Collect your garbage please

November 7, 2013 · 0 Comments

Open letter to Shelburne and area residents:

As the volunteer manager of the OSPCA’s Paws & Claws Thrift Store, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the number of items being ‘donated’ to us which, prior to June 1st, would have been either placed in a (black) garbage bag on the curb on a regular garbage day or put out for the monthly large items garbage collection.

I sympathize with people whose budgets do not run to paying $2 for an extra garbage bag tag or $20 for large item pick-up. However, dumping these unwanted items in the guise of donations to Paws & Claws is not the answer. We have to pay for them to be taken away with money that comes out of the proceeds from the real donations.

How fair is that to the homeless animals for whose support the store is run in the first place? Quite apart from the cost of waste removal, our volunteers are predominantly women past retirement age, so how about applying a little lateral thinking – would you expect your mother to heft your heavy boxes and bags of quite obviously unmarketable objects from donation bin to store to dumpster to save you paying $2 for a garbage bag tag?

If the person who dumped the foam core and stuffing pictured is reading this, it might be a nice idea to come into the store and use our collection box to pay your share of the cost of emptying the dumpster where your ‘donation’ is currently taking up a quarter of the space.

Thank you for your time,

Jean Jardine Miller