By Tyler Wright
Selling pre-loved clothes to bric-a-brac goods to locals, volunteers at the Emerald Opp Shop have been serving the community for over three decades.
The community op shop, located at St Mark’s Anglican Church, recently celebrated operating for 33 years, after opening in 1990 as the first store of its kind in the town.
Store manager Magda Lane has volunteered at the shop since its inception, and said prices have not changed much over the years.
“People tell us we are one of the cheapest they know,” Ms Lane said.
“In 33 years I’ve been managing the shop, we have changed the prices once; from 50 cents to a dollar.”
The op shop partners with the CFA’s Emerald and Clematis fire brigades, taking over $1.3 million which has been returned to the community through supporting the Emerald Carols, Cockatoo Foodbank, the SES and bushfire and flood relief efforts.
“We also have a special fund put aside to respond to immediate needs… we send the school packages for the teachers for encouragement in the community,” Ms Lane said.
“To me, it’s a win win situation. People feel good about donating, the wonderful volunteers sort it all out and prepare it for sale. We only rarely use 20, 25 per cent of what’s donated.
“The rest goes into our bins here. The organisation that empties them, they’re trying to do zero landfill; they’re a wonderful organisation that deals with the overflow.”
Ms Lane said while staff are “very grateful” for the donations they receive, it would be beneficial for donators to be more selective.
“Some people have a different idea of what’s sellable,” she said.
“We’re not allowed to take baby things or electrical things…unfortunately, we are all booked-out, so no books at the moment.”
Volunteer Judy Warwick said most of the staff work at the opp shop because they “love op shops”.
“Everybody who comes in here loves op shops, too,” Ms Warwick said.
“More and more people feel that op shops are good places, very good places. I think once upon a time, it used to be frowned upon if you went to the op shop, but that’s changed completely.
Ms Warwick said the store has clothes of any type; from coats to hardly-worn skirts.
“A lot of the time you get a bundle of stuff because somebody’s lost weight or put on weight, so a huge pile of wonderful stuff comes in that all the same size, very similar looking, because it doesn’t fit them anymore, or some people just don’t want to wear it anymore,” she said.
“It’s fantastic what they bring in……we’ve got to be very careful what we take home. We can get very full houses if we’re not very careful.”
Despite this, Ms Warwick said a lot of donated items are “filthy, dirty and smelly”.
“Last week, we had some tubs that were mud and slush and a vacuum cleaner without the motor and a pram that you could hardly tell was a pram it was so putrid and mashed up.
“They could put it in the hard rubbish. Why they send it here, I do not know.”
For Ms Warwick, the friendships she has made over her 15 years of volunteering has been the “top of her list” of experiences at the Emerald Opp Shop.
“An enjoyable day; a day that I can go out and have fun with other people and then we go off and have a coffee together, and it’s just changed how I think about this place, Emerald itself, the whole area, how wonderful it is,” she said.
“The reason we work here is that we’re all very similar…we don’t mind being here, it’s not a chore.”
If you are interested in volunteering at the Emerald Opp Shop, you can contact the store on 5968 4046.
Shifts are generally three hours at a time.
The store is located at 3 Church Street in Emerald.
