Sorting Out the Good, the Bad and the Useful

The men’s blue V-neck sweater has so many moth holes it looks machine-gunned. The white fabric cover for a baby seat is streaked with ominous brown stains. The child’s rumpled Beetlejuice baseball shirt has a hole the size of a softball in the armpit.

Each of these articles lands in the rejects bin following a three-second inspection by Bertha Aldama, Esperanza Arguielles, Rosalinda Reyes or another of the day inspectors on the receiving line at Goodwill Industries here.

The clothing flies over their shoulders, like dirt thrown by ditchdiggers, in the search to find the clean, the suitable, the worthy, the dignified: the crisp black Lee jeans or the worn but spotless blue floral print dress or the like-new turquoise nylon Windbreaker that will end up on a Goodwill store rack for $3.50.

And feed the poor. Help the sick. Employ the disabled.

But this textile mining operation, situated near the Ventura Freeway in a sprawling warehouse, is anything but easy.

Nearly half of all the goodwill implied in contributions to Goodwill Industries is junk: Unusable. Waste.

Somebody else’s garbage.

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Trailer trucks pile in from donation centers all over Ventura and Santa Barbara counties--at the rate of up to six a day, or more than 500 a year. Together, they disgorge more than 3.5 million tons of stuff--not just clothing but furniture, books, appliances, sporting goods, cleaning implements, anything that’s already served its usefulness to its original owner.

That’s the beauty of charity, of course. In Goodwill’s case, it provides a second life to things for so many people, cheaply, yet in doing so generates money for helping causes. More than that, the organized harvesting of such goods creates a business that employs people and sustains itself within the larger economy.

But the harvest is a window into charity’s true heart: the giver.

And at the sorting line, that window is wide open.

With the care of a hunter lifting a highly poisonous snake, Monica Carreno lifts a ladies’ leather thong sandal between her thumb and forefinger, holding it up at arm’s length. Miles upon barefoot miles have been walked in this sandal; its leather is deeply sweat-stained and cracked, its insole bears the clear imprint of a foot in sand, its faded turquoise thong flaps hopelessly about.

“What is someone thinking when they give us this?” Carreno asked. “I couldn’t begin to say.”

But Carreno, who manages the unloading and sorting operations, does speculate: “Everybody thinks their stuff is good. And then the cost of dumping has gone so high.”

Looking around the warehouse, one wall of which is stacked with 53 refrigerator-sized, 600-pound bales of clothing rejects, she added:

“And here we are.”

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Undeterred, Carreno and her crews sort. The payoff, Carreno says, is in knowing that after the harvest, “we have very high quality at our stores, and we pride ourselves in that.”

Indeed, good clothing is often joined by working TVs, VCRs, sometimes a fancy computer or two. And most of the rejected donations do find their way into a lower chain of life--soiled and torn clothing is sold to a recycler for up to $48 per bale, and broken furniture is sold to dealers who do quick fixes and drive to swap meets in Mexico.

But of the half of all donations that are rejected, a good portion are just plain useless. The item must be thrown away--as it should have been, certainly, at the phantom benefactor’s house-cleaning.

Yet this tax-deductible junk, which overflows Goodwill’s orange Dumpsters, suggests lives richly lived: a Nordica ski boot (left foot), buckles missing; a gold aluminum chair, seat broken, rear legs bent; the cassette tape “Stay on the Cutting Edge With Anthony Robbins”; a torn, coverless copy of the novel “Dishonored,” commencing on Page 11 with the words “that art could have no limits fixed by petty souls.”

The blacktop at the base of Goodwill’s loading dock is paved in its own strange litter, a tide of junk accumulating from this midweek haul: yellow stuffed dog, torn; broken pink barrette; baby’s polka dot panties; red ketchup squeeze bottle; the lime-green foam letter H; yellow place mat; wide aluminum snow shovel, blade bent. Strangely, a gleaming silver, acorn-shaped candy dish shines through, near the truck’s left rear tire.

Sometimes the sweet, the ladies on the sorting line would agree, is cloaked in the bitter.