By Stephanie Villella

Bring garbage to the dump, not to donation bins: Bylaw

Mar 28, 2017 | 4:04 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — Spring cleaning is just around the corner, and the city is reminding the public to not dump personal garbage inside donation bins. 

The Post, a not-for-profit thrift store has to deal with this issue on a regular basis.

Jason Thunberg, program manager at the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA), who operates The Post, said the store sees unusable items inside their donation bins every week.

Although there are a signs posted on the bins of what is and is not accepted, Thunberg said the unwanted items are still being dropped off.

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He said he thinks people are taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of their garbage without having to pay the dumpster fee.

However, now that fee falls into the hands of the charity.  He said The Post pays over $15,000 a year to remove other people’s garbage that ended up on their doorstep.

Dumping garbage inside donation bins is illegal, and offenders can be charged a $150 fine.

Bylaw supervisor, Heather Trial, said the fine is small in comparison to how much work charities have to deal with.

“We’re talking about staff that need to go deliver it and they need to come up with some way of getting it out to the the dump,” she said. “There are some fees out there at the dump to get rid of that, and that all falls on the charity.” 

Thunberg said he is hoping people will understand how difficult it is for the organization to deal with unusable items.

“We sell items at low value, we do have to put work and effort into them.  So after half an hour, thats six dollars at minimum wage, we need to at least produce $12-15 worth of product,” he said. “So if we’re having to wash or if we’re having to repair, it almost starts to become of no value.”

He said The Post only accepts “quality items, that are clean, gently used that, to be quite honest is something you would still be happy to use, but it’s just not in your closet anymore or in your kitchen.”