Overflowing donation bins pose potential health and safety hazard

Since people started to self-isolate due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many have been using the time at home to do some spring cleaning.

Now, some charity donation bins are overflowing and becoming dumping grounds for people’s garbage.

That prompted Diabetes Canada to make a plea to community leaders and elected officials across the country. It says because of the restrictions now in place, the pickup of all textile donations from homes and bins stopped on March 23.

In a Facebook post, Mayor Charlie Clark flagged the letter and asked people to stop using the donation bins until they’re opened up again.

Clark acknowledged in his post that most people are well-meaning and want to support the important work done by Diabetes Canada, but in some cases, people are using these sites as garbage dumps and that’s posing a serious health and safety issue.

He also reminds people that residential waste pickup services in Saskatoon are currently unaffected.

In its letter, Diabetes Canada says it relies on generous charitable clothing donations as a crucial source of revenue to support the 11 million Canadians living with diabetes or prediabetes and hopes people will resume donating once the organization is able to resume picking up the donations from the bins.