WORKERS at a charity shop have hit out at people who fly tip outside their outlet after someone left a dead puppy outside.

Volunteers at the Helen Rollason charity shop, in Wickford, said they are struggling to cope with the amount of rubbish left outside their branch by ignorant residents.

Last week, one worker was left in tears after finding a dead dog had been placed inside a bin liner and left in front of their door in the High Street.

A 60-year-old shop volunteer, who asked not to be named, said: “It was just lying there, left like a piece of worthless rubbish.

“What kind of person puts a dead animal in a sack and just tosses it away? It is just beyond belief.

“The person who found it was devastated and burst into tears.

“We notified the environmental health department and they came round and took it away.”

Workers at the shop are used to seeing bags of clothes, toys and junk left outside their shop at weekends and bank holidays.

The volunteer added: “We’ve had piles of rusty old lawnmowers, car exhausts, cat litter, sawdust and uncooked chickens riddled with maggots dumped outside.

“A lot of the time the bags are full of stuff we can sell and we are very grateful to people for their donations.

“But over the past five years that I’ve been working here, things have got so much worse with rubbish dumping. Many people just see us as a place to fly tip.

“We always ring environmental health and they will usually take a lot of it away, but we have to pay for our bins to be emptied.

“People tend to think they should have free rein to just dump what they like here, but we are a charity shop just trying to raise money for cancer research.

“Hopefully we can hammer home the message we are not a dumping ground or a place to leave poor dead animals.”