“PLEASE don’t drop and run,” urges Coffs Harbour Salvation Army Family Store temporary retail manager, Chris Reading, who is frustrated at the amount of out-of-hours community dumping that goes on outside Op Shops.

Arriving at the shop on Monday morning 30 January he found a double bed deposited at the front door.

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“We have no room for furniture at the moment.

“People need to phone and ask or come in and ask us if we can take their furniture, not just leave it outside when we are closed,” Chris told News Of The Area.

“We can put up as many signs as we like but still no one reads them.

“NOTA wrote about the issue in March last year.

“However, people just want to get rid of their stuff at no cost to them and they use Op Shops as their dumping ground when the shops are closed, it’s dark after-hours and no-one can see what they are doing.”

According to Chris, whose responsibilities are across running the shop and the truck runs to the tip, the dumping got a lot worse once City of Coffs Harbour ceased its free-of-charge roadside bulky goods pickups back in 2018.

“City of Coffs Harbour has vouchers for ratepayers to dump rubbish at the tip, but nobody knows about them; it’s one of Coffs’ best kept secrets,” he said.

Op Shops in Coffs, and across the Coffs Coast, are asking people to take their donations into the shop and be prepared to take it back if the staff member says it won’t sell.

“You’ve got to ask yourself, if you wouldn’t buy it yourself then why would someone else?” suggested Chris.

“We get some filthy stuff left outside the shop.

“People think they are helping out the poor, but the poor have standards,” he said.

When rain comes into the equation, it makes matters worse.

“This morning we found a perfectly good child car safety seat left outside but left overnight before it got rained on making the chair unusable, unsaleable and it went to the dump,” said Chris.

When it comes to donations, the staff at Save the Children shop in Coffs Harbour go by the reality-check saying of “If you wouldn’t give to a mate, then don’t donate”.

“We’re used as a bit of a dumping ground which is unfair,” said a staff member who gives her time on a Saturday to serve in the shop.

Staff get fed-up tidying up the night’s ‘donations’ stacked up at the front or back of their shops when they turn up for work that some are moving on to other volunteer roles, meaning the shops are short staffed and unable to open to their advertised hours.

There’s a fine line between dumping and donating, said Chris.

The City of Coffs Harbour website guides people through the fee-free and fee-paying services.

Each household paying the Domestic Waste Occupied Land Charge will be entitled to two free vouchers per calendar year, running from March to March.

Eligible residents can call the Coffs Coast Waste Services Hotline on 1800 265 495 to request the vouchers.

Proof of residency will be required.

Vouchers are mailed by post to eligible properties, so ensure you order your vouchers at least two weeks in advance so they have time to arrive.

Coffs Coast Resource Recovery Park at Englands Road accepts a range of goods free of fees: clean expanded polystyrene, paper and cardboard, recyclables (glass bottles and jars, plastic containers, steel and aluminium cans, tetra packs), eWaste, scrap metals, white goods (washing machines, ovens, fridges etc), hazardous items such as paint, gas bottles, motor and cooking oil and fluorescent globes.

The tip opening hours are Monday to Friday, 7.30am to 5.00pm and weekends/public holidays, 8.00am to 4.00pm.

Contact waste@chcc.nsw.gov.au, call (02) 6648 4000 or visit www.coffscoastwaste.com.au/.

By Andrea FERRARI