Stop using charity collection containers as garbage bins: Quebec organizations

Quebec charities would like people to stop using their collection bins as places to dump trash.

With spring cleaning and moving season getting into full swing, some Quebec charities say their streetside donation bins are starting to overflow – and often with items that cannot be resold, Noovo Info reports.

They lament the fact that when bins are full, clothes and other items are left next to the containers, exposed to the elements and sometimes stolen.

Additionally, the organizations say people use the sites to throw out anything they don’t want, leaving it up to the charities to clean up at their own expense.

At the Renaissance sorting centre, donations arrive continuously, but almost 50 per cent of items cannot be resold.

“The sorters assess one item at a time, visually, to check whether it’s in good condition, whether the zip works, whether it’s clean,” explains Marie-France Dumont, Renaissance senior director of marketing, communications and public affairs.

Clothes left outside a donation bin, or even just a few centimetres from the top, are often unusable.

“Items left outside are exposed to the elements. The doors can crush clothes and damage them. You can’t do anything with them,” she said.

The same is true of La Collecte, another second-hand foundation in Quebec.

“We lose between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of materials,” said Benoît Tessier, the organization’s marketing and communications director. “These are irrecoverable, soiled or wet items. It costs us money to throw them away.”

La Collecte recently removed a bin from a commercial car park in Brossard, on Montreal’s South Shore.

“People were dropping off anything at any time. There was no supervision,” said Tessier. “Despite our regular interventions, the owners had enough and asked us to leave.”

He says La Collecte, similar to Renaissance, has also experienced theft.

“People try to get into the containers, sort things themselves, take what interests them and leave the rest,” he said. “We’ve already found people trapped inside.”

He says the decision to withdraw the Brossard collection bin was heartbreaking

for the organization, which relies on its containers to generate the revenue that funds its missions.

“When we lose one, it means less money for programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters,” said Tessier.

Additionally, the organizations note that some cities are reducing their financial support, making it even more challenging to maintain operations.

The organizations are asking people to ensure that they drop their donations directly into the bins or visit a centre.

Renaissance alone has 27 donation centres in Quebec.

“People can drop off their donations in the bins, but we certainly encourage people to come to our donation centres because we can really preserve the quality of the product to improve the quality of the donations,” said Dumont.

In 2023, Renaissance says it diverted 30,000 tonnes of material from landfills and aims to double that figure by 2030.

For its part, La Collecte says it offers a home collection service, sometimes even by bicycle, and a QR code affixed to their bins can be used to locate the nearest drop-off points.