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Thursday, 6 July, 2023
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‘The Phantom’ death mystery
Charity dump rise By Corey Everitt
Bev Burley and Jan Taylor of the Pakenham Op Shop are frustrated with having to pay for the disposal of people’s rubbish. “It’s harder work putting it in your car and bring it in down here, than it is putting out front of your place and calling the council,” Jan said. Every household in Cardinia Shire can book up to two free collections a year for hard rubbish pick-up at their property. For a single pick-up, a pile must not take up more than two cubic metres of space, you can make a double booking which puts the two free bookings into one where a single pile can take up an area of four cubic metres. The Pakenham Op Shop has been around for 60 years as of this year, as a staple of the town they hope residents do the right thing with what they donate.
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These items were dumped at the Pakenham Op Shop over Monday night. The mattress and its frame can’t be sold by the shop.
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“It’s just rubbish, we can’t sell it, we can’t repair it,” Jan said. Bev added: “It’s the fact that some people feel they have a right to use this place as a rubbish dump.” This burden affects the ability for the Op Shop to give to the community. “The more rubbish we have to get rid of, the less we can give to the fire brigades and the other charities around here,” Jan said. “It all gets distributed to them at the end of the financial year, every year, but if we are paying $100 this time and $100 in a week’s time, we just can’t do it all.” It’s more puzzling to them when doing it the right way is seemingly easier.
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The Pakenham Op Shop is calling on people to stop dumping their unusable trash at the op shop as they continue to fork out hundreds of dollars to get rid of rubbish that shouldn’t be their responsibility. Op shops are built off the reusing of one’s unused goods, but some people seem to think op shops are a free tip to dump their unusable rubbish. On Tuesday morning, the Pakenham Op Shop volunteers were greeted to just that, as various large, unusable items were left overnight in the back alley of the shop. Things like broken furniture and mattresses are not ideal items for them to resell, so now the burden falls on them to dispose of the trash that is not theirs. Bev Burley and Jan Taylor are used to these happening occasionally, but they have ramped up recently. “It’s happening too regularly now, a lot of it if we can smash it up and put it in the skip bin,” Bev explained. “But that’s just too big to handle that.” Jan added: “There is no way we can lift the mattress into the skip and it probably wouldn’t fit anyway.” The items, in this instance a mattress and a disassembled bed frame, are too large for the volunteers to move around and are either broken or not suitable to be able to sell at the store. Now the op shop has to spend over $100 to get a waste disposal company to get rid of it. “That’s the annoying part, we’ve now gotta pay the tip people to come and get it because we have to keep the place tidy,” Bev said. “It just costs money and it’s very frustrating.” This isn’t the first time. Many items over the years get dumped at the op shop that clearly can’t be used or sold leaving the the volunteers to be responsible for it.