Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 3, 1993                   TAG: 9309030017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

`DONATIONS' OF TRASH PUT SALVATION ARMY IN UNPLEASANT BOX

The kinds of donations it was getting - old tires, grass clippings, appliances well beyond repair, trash and even dead animals - cost the agency millions of dollars because it had to pay to have the unwanted goods hauled away.

And the donated shirts, shoes, pocketbooks and household items that might be worth selling at the army's resale shops often have been stolen from the boxes.

Faced with the escalating cost of dumping other people's garbage and fed up with watching thieves scurry off with everything from couches to clothes, the Salvation Army has said, "enough."

In late August, the agency pulled virtually all its boxes out of shopping centers in the Midwest, from Detroit to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where someone recently dumped 80 tires beside a collection box.

Space for the boxes has been donated, and "We can't just say to the property owner, `It's not our trash,' " said Lt. Col. Marcus Stilwell, commander of the Salvation Army's adult rehabilitation centers in the Midwest. "Everywhere, we're just being inundated with trash."

There are countless stories of sites where people pried open the metal boxes, often breaking the locks. That made it easier to lower their children in to toss out usable merchandise.

Problems with collection boxes are nothing new. In late August, 450 boxes were yanked out of 10 Midwestern states. The giant boxes already had become all but extinct in the South and West.

"We just had to get out of the drop-box business," said Maj. Charles Nowell, assistant commander for the office in Atlanta, which oversees 15 Southeastern states. "It's almost like people were watching to see when someone was bringing something in. Besides, we were becoming one of the biggest trash haulers in the community."

Salvation Army officials said trash dumping at the boxes had increased in the last three or four years. The reason, they said: Many people aren't willing to comply with recent environmental laws that have put price tags on disposing of items that once could be thrown away for free.

The ratio of garbage to merchandise, Stilwell said, had become absurd. For each truckload of goods, there would be a truckload of junk. Each collection site was costing the Salvation Army between $800 and $1,000 a month in dumping fees.

Last year, Stilwell said, the Midwestern offices spent nearly $1.5 million in dumping fees - up $180,000 from the year before.

In the end, Stilwell said, the money saved from dumping people's trash will make eliminating the boxes worthwhile. He also hopes more people will donate because they'll feel certain of where the goods are going. That's what happened in the West, where collections have gone up since the boxes were removed.