We're not dumps, charities say 'We get stuff you'd give a worst enemy'

The odor wafted through the window and beckoned them to come outside. "It was just this raunchy old aroma," said Kamille Ogle. It was a smell that SWAT-teamed the senses and made them come out with their hands up (to cover their noses). Ogle and her Salvation Army colleagues exited the building where they were working. They were drawn to the parking lot. They looked down at their feet. "It was a pig's head in a sack," said Ogle, manager of the Salvation Army store at 423 W. 300 South. It was one little piggy who'd gone to market. It was one little piggy who wasn't going home -- although Ogle nearly did. "I felt ill the rest of the day," she said. "It was awhile before I ate a ham sandwich." The fragrant porker also was a fetid symbol of a giant problem facing the Salvation Army, Deseret Industries and other charities recycling goods for the less fortunate. "We get dumped on occasionally," said Maj. Wayne Froderberg, Salvation Army Salt Lake Basin coordinator. "Sometimes we get taken advantage of." Meaning many of these charities get stuff you'd give a worst enemy only if he or she were a really terrible, worst enemy. "We get a lot of people who think we're a garbage dump," said Tiffany Gorzitze, clothing supervisor for Deseret Industries' downtown Salt Lake store, 131 E. 700 South. "The other day someone dropped three truckloads of drywall. Not sheets of drywall like you could use. Just all broken up in pieces. Trash." "We get bags of leaves and yard waste," said Vince Earnhart, general manager of Deseret Industries' Murray store, 4485 S. Main. "I guess people think we've got a mulch out back or something." Even items that aren't outright trash don't exactly come to the charity recyclers in ace condition. "Old mattresses that have been left out in the weather, with wet leaves all over them," Gorzitze said. "Couches with springs sticking out of them." "We get washers and dryers . . . the people say they work," said Sonia Simental, assistant manager of the Salvation Army store at 1232 S. State in Salt Lake. "You sell them, and people get mad when they don't work. You get moldy refrigerators almost impossible to clean." Earnhart said one of the worst problems is people leaving barrels of toxic waste. "It costs us thousands of dollars actually to dispose of this, because of the special nature of it," said Earnhart. "You call and get a price. 'Gasp. Gulp. OK, we'll do it.' We don't have any choice." Pause. "And then when the men come to pick it up, they have three eyes," Earnhart said, with a chuckle. Recycling humor. It helps. "If you don't have a sense of humor in this business, you're not going to last very long," said Earnhart, who's been at it 19 years. "We get batteries from people. They say they've still got juice," Earnhart said. "They've got juice, all right. It's called sulfuric acid. You've got to dispose of that." One time Earnhart was taking a stroll through the Deseret Industries warehouse. He spotted something he'd never seen in all his recycling years. "A coffin," he said. Earnhart approached it carefully. "My hands were actually trembling," he said. What if there was a guy in there with pointy teeth? "It was filled with fishing poles," Earnhart said. It's not just the flotsam jettisoned on the recycling centers that's a problem. It's people who also take. "People will bring product in after hours," Froderberg said. "Then other folks will come along and vandalize it. You'll have a nice collection of clothes, and someone will come along and rip the boxes or bags open and just scatter stuff all over the place. "They'll high-grade it -- pick out just the best stuff -- then leave the rest littered around the parking lot." The worst cleanup morning in the charity business is Monday. "We're not here all weekend," Gorzitze said. "We'll have to have someone come in at 7 (a.m.) Monday just to pick up the parking lot where things are all over out there." Normally, Froderberg said, it's indigents or chemically dependent persons picking over the goods. In the case of the poor, the clothes are getting into the intended hands. "But the problem is, they can ruin the rest of the clothes for someone else," Froderberg said. "It can get rained or snowed on. It saddens me to think of how the rest of these items might have benefited someone else." Perhaps the worst insult, however, is people who come in, rifle through the boxes and bags and make off with items for profit. "A number of people will come in and systematically go through it all, then take it home and sell it in garage sales," Froderberg said. The disposal problems for the Salvation Army and Deseret Industries tax already spare budgets. "The money we spend getting rid of these items is money we could spend sheltering and feeding people," Froderberg said. Froderberg said the easiest ways to make sure your donations get into the proper hands are either to call for a Salvation Army truck or come by one of the stores between the 9 a.m.-5 p.m. business hours. "When I started doing this 30 years ago, it used to be so simple," Froderberg said. "You could leave a drop box in commercial space . . . Smith's, Fred Meyers. Not anymore. Items will be strewn all over. It's an eyesore. It disturbs the merchants. "It's symbolic of the way society has changed." Many people are not intentionally mean in disposing of unusable items, Froderberg said. "They give things which out of their life experience have meaning. It has value to them. They donate with best of intentions, for all the right reasons," Froderberg said. "We just need to educate them better on those things we can use and those we can't." "We have an obligation of stewardship to make the very best of every donated item," Earnhart said. "We take that very seriously." He suggests people look carefully at the things being offered, and if the items can't be used or salvaged, take them to the dump.