Vinnies stores in Byron Bay and Mullumbimby need some helping hands to sort donated goods, prepare them for sale and serve in the shop.
What a lot of locals don’t realise about Vinnies, is that as well as raising funds for valuable community services, it is a really green process!
The cycle used by Vinnies from donation onwards, aims to create as little waste as possible. This leads to less landfill and more reuse and recycling.
‘We’re recycling donated goods, we’re turning unsaleable clothes into rags, and we’re doing it to raise money to help people’, said Mullumbimby store manager Pam Murray, who has been volunteering at the shop for four years.
As well as the social aspect of volunteering, the community in Mullumbimby and Byron Bay really care about the recycling element. It’s another reason to be proud to volunteer at Vinnies.
Green heart
Beyond the buzz of Vinnies shops lies a mammoth recycling effort.
The Matthew Talbot Recycling Centre run by Vinnies in Goonellabah, sees a 40-foot shipping container, packed with more than 23,000 kilograms of clothing graded as unsalable quality, leave the centre every second day.
This clothing makes its way to Africa where it is supplied to some of the world’s most poverty stricken communities.
Cotton from unsaleable t-shirts is cut at machines in the facility to be sold as industrial cloths as Vinnies Bag O’ Rags for trade and hardware use.
Again, volunteers keep this process churning, squeezing every last drop of benefit from donations so that Vinnies can carry on its good works in the community
Vinnies’ waste management facilitator Angelo Grande says the funds all its own freight and disposal costs
‘No one benefits from that – society or the environment – so we transport it, process it and absorb the cost.’
If you can help out for even a few hours a week, please call 0428977454.
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