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MARQUETTE -- It's a typical Monday morning sight, "donations" scattered outside the Marquette St. Vincent de Paul storefront.  Donations that won't find new owners...they're going straight to the dumpster.

It's the aftermath of another weekend when items were dropped off to battle rain, theft, and the wear and tear of outdoor conditions.

"It didn't rain or anything last night, but they're damp," says St. Vincent truck driver, Edward Morrison.  "You can feel the dampness in it. This stuff, you can't really sell it; you put it in the store, it's going to start to mold."

And then there are the items that the society says are a deliberate dump of unwanted and unusable property.

"Furniture that you wouldn't let an animal sleep on," says Store Manager Sandy Peterson.  "We get mattresses that are, that, I would be mortified if I had to put them into our store."

It's one expensive mess.  On average, the Marquette St. Vincent de Paul store spends $1,050 on dumpster fees alone.  They pay for each filled dumpster; one weekend's stack of items just about filled the dumpster to the brim, and volunteers said it was a "small" pile.

That is costly for the society and potentially for offenders.  Illegal dumping is an offense punishable by up to $5,000 in fines at the misdemeanor charge.

"Some people are under the misconception that just because it's St. Vincent de Paul that they can leave anything they want at the drop-off site, but if it's not useable by anybody, it would be considered littering," says Craig Marker, youth services officer for the Marquette Police Department.

"That garbage costs us a lot of money that we could be using to feed the poor, and that's what our mission is, not to rid Marquette of garbage.  It is to feed the poor," Peterson said.