Parry Sounds ~ Ideas and Opinions, In and Around Parry Sound

I have commented several times on the need and challenge related to addressing the issue of charitable organization waste. I won’t repeat my arguments on why the town needs to take on a more active role in the disposal except to offer the picture below.

Driving by the Salvation Army this morning I stopped to see what had been ‘donated’ over the weekend and took the picture above. As you can see someone had ‘considerately’ donated an old three-section sofa. And because the individual(s) didn’t want to have their generosity acknowledged it seems they decided to drop it off over the weekend when the store was closed.

So what does the Salvation Army do with this donation? The really don’t have the space to inventory it. And how can they in good conscience sell it without a proper cleaning? Who knows where and what the couch was used for prior to the drop off. I find it a little bit scary to think about taking it home, even in an unfinished basement.

The answer is of course is to pay to dispose of it. What the cost might be for this type of ‘commercial’ waste I don’t know. If a Parry Sound resident were to bring it to the transfer station the cost would be three ‘dump tickets’, or $9.00.

But a donation sure beats paying $9.

The town needs to help address this situation. This is not a charitable waste issue, it’s a town littering problem. What would the town do if the sofa were dumped at the corner of James and Mary Streets? They would pick it up and bring it to the transfer station, whether the anonymous ‘dumper’ was from Parry Sound, McDougall, McKellar, Seguin or any of the other surrounding municipalities.

Let’s see how the town chooses to handle this challenge. It’s people who are generating the waste, not our charitable organizations.