In effort to help cover costs, Pittsylvania Pet Center to double as thrift store

Household items people donate will be sold to help raise money

PITTSYLVANIA COUNTY, Va. – Seeing household furniture and appliances left at Pittsylvania County trash collection sites is not uncommon.

"People leaving behind seemingly perfectly good household items for other people to collect," Pittsylvania County Administrator David Smitherman said.

Smitherman said work is underway to change the county's solid waste collection system to address this.

"We thought, 'Well, what if we collect those or use our sites as a collection point for thrift items and tote them down to the pet center?'," Smitherman said.

The goal is to have a thrift item collection system set up at some of the trash sites by the end of the year.

"All of our sites currently are, at most, only part-time staffing. We'll soon go to full-time staffing at many of our sites and those sites will be ones that will be considered for collection sites," Smitherman said.

In the meantime, people are asked to bring their items to the animal shelter.

The items will be put up for sale and the money from the sales will be used to help cover the day-to-day expenses of the shelter.

Smitherman said the shelter costs an average of $50,000 a month to run, which breaks down to about $1,600 a day.

"We are absolutely learning as we go, but if the anecdotal volume that we are seeing being left behind, we're going to have plenty of items, good items, for sale," Smitherman said.

Couches, sofas, lounge chairs, bicycles and working appliances are some of the items that will be accepted.