Wednesday, November 4, 2009

City leaders are about to put the brakes on a charitable donation service that you may be familiar with. You've likely seen those red bins around town advertising donations for charity. But what you may not know is that your donation isn't going to a charity.

City leaders say there are two issues: 1) Clothing is not considered recyclable material and, 2) People often dump trash and other things around the red bins, causing a blight issue.

"Old clothing is not considered recyclable material under our zoning code," said Kurt Schroeder, with the Wichita Office of Central Inspection. "That's what it boils down to at this point."

You'll likely see one every day if you have to travel more than a couple miles in Wichita. The red bins asking you to drop off your old clothing and shoes to help out a local charity. But are you really helping out a local charity? Not really. Your donations are going straight to a for-profit company that resells your items to make money.

Gayle Goetz of Goodwill Industries in Wichita, says only a small monthly donation is made to the Child Start organization locally.

"We are a competitive economy and competition is a good part of business," Goetz said. "The problem that we have with the bins is that they're somewhat deceptive. I think most people think that their donations are helping the community."

The problem isn't really the concept of these red bin donation boxes, but Goodwill Industries says that people may not realize where their donation is going.

"When they see that bin and it says it's helping a not-for-profit, and it's a good not-for-profit, they assume that their donations are going to that company and they're not," Goetz explained. "Every bit of those donations are going out of Kansas. They're actually going to Texas and being shipped out of the country."

The company that owns the red bins is called American Recyclers out of Tulsa, OK. The company is now trying to change the wording of Wichita's zoning ordinance to classify clothing as a recyclable material. However, the city says, even if they get their way, the red bins still violate city ordinance.

"The problem is, if you call it a recycling processing station, like you see for tin cans and other kinds of things maybe in parking lots and such, they don't meet any of those requirements, either," said Schroeder.

We tried to reach American Recyclers Wednesday by calling their Tulsa business and a local number provided on the red bins. Our messages were not returned. The company has about two weeks to come up with a solution to resolve the matter or the city says the red bins will have to go.