Canberra’s biggest charities dumped almost 600 tonnes of waste last financial year, with the declining quality of donations a key factor in goods ending up as landfill.<\/p>\n
The St Vincent de Paul Society sent more waste to ACT government landfill sites than any other charity in Canberra, disposing of 376 tonnes of donated goods.<\/p>\n
The figure marks an increase of 67 tonnes from the previous year, when the organisation sent 309 tonnes to landfill under a scheme that waives tip fees for charities, according to a document released under Freedom of Information laws.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lindsay Rae says the Vinnies distribution centre sends more unsellable donations to landfill than it used to. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n
St Vincent de Paul director of commercial operations in Canberra and Goulburn, Lindsay Rae, said the rise reflected a pattern of wastefulness the organisation had seen over the past five years.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had this natural progression [of waste], especially since COVID, of about 15 to 20 per cent a year,” Mr Rae said.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, the quality of stuff that we’re buying these days just doesn’t last, and so when we get the donations, a much higher percentage of it ends up going to landfill.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of things that are broken.”<\/p>\n
Unsellable donations ‘costing us millions of dollars’<\/p>\n
Most of Vinnies’ waste does not come from clothing, but from bulky, broken or incomplete homewares and packaging.<\/p>\n
“People immediately think about textiles when they think about what we have to dump, but the reality is it’s not textiles that are creating the problem,” Mr Rae said.<\/p>\n
“Only 2 per cent of our waste is actually textiles, the rest is homewares.<\/p>\n
“We need good homewares that are complete, that aren’t broken.<\/p>\n
“That’s what we need more than anything else.”<\/p>\n
The majority of Vinnies’ landfill comes from its Canberra warehouse, which processes items that its 10 retail stores are unable to sort through.<\/p>\n
Mr Rae said the warehouse cost $3.4 million to operate each year, covering the work of 45 employees who sorted and processed about 2.8 million kilograms of overflow donations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About 45 employees work at Vinnies’ distribution centre in Mitchell where they sort donations. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n
But he would love to see that money put towards services, rather than processing goods.<\/p>\n
“When we receive a bag of donations, we don’t know what’s in it,” Mr Rae said.<\/p>\n
“A large percentage of it is stuff that we don’t need \u2026 and it’s costing us millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
“It is actually costing someone a meal.”<\/p>\n
Charity waste overall declines<\/p>\n
Despite Vinnies’ rising landfill figures, the total waste sent to ACT landfills by Canberra’s six largest charities fell from 950 tonnes to 586 tonnes last financial year \u2014 a 38 per cent decline from 2023\u201124.<\/p>\n
The Salvation Army was the second-largest contributor, though its total fell from 532 tonnes to just shy of 112 tonnes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Renee Dixon says donations should still be in good condition. (ABC News: Callum Flinn)<\/p>\n
Other charities showed mixed trends.<\/p>\n
Winnunga Aboriginal Health Services increased its landfill from 24 tonnes to 29 tonnes, while Anglicare’s waste rose from 21.5 tonnes to almost 33 tonnes.<\/p>\n
Anglicare ACT director of community engagement, Renee Dixon, said the increase in the charity’s waste was largely driven by poor-quality donations, limited storage space and the organisation’s reluctance to turn donors away.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to be pushing people away, and so we accept those donations willingly and then we work through sorting them out,” Ms Dixon said.<\/p>\n
Ms Dixon said depending on the week, up to half of the donations Anglicare received were unsellable.<\/p>\n
She urged the public to be more discerning about what was donated and to avoid items such as chipped glassware and crockery, or clothing they would not give to a friend.<\/p>\n
“We’re encouraging people to make sure that they’re donating just their best things,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canberra’s biggest charities dumped almost 600 tonnes of waste last financial year, with the declining quality of donations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2666,180422,64,63,99,2667,32724,180425,95404,180424,50865,180420,180421,4931,20266,180423],"class_list":["post-320186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-act","tag-anglicare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-canberra","tag-charities","tag-donated-goods","tag-landfill","tag-lindsay-rae","tag-st-vincent-de-paul","tag-the-salvation-army","tag-vinnies","tag-waste","tag-waste-management","tag-winnunga-aboriginal-health-services"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}