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Overflowing clothing recycling bin, courtesy Chuck Stegman

It’s a small component of a larger problem in this northeast Dallas area, neighbors say, but it is important to do what we can to clean things up.

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Issues plaguing residents and businesses include aggressive panhandling and loitering on private properties, Jackson Meadow homeowner Chuck Stegman says. His neighborhood representatives are working with other nearby neighborhood associations, Dallas Police Department, Dallas City Council, code enforcement and the Lake Highlands Chamber, to name a few, to address those problems, about which I plan to report more at a later date.

But it is also about literally cleaning up surrounding shopping centers, says Stegman, who recently launched an effort to have an unkempt donation box removed.

“We need all the help we can get to clean up the four corners of Abrams and 635, and this is one of the eyesores,” he says.

The donation-bin complaint is not unique to Lake Highlands or northeast Dallas. Stories abound about, as Brooklyn Magazine dubbed prolific pink ones in New York City, “piece-of-crap bins.” While some work well — like one outside East Lake Pet Orphanage that benefits that local nonprofit or the one at Urban Thrift which boosts a local business — they can devolve into aesthetic annoyances or, worse, they can be downright scams.

The Houston based company that owns the bin in question, ATRS Recycling, has responded to Stegman’s complaints, he says. Following his posting on their Facebook page of this photo, they sent someone out to pick up the overflowing donations. Still, the box will be bursting at its seams again in no time, he says.

“The only thing that I have heard from them is that this donation box was requested ‘by the community’ and that they maintain it on a regular basis,” he says, “but as you can see from the photo, that is bull. The community is now requesting that they remove it.”