I shouldn't let myself get riled, I shouldn't, really, but happening upon an article by the Calgary Sun I find myself quite incensed.
If you couldn't bring yourself to click on the link the gist of it is that Charities in Alberta spend in excess of half a million dollars hauling away useless donations. Don't click on the link, I just saved you the pain of reading the article.
Now it must have been a slow day in the news, and somebody was told in no uncertain terms to make something up, because - really...
A few observations & suggestions.
#1) How much do the charities make per year - off of free donations and volunteer labour? To me it seems that it's the smallest of reasonable expenses any business could hope to incur. I mean, their product is supplied free - and the decision not to sell something is frequently theirs and theirs alone.
#2) Who decides what is salvageable and what isn't? How many times have I wanted to root through a charity dumpster because I've had the suspicion that they were throwing away perfectly saleable merchandise (and once I did, found a stack of old books that I traded for $100.00 in credit at a local bookstore...not Fair's Fair.)
#3) Perhaps - nay, indeed likely - if they laid out the "rubbish" provided them by donors they'd find a fair measure of it hauled away - free of charge - by patrons that couldn't afford to shop their inflated prices. I know artists, myself amongst them, that would love and even pay for access to the materials they don't deem fit to sell. I'm talking to you, Salvation Army and Interfaith Thrift Store. Sometimes I wonder why their dumpsters are so secure - is it to prevent others from using them, or others from finding and reusing items they'd rather you paid for?
In short, a lousy article making a full page whinge out of local charities whining the quality of their donations isn't nearly what they'd like. Too bad, you should know better. What will the next article be - "Scheduling and Screening Volunteers Costs us Valuable Hours in Administration"?