Seaside thrift shops struggle with illegal dumping.

The right way is to take unwanted goods to a thrift store’s donation drop-off center, where staff can accept or reject them.

The wrong way is to abandon junk on the store’s property.

Sarah Fling, manager of the St. Vincent de Paul store in Seaside, says people often illegally dump cast-offs in the alley behind the Fremont Boulevard shop. The junk includes greasy auto parts, old appliances, dirty mattresses and other cumbersome garbage. “You wouldn’t believe,” she says.

Dumped trash becomes the charity’s burden, forcing workers to haul it to the regional landfill in Marina.

Monterey Regional Waste Management District charges $45 per ton at the scales, plus additional fees: $10 each for mattresses, $20 for refrigerators and $5 for other appliances. The fees reflect the district’s costs to dismantle hazardous components and ship off items that require special disposal.

The Seaside St. Vincent de Paul store has shelled out more than $4,000 in dumping fees since January 2007, according to district spokesman Jeff Lindenthal.

Julius Lawson, supervisor of the Goodwill Industries thrift shop in Seaside, says the Broadway Avenue store faces the same problem. “It happens every day,” he says.

Goodwill staff often arrive in the morning to find piles of mattresses, electronics and broken furniture – all items the charity refuses – outside the donation center’s door. “Some of the stuff we reject during the day, they’ll wait till we close and then dump it,” Lawson says. “They get the impression since we’re Goodwill we’ll take it anyway.”

Lawson notes the irony in dumping garbage on the doorstep of a donation-driven charity: “It has to come out of our pockets.”