“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

Those were the words of Salvation Army volunteer Melissa Marshall, who arrived for her shift about 8.45am on Saturday to find more than 20 black garbage bags flying around the Maunganui Rd site’s carpark and piles of clothing left lying on the ground.

A large drop-off of clothes had been left overnight and rummaged through by the morning, leaving her with a clean-up job that would take up her whole shift.

“This is going to take all day,” she said while cleaning up the mess.

“If it had rained, this would all be in the bin and it would all go to waste.”

Salvation Army shops threw away anything received that was wet or damp, she said.

Having to throw away wet or damaged items was disappointing, Marshall said.

“There’s actually a few good things that I’ve picked out from there, also some good things I’ve had to throw away because they were wet or damp.

“Luckily, it didn’t rain, so everything’s not ruined and hopefully, we can salvage some things.”

Scavengers left a big pile of donated items in a mess for staff to find on Saturday morning. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

Marshall had been a volunteer at the Te Puke and Mount Maunganui stores for the past year and said she had not seen a mess “this bad before”.

It was hard to throw away items that could have been sold in store, she said.

“I’ll have to go through each thing and look at each thing to salvage.

“I wouldn’t want to chuck out anything that the store could use,” she said.

Marshall said the shop preferred donors to drop off items during shop hours to avoid the risk of waste or theft.

If items were dropped off after hours, “people will go through it”, she said.

With people travelling and moving in Mount Maunganui often, she said drops as large as this came from closed estates or people moving house.

Melissa Marshall has been volunteering for the Salvation Army for a year. Photo / Aleyna Martinez

She said the large pile of discarded items “was just a shock, the volume of it too”.

“This is a big one, but it does happen often when things get left outside, they’ll just be opened up and spread all over the ground.”

“It does happen often, not to this extent, but it does happen.”

She had a message for people who went through the bags left outside the shop: remember, the proceeds were for charity and people in the community were in need.

“It must have taken a while to open up all those bags and go through it.

“Please come into the Sallys and have a look through – stuff is pretty cheap and good prices,” she said.