The Permanent Free Store

The Permanent Free Store

The Free Store is a centralized location that allows you to drop off stuff you don’t want anymore and pick-up things you do want for free. Essentially, this is a “store” where everything is free. Our goal is to create a campus where waste is a thing of the past. By creating a space where anyone can drop off and pick up stuff, we hope to reduce consumption by offering free items to the campus. We also want to make sure that items have a second chance to be used before they go to the landfill or off for recycling.

The whole idea started when we noticed the outrageous amounts of perfectly usable items in the 20-yard bins at the end of the school year (during campus move-out). We started a collection program to recuperate these things (The Dump and Run), which we then distributed to local charities and a large-scale Free Store event for new students in September. Due to popularity of the program, we decided to expand it to an all-year opened ‘store’ where people can drop off and take things as they please. The official opening date of the permanent location; an entire house dedicated to the program, was September 1st 2012. On a daily basis (open Tues-Thurs), the Free Store serves anywhere between 50 and 200 uOttawa community members. The program’s promotions are done entirely from word of mouth.

All Plastics Recycling Program

In the hopes of reaching the University of Ottawa’s zero-waste goal by the year 2020, we decided to investigate Styrofoam recycling. As it takes up a lot of room in our waste bins on campus, we thought this might be a good place to start innovating and expanding our regular recycling collections. The only company in Canada willing to do this for us was ‘Asset Recovery Specialists’. Not only were they willing to take our Styrofoam, but they were willing to take all types of plastics for sorting and recycling. We launched the collection in March 2011, all over campus; people can recycle absolutely all forms of plastic in our public recycling stations, and larger items (such as foam for lab equipment) in the loading docks on campus. Foam is more expensive to recycle than any other material due to its light-weight; we are using funds gained through other recycling programs to pay these recycling fees.

The University of Ottawa campuses are the only areas in the city where you can recycle all forms of plastics. We have also been suggesting that the city, hospitals and other post-secondary institutions gets on board with us.

BRIGITTE MORIN