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Broken furniture. Flashlights with leaking batteries. Disfigured Barbie dolls. Across the country, thrift stores have been flooded by household items, the offerings of people who have been homebound for months and are eager to clear out some of their possessions. Problem is, too many such items could most accurately be described as trash. Many of the donations are defective or worn-out items – gifts from well-intentioned people who want to reduce waste but who donate items that simply shouldn’t be donated. The thrift stores, wary of discouraging donations, say that, as always, they ...

In the midst of spring cleaning season, the stores want to slow a barrage of unwanted contributions that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The spikes in trash expenses can divert money away from other services the agencies could spend in their communities, like workforce development programs. In Wisconsin and Illinois, stores have reported an influx of flammable and hazardous donations, including lead acid batteries. Those items increase the stores' costs because they must be be disposed of by a waste removal company in an environmentally friendly way, said Julie Deming, a merchandising director at Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin, which operates 100 Goodwill stores in southeastern Wisconsin and the Chicago metro ar...

Goodwill stores have a message: Please stop donating trash HALELUYA HADERO, AP Business Writer May 19, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail 2 1of2In this undated photo provided by Goodwill Northern New England, a donation attendant working for Goodwill Northern New England at the Westbrook, Maine, store looks at a broken picture frame and a broken cat scratching post. Experts note the coronavirus pandemic has encouraged many to clean their homes and get rid of stuff they don’t want. And during the past year, several Goodwill agencies say they've seen an increase in unwanted donations, and...