a day just sorting through garbage.

The garbage is put into a large rented shipping container, which gets emptied every week and a half to two weeks, on average.

MacDonald estimates the container disposal costs at least a few hundred dollars a month.

She said with T-shirts selling for $2.50, they have to sell a lot of secondhand items to offset disposal costs.

"One [purpose] is to provide goods at an excellent price, but also to raise funds for the programs of the Salvation Army," she said. 

"Everything that's in this store stays here in our community right here and surrounding [area], and so I sort of feel the heavy responsibility to know that the finances that we make from this store after our expenses go straight back into our community.

"When I see something coming in, I'm thinking, 'Oh, that's going to cost me to get rid of that.'"

If you can't use it, don't donate it

As store manager, MacDonald said she knows Islanders are mostly well intentioned with their donations.

"We assume that, you know, 'This is kind of not good, but somebody will use it,' ... so they drop it off here, except we can't use it and no one else will buy it," she said.

When making donations to the Salvation Army or any thrift store, MacDonald recommends asking whether the item is something you'd buy as is. 

The store runs with limited resources, including six staff spread over seven days a week. That means there is no capacity to repair the damaged goods that come in.

Despite the trash, MacDonald said they also get a lot of great donations.

"It overwhelms us how generous the Island people are," she said. "We really need it to be good goods because otherwise it costs us. Help us, help them."

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