Thursday, July 21, 2011

Let's Talk About...

...donating to Goodwill.

When we get donations we sort through the items to see what is worth selling and what is not. Electronic items that don't work get sent to the mother ship (main branch in Tyler) to be broken down by special needs workers for recycling. Clothing that has stains, fuzzballs, tears, or pulled seams also get sent to the mothership for a special needs crew to box up for recycling. Shoes that are too worn and gross (and most of them are!) get paired up and sent to a company that recycles them, and, in case of disasters sends them out for people who need them. Also, the cardboard boxes that donations come in get sent to the mothership to be recycled. That my friends is a great thing!

Other items that are broken, overly dirty, stinky, or wet...get thrown away! You would not believe how many people dump "donations" that are really just garbage. Because they are too cheap to take it to the dump.

I don't get too upset with the unusable clothing, although stained underwear (really?!) makes me gag. My first day at work I sorted clothes and opened a bag of nasty shoes...those who know me, know that I don't like feet and I almost threw up when the smell hit my nose.

It breaks my heart to see what gets thrown out. Even though we recycle the majority of what gets rejected, we still have to have 2 large dumpsters emptied every other day. That's a lot of garbage that Goodwill pays to have hauled away.

I'm not complaining, it's a necessary part of running a Goodwill store, but I could do without the obvious garbage, dirty underwear, and disgustingly stinky shoes.

Still, everyday is a treasure hunt!

4 comments:

stephanie said...

It's good to know that what cannot be salvaged is recycled. I regularly donate to Goodwill and I've always wondered what happens once we drop it off. Now I know :)

Anonymous said...

Now that you are in charge do you get to delegate the task of sorting stinky shoes to someone else? -Corynn

Plant Freak said...

Absolutely! I don't touch those things anymore!!

Anima Sharma said...

Wow really nice blog and very informative. Thanks for sharing it.....

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