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Salvation Army to reopen stores

Phoebe PinKalgoorlie Miner
Sherry Harper, Ronnie Rogers, Sue Naake, Denise Flannery, Lynne Hutchings and Jodie Hall.
Camera IconSherry Harper, Ronnie Rogers, Sue Naake, Denise Flannery, Lynne Hutchings and Jodie Hall. Credit: Kelsey Reid

Thrifty Kalgoorlie-Boulder locals will once again be able to hunt for bargains when the Salvation Army reopens its second-hand stores on Wednesday.

To accommodate State Government guidelines, the not-for-profit’s Brookman Street store will be open Wednesday through to Saturday between 10am and 3pm while the Burt Street store will open Friday only.

Locals can donate clean, undamaged items in good condition direct to the stores during trading hours, but red collection bins have not yet been reinstated.

Collection of furniture items can also be arranged, with all donations going through a 72-hour quarantine before processing.

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Lieutenant Jodie Jones said the measures were intended to keep staff, volunteers and customers safe while the Salvation Army continued to serve the community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We know (thrift stores) support the community in that people know they can find good quality, low-cost household and personal items, helping people’s money go further,” she said.

“It also reduces how much goes into landfill ... if something is still usable and in good condition, there is no reason for it to go in the bin.”

Lt Jones stressed the Salvation Army could not accept donations in poor condition, saying the disposal of unusable items took money away from other community projects. “It is astronomical ... we spend about $5000 a year on rubbish disposal,” she said.

“The money that is raised through the sales in our thrift shops stays in the community and we either have to use that for rubbish removal or we get to use it to buy food and help people in the community.

“We already have a lot of extra cleaning and health restrictions put on us so we can open and we can provide this service to the community and we want to be able to do that but if products come to us that are broken and unclean, we cannot be processing those.”

Lt Jones said the Salvation Army had used the 12 weeks of the coronavirus shutdown to improve the donation distribution process, with staff and volunteers eager to put the new procedures to good use.

“We used the downtime to do a restructure of how we process so we now have a processing and redistribution centre in Kalgoorlie-Boulder,” she said.

“We are excited to be able to come back with a new system in place ... our teams are just going to be so happy to be back and welcoming people through the doors.”

For public health and safety reasons, donations cannot be left outside thrift stores outside of trading hours.

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