Dismay at charity bin ‘takeaway’ bid

A woman and her partner were queuing for petrol the Skimpot Tesco store on Sunday afternoon when they saw a car pull up to the large metal containers.

She said: “I noticed the car reverse back at speed to the charity bins, which I thought was strange.

“The gentleman got out of the car, opened the back door of his people carrier and proceeded to unload the recently donated clothing into his car.

“We were very shocked and disgusted but what made this situation worse was seeing more bags being pushed out of the bin.

“These are large bins and it seemed weird that so many items were being loaded into the car. Moments later we received another shock when a slender man climbed out of the recycling bin and jumped into the passenger seat of the car.”

Disgusted by what she saw, the woman reported the incident to the police.

She added: “We are rather concerned that people are generously donating clothing to charity just for these items to be ‘stolen’ from the charity by other people.”

A Bedfordshire Police spokeswoman said: “We are aware of this sort of thing happening. We don’t approve of it as someone has donated something in good will and someone else is potentially taking it for their own gain.

“But the issue is identifying the loser, as at this point the clothes don’t belong to anyone.”