Waste

Dead cats don’t belong in charity bins. Same goes for sex toys, dirty nappies, sharp knives, broken furniture and the leftovers from your Christmas dinner. But try telling that to the people who’ve dumped hundreds of tonnes of crap in the charity bins of suburban Sydney and Melbourne this past week.

Charity befitting no one. Photo:Chris Scott

According to news reports in both the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, people in our eastern states’ most “affluent” suburbs decided the local Salvos, Smith Family or St Vincent de Paul charity bin was a more convenient way of getting rid of unwanted Christmas detritus than paying a visit to their local tip. The measly $12 entrance fee to most local council tips clearly proving far too expensive for their “affluent” tastes.

Dumping broken furniture, dirty clothing or unusable bric-a-brac is not charity. And our suburbs have not been suddenly overcome by an urgency to give to others. Stuffing your local goodwill bin full of unwanted stuff (some living) helps no one. It’s just thoughtless, lazy and selfish.

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  • Sleepless says:

    08:19pm | 12/01/12

    I’ve seen people going through charity bins and taking almost everything, just leaving plastic bags. Same people every time. (I’ve seen same well dressed male in his 60’s going through bags outside St Vinnies on Saturdays and Sundays) So very sad. He comes with his own carry bags. Staring at… Read more »

  • Angry_Of_Mayfair says:

    01:35am | 10/01/12

    Here! Here! Well put, PJ! We need more of you and fewer of the cynical narcissists that plague these pages. Read more »

 

Nobody likes to look incompetent or inept. So it’s no wonder the Federal Government fought to keep secret a report that revealed the $3.5 billion it spends each year on indigenous programs has generated “dismally poor returns”. 

Money for indigenous programs needs to be used better. Pic: The Australian

Close to two years after a 470-page Finance Department report slammed the Government’s management of indigenous programs and expenditure there’s been no radical movement, no overhaul of the Departments responsible, and none of the 115 recommendations adopted.

The report may never have even been made public save for a long-running freedom of information case brought by Channel 7.

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  • Sam p says:

    10:36am | 16/11/11

    The money went into the pockets of non Aboriginal people, they dont consult, then employ non.Aboriginals for a paid holiday. Its as well planned as the alpine grazing trial, if your going to control humans like a dictatorship then take responsabillity for the repeat failures, the Aboriginal population is growing… Read more »

  • xar says:

    08:29pm | 25/10/11

    I don’t have the answers, I wish I did. People seem to propose stuff that either involves cultural whitewashing or things which have already been implemented with a massive failure rate. Read more »

 

Those too selfish and lazy to properly stash their trash better listen up. It’s time to take a leaf out of Singapore’s book and treat litterers like the criminals they are.

Chuck it, don't dump it. Photo: Herald Sun

I was a race virgin until recently. Sydney’s Rosehill Gardens is, as expected, an eclectic mix of beautiful and hideous dresses, faceless men with mobiles plastered to their ears on the balcony, hardcore punters in trackie dacks casting a hex on their rivals by invoking Tony Abbott’s name. It was like Parliament, really, with a touch of sunshine and horses.

But somewhere between struggling to walk back and forth from the racing track to the bookies on uneven ground in stilettos, something did surprise me. Betting tickets, plastic drinking cups, hotdog buckets, and loose change everywhere.

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  • Sam says:

    06:45pm | 02/01/12

    Yeah you can drive deep into the remote alpine areas and still find beer cans and tires along the side of the road, bunch of dirty bogans live in Australia, hard to comprehend the amount of damage done in such a small time, they even destroy and tag and burn… Read more »

  • subotic says:

    08:37am | 17/10/11

    Aaaaaah Singapore, that democratic jewel of Asia, the land of clean streets and home to religious intolerance on a scale probably only just less intolerant than say China or North Korea. 7 year old children and 70 year old grandmothers locked away in gulags for daring to believe in something… Read more »

 

Deck the halls and fill the cupboards; despite the pre-Yuletide complaints from some shops Christmas is invariably a multi-billion dollar smorgasboard of retail excess.

Have you overdone it this Christmas? Photo: ThinkStock.

The question, though, is what to do with all that stuff once you’ve unwrapped it?

Because it’s not like we truly need a lot of it.

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  • Shama says:

    08:57am | 30/12/10

    Hmm I hear the CEOs of op shops make a fair bit per year by way of salary - and by that I mean a lot, not moderate. Its like a legitimate well paying career option these days! I give to the Salvos but I don’t wear a halo aorund… Read more »

  • Shifter says:

    02:08pm | 29/12/10

    Nah, you don’t want low quality Crazy Clark’s $2 sex toys… Read more »

 

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