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Charities trash City’s lack of consultation

Tyler BrownJoondalup Times

LOCAL charities are disappointed they were not consulted before the City of Joondalup decided to ban clothing bins on public land.

Joe Tuson, bin manager for the Spine and Limb Foundation, said at last week’s meeting he had “serious concerns about the process of the examination”.

“No consultation was undertaken with the charities that own the bins, despite these being significant stakeholders,” he said.

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“Each month, we collect 27 tonnes of donations from our charity bins, including 16 tonnes a month from bins on City of Joondalup land.

“We also collect approximately four tonnes per month of illegally dumped rubbish from our City of Joondalup bin sites.”

He said banning the bins on public land endangered the jobs of “several of the 145 people with disabilities that we employ and who live within the City of Joondalup”.

Good Samaritan Industries divisional manager Debbie Cameron said the ban would “significantly damage” the charity because the majority of its funding came from its shops that were serviced by the bins.

“Our ability to support the people with disabilities that we work with is directly related to the donations that we receive,” she said.

“The City of Joondalup currently provides us with about 8.5 per cent of our metropolitan donations and half of these come from the bins on public land.

“If we lose those bins, potentially we lose 4 per cent of our donations, which could lead to up to eight people with disabilities losing their jobs.”

Mayor Troy Pickard said he did not agree the ban would result in “loss of supply chain for charities or the potential loss of employment”.

“There are 22 service stations in the City of Joondalup and 38 shopping centres and I think they are appropriate locations to house charity clothing bins,” he said.

“Maybe this is an important trigger for charities to think about other avenues in which to collect their produce from our community and I’d be happy to explore with those stakeholders those opportunities.”

Good Samaritan Industries chief executive John Knowles said the charity would support “a degree of regulation of the bins”, which would “go a long way to solving the issue rather than banning bins”.

“I think a ban without trialling some regulation would be counterproductive to the good work we do,” he said.

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Public land bin ban