Achi news desk-
Employees at Ergon Thrift in Riverview got a nasty surprise when they arrived at work Tuesday morning to find piles of clothes on the ground.
“(Alleged thieves) went through and emptied everything out of all three bins, and it was all over the parking lot,” said Argon CEO Corey Thibodeau.
The social enterprise offers programming and training to help their employees live with mental illness.
It took hours of cleaning and washing so that the donations could still be sold.
“If it had rained we would have lost everything,” he said.
Thibodeau said this is not the first time this has happened.
He said they often had to spend money replacing locks that had been cut from the bins.
His organization is looking at spending about $1,000 on security cameras for the bins, which he says is a significant investment.
“Every dollar I have to spend somewhere else, I can’t spend on people we’re trying to help,” he said.
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According to him, his team encountered people trying to steal from the bins, which raises concerns for their safety.
He is also concerned about the people going through the bins.
“One morning one of our workers went out to empty the bin, when he opened it there was someone sleeping inside the bin,” he said.
Dayzee’s Fashion, another thrift store in Riverview, has a bin designed to make entry impossible.
They also deal with frequent theft and vandalism, having reduced the number of bins in the community from 18 to just one.
“The different properties we used to put them in asked us to remove them because there’s always a mess, whether it’s our bin or the one next to it,” said Daisy’s fashion director Candice Walsh.
“Sometimes we spent $300 a week (changing) locks,” she said.
The IWK Children’s Hospital Foundation has clothing donation bins in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as part of its fundraising efforts.
Chad Milner, who manages the bins as part of his role as director of operations at LML Trading, said they have also dealt with property owners who have asked them to remove the bins due to theft and vandalism.
“In Moncton alone, we’ve lost probably anywhere from 30 to 35 bin locations in the last year,” Milner said.
He said this was because the donations often disappeared before they could be collected, or those who owned the property where the bins were found asked to have them removed.
According to him, the cost of each bin has increased drastically due to the need for additional security measures.
“When we started putting out bins, it cost us, you know, seven, $800 per bin now, with the upgrades we have to do for security. You’re pushing almost $2,000 a bin that’s going to keep people from breaking in,” he said.
He urges the public to alert the police if they see donation bins that have been broken into.
Global News reached out to the Kodiac RCMP for comment Wednesday morning and did not receive a response in time for publication.
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