On Monday morning, the rain-soaked sidewalk along the exterior side wall of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Thrift Store on East 42nd Avenue at Fraser Street was lined with ripped garbage bags and miscellaneous junk, including a drenched upright vacuum cleaner.
Sometime between the store's closing Saturday afternoon and 7 a.m. Monday, the garbage bags and boxes left outside the MCC store were torn open by passersby who exposed the contents, including clothes, linens and small household items, to the rain. Two men were sifting through the soggy mess that morning.
MCC manager Helga Stobbe told the Courier people leave donations outside the store after store operating hours every night, but by morning, the goods are typically reduced to piles of garbage.
"It's the worst Monday mornings after the weekends," said Stobbe. "It's sad because people think they're leaving us a donation. But the stuff usually gets so muddy and dirty it's no longer a donation and we have to pay to have it cleaned up and hauled away."
Stobbe said thrift store spends $1,000 or more a month to pay for the cleanup, which comes out of the store's profits meant for charity. The cost is one reason prices at Vancouver thrift stores are climbing. She added larger items like mattresses and discarded furniture are often dumped at the back of the MCC store off the alley, particularly at the end of each month when people are moving. The store has to pay to have those larger pieces hauled to the city's transfer and recycling station, which charges $15 each per mattresses or box spring.
Stobbe said the incidence of nocturnal dumping is growing, despite the increasing number of signs in multiple languages on the store's exterior warning people not to dump.
Brett Cox, manager of the Wildlife Thrift Store on Granville Street downtown, agreed signs appear to make little difference in the fight against illegal dumping. He said such dumping hurts the bottom line of most thrift stores and estimates the cost to haul garbage away from his store is a minimum $300 a month. "What really hurts is having to haul away the mattresses and old fridges and heavy pieces of furniture that people dump in the alley," said Cox.
Cox noted the lease is so high at the store's Granville Street location it takes the store the first half of each month to make enough to pay the rent. He added paying to have garbage and furniture hauled away takes away from the store's profits, proceeds that help support charities such as Coast Mental Health and Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter.
Cox said the weather plays a big part in turning what started out as a donation into trash. "It's a big mess and a real eyesore," he said. "But it's also the cost of doing business in a city where a lot of people don't have transportation and can't afford to have their stuff hauled away."
VPD spokesperson Lindsey Houghton told the Courier there's little police can do unless someone is physically caught in the act of dumping. Lindsey said illegal dumpers could be charged under Section 84 of the city's littering by-law, which reads in part, "No person shall deposit upon any street any rubbish, sweepings, paper, handbills, refuse, or other discarded materials or things_" Fines run between $250 and $2,000.
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