By Tyler Wright
Volunteers at the Gembrook Community Op Shop are worried they will have to reduce opening hours even further and install surveillance cameras outside their store as an influx of non-salable goods has left them overwhelmed.
Staff are urging community members to consider what they are donating to the store, with people leaving used diapers and baby clothes with food stains, broken glass and mouldy items in bags at the store-front which are left for volunteers to sift through.
“Even the council supplied us with proper signs saying ‘do not leave anything outside’ and probably three times a week I’ll drive past… and it’s just ‘oh here we go again,’ co-manager and Secretary of Gembrook Community Op Shop Judy Byrnes said.
There are a list of items the op-shop is not permitted to sell, including helmets and electricals, which end up being discarded in the garbage.
“We’ve got eight rubbish bins plus a recycling bin and every week now the whole lot go out,” Ms Byrnes said.
She said while residents and visitors leaving their donations outside of tradings hours has occured for some time, it has recently become worse and volunteers are contemplating leaving the shop, while some who are already ill are lifting and dragging heavy bags of donations in order to help carry the load.
A plea made on the Gembrook Community Op Shop Facebook page stated the health risks to volunteers at the store.
“…[I]t means they are lifting huge bags of rubbish, dragging heavy bins, spending backbreaking hours unpacking items that simply go straight to the bin, costing us time and money. Money that is supposed to be going back to the community,” the post said.
Ms Byrnes said donations from the non-for-profit go to the local school, sporting clubs and Country Fire Association, and to community members in need.
“It’s not us that’s going to be missing out, the community’s going to be missing out if we have to close,” she said.
“And that just doesn’t seem fair.”
The stress on resources have meant opening hours have suffered.
“We used to do six days, but we can only get enough people for four days now.
“And we used to do 10 until 4 and now its 10 until 2 and sometimes Saturday and Sunday we will open from 10 until 3.” Ms Byrne said.
Even with the potential installations of cameras outside the premises, Ms Byrnes is unsure it will deter people from leaving their “rubbish”.
“It’s an epidemic of its own,” she said of the amount of items left at the front of local op shops.
“It’s got worse. A lot worse. We didn’t have these problems five years ago.”
For the Gembrook Community Op Shop, public announcements are now an attempt to keep their hub surviving.
