Territories Minister Meegan Fitzharris said the bins in Gungahlin, Kippax and Kambah are particularly bad, but she wants to hear from residents about other bins as she considers removing them when the two-year permits expire at the end of June.

The extensive dumping around charity bins had led to "mini-waste dumps" at shops and around town centres.

"We can't allow the unsightly dumping of waste around these bins to continue," Ms Fitzharris said.

"There have been some shocking examples recently of waste strewn across the footpaths where these charity bins are, causing access issues and making our city look like a dump, quite frankly."

The area manager for the Salvo stores, Tony O'Connell, said he stopped putting Salvation Army bins at shopping centres some years ago because it was a "terrible" job trying to manage them. He had deployed two trucks to empty the bins and clean up around them each week, and more often during school holidays.

"The amount of rubbish that was dumped around them didn't warrant us spending hours on end cleaning up other people's stuff," he said.

With bins only at the Fyshwick store, it was much easier to manage, he said.

Peter Elford from the Gungahlin Community Council said something should be done about the bins, but they should not be moved without an alternative for people wanting to donate — such as comprehensive website information about where to drop items.

"Inevitably, unless there's some oversight to the process, it's going to become unsightly," he said, with donations piled up around full bins and rubbish dumped alongside.

Two years ago, the government drastically reduced the number of locations where charities could place bins, cutting numbers from 50 shopping centres to just 14. A maximum of 144 bins has been allowed across the 14 centres, which are in shopping centres in Dickson, Belconnen, Hawker, Holt, Kaleen, Chisholm, Curtin, Mawson, Weston, Tuggeranong (two sites), Wanniassa, Kambah and Gungahlin.

The system introduced in 2014 emphasises that the charities are responsible for keeping the bin area tidy, removing graffiti and maintaining the bins. They are required to clean up around bins within 24 hours of being told of dumped material.

But Ms Fitzharris said while the 2014 change had helped to reduce illegal dumping, dumping was so bad in some places that some charities were not removing it within 24 hours.

"The management of charity donation bins is difficult. On the one hand they help support charities with donations of clothing, footwear and blankets, but on the other hand they are used by some people to dump unwanted items from their house," she said.