Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:
Transcript
Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:
(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)
Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.
“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”
Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.
“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”
Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.
“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”
And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.
David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.
“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”
About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.
Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.
“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”
Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.
Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.
“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”
ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.
For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.
