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Dumpsters overflow and discarded furniture piles up at curbs on July 31 each year in Austin, Texas, when rental leases end and students move out of their off-campus apartments.  If you live in a university town you may have noticed a similar problem this time of year as the academic year ends. 

But across the country universities are stepping up to address the challenge. Read more in this month’s Reuse News.

When solar installations surged 10-15 years ago, homeowners focused on financial savings and cleaning up their energy use.  One question now emerging for those early adopters is what to do when you need a new roof.  Do you re-install the older system or buy a new, higher efficiency system? Solar installations typically outlast the roofs they were installed on;  for example solar  panels now have a 40+ year lifespan vs. the typical 20+ year roof lifespan.  Because of this, we now have a surplus of high-quality, pre-owned solar equipment. Sounds like a job for reuse…

Guilty. Even though I read 41 books last year, my purchases doubled that. I'm a reader, but more than that I am a typical American consumer. Under the guise of supporting local authors and independent bookstores, influenced by raving heartfelt reviews from friends, family and, I'll admit it…#booktok, I look at my busting shelves not at all shocked when the host of Freakonomics Radio mentioned that 320 million books a year are thrown away. Thrown away! But it doesn’t have to be that way…

As everybody knows, you need the right tool to do the job right.  But what if that tool costs several thousand dollars and you only need it once?  Enter the tool lending library.

Across the country tool lending libraries provide tools for people in need, people looking to learn and experiment, and community groups and disaster relief. Lear about Tool Libraries and find one near you in this month’s issue of Reuse News.

Did you know that the waste from demolishing a single family house is equivalent to the total waste generated by one person over their entire lifetime? In addition to that crazy statistic, construction and demolition (C&D) constitutes over 20% of our total waste generated as a society, and in some areas it can be as much as 40%!  But it doesn’t have to become waste…

… Learn more about deconstruction and building material reuse in this month’s issue of Reuse News.

This was a big year for the Reuse Alliance.  By far the biggest leap we took this year was opening The Reuse Hub, a brick and mortar location in the Petaluma Village Premium Outlets, where we are raising the visibility of reuse resources in the North Bay.   The Hub provides office space, staging and storage for all our operations and exponentially expands our ability to serve the public.  We are open five days a week and offering additional services, including workshops (in all four types of reuse), repair consultations by appointment, community events (panels, roundtables, meet-ups, swaps), and more.

Find out what else we’ve been up to in our latest issue of Reuse News.

For this year’s reuse gift guide we have identified some great reuse gifts you can BUY and where possible we have included a DIY option. 

If you aren’t crafty, but would like to make some gifts check out our upcoming workshops at the Reuse Hub (including how to wrap your gifts in reusable cloth gift wrap!).

We’re excited to announce our 2025 Reuse Awareness Campaign launched on October 20th - National Reuse Day!

This year’s campaign is called ‘Join the Re-conomy’ and focusses on the economic benefits of reuse. We hope you will share your own stories of how reuse saves more than money.

To find out more about the campaign and download the partner toolkit visit www.jointhereconomy.org

A fat worm coiled in a specimen jar?  No!  Wait! That’s plastic tubing!

An extraterrestrial lurking in the corner?  Wait!  Is that a lamp?  

These are artworks made by participants in T.R.A.S.H., which stands for The Recology Artstart Student Hub, a new artist-in-residence (AIR) program, piloted at Recology Sonoma Marin this summer.  

Lauryn Morris used to love driving her 1975 Datsun 280Z around L.A.  At red lights, other drivers would often make eye contact, give her a thumbs up, and invariably say, “Nice car!”  That goes a long way in explaining the branding of NICE, the company she founded to convert old gas cars into electric vehicles. 

NICE stands for No Internal Combustion Engine and it taps into that vintage-car vibe.  Yours could be a NICE car, whatever the make or model.  

It’s Friday, and the Reuse Hub is buzzing.  In the textiles corner, prep is underway for the evening’s mending workshop.  Ten students will be arriving to learn patching and seam repair basics and the textile coordinator is laying out fabric scraps and donated embroidery floss in a rainbow of colors.  

A visitor at the info desk is getting resources for where to donate various things they’re cleaning out of the garage.  Some of the tools they can donate to the hub where volunteers will clean, sort, and package them for resale or use in our programs …

Welcome to The Reuse Hub, a central place for reuse in the north bay.

My creative reuse journey started my freshman year at UC Santa Cruz. Double majoring in Art and Biology, I begrudgingly signed up for an Intro to Sculpture class, upset that there wasn’t room in the oil painting or printmaking courses.

One of our first assignments was creating a piece using found objects. I learned that sculpture could be so varied and working in this new medium cracked my brain wide open.