The Salvation Army is struggling to cope with a massive increase in the amount of junk dumped outside their stores this holiday season.  Stores have seen a 30 per cent increase in unwanted and unusable donations, sending cleanup costs spiralling.

By TIFFANY KORSSEN

Victorian Salvation Army stores have become filthy rubbish tips this summer.

Salvos spokesperson Aife O’Loughlin said incidents of people illegally dumping junk outside the shops had increased a massive 30 per cent since last year.

This means a $32,000 increase in expenditure for cleaning it up across Victorian stores for January.

Ms O'Laughlin said it would be better if people took it straight to the tip.

“We have to take it to the dump ourselves … it’s very costly and unfortunately we have to pay the same as everyone else to dispose of it,” she said.

More than $6 million is spent by the Salvation Army in Australia every year just to remove unusable donations from their shopfronts.

Stores at locations such as Errol St in North Melbourne have notified police about the illegal dumping of several soiled mattresses, trashed couches and countless piles of dirty clothes too damaged to be resold.

One couch dumped at the side of the Errol St store was left for days with human faeces on it.

The Salvation Army has been forced to recruit extra volunteers to help get rid of the inundation of waste.

Looting of donations dumped outside Victorian stores had also increased markedly since last year, Ms O’Loughlin said. Victoria’s southeastern stores, including Windsor and St Kilda, were particularly affected.

“Another huge concern is that the valuable items left with the rubbish are often vandalised and stolen overnight,”  she said.

The City of Melbourne said dumping goods outside store hours is illegal.

Environment Protection Authority Victoria CEO Chris Webb said the donations were often useless to the charity.

“More often than not, the goods left outside these stores cannot be sold … even if people are doing this with the best of intentions, it’s having the opposite effect.”

While Ms O’Laughlin said the Salvos' clients were mostly trying to do something good, their persistence in giving their “donations” on the footpaths outside the stores on weekends – especially on Sundays – was leaving volunteer staff with a backbreaking health and safety issue on Monday morning.

Not only are most of the items not suitable to be sold, many of the more valuable pieces of clothing and furniture are stolen or vandalised before staff can sort through them.

For donations to be considered they must comply with Salvation Army conditions. No items can be “broken, damaged, torn, ripped, stained or in any way faulty”. The website also clearly states that delivery of donations must be made during business hours.

“If people can’t make it into the shop for whatever reason, they can call us and organise a home pickup, it doesn’t matter where it is or what it is, we can arrange to pick it up … there really isn’t any reason why items need to be dumped after hours,” Ms O’Laughlin said.