For more than 20 years, Stones Fabric Industries has provided South Canterbury Plunket with clothing donation bins, but due to regularly finding a lot more than clothing in them, the company has decided to remove them entirely from the region.
Across Mid and South Canterbury, 25 clothing bins have been removed.
"Stones have very generously placed these bins around South Canterbury where Plunket has been the recipient. These helped to generate funds especially in our rural areas, which are run by our fantastic volunteers.
"They have helped to fund a lot of our really important services in these areas because connections with families is what we do.
"There was a lot of talk on social media that we had removed them ourselves, but that is not the case. Unfortunately, Stones have found it’s not feasible to have their bins in South Canterbury due to the amount of fly-tipping."
She said she was shocked to learn about some of the items being dumped in the bins.
"It’s disappointing that people are finding it OK to put all sorts of things in these bins that personally I wouldn’t want to be taking out.
"I found there’s lots of really interesting, unusual and sometimes some really disgusting things that have gone into these bins It is really unfortunate, especially when the Timaru District Council provide some really great waste management facilities."
Mrs Haley said the loss of funding would have a substantial effect.
"Stones have generously paid for this year which we are extremely grateful for but going forwards we will have to try and recoup that in some other way.
"That money has been key in helping to grow and maintain our service here, the bins themselves were a really important service for the community. We’ll always be grateful and hopefully one day we might be able to get them back.
"I hope people will now, when they see a charity sticker on one of the clothing bins, think about what they’re actually putting in these bins because the consequence can be much more serious than someone having to reach in and take it out."
