About Us

MISSION
To promote the concept and ethic of reuse to the campus population and to divert reusable materials from landfills.

HOW
Re-USE will achieve this by collecting reusable materials from individuals and departments and redistributing them back to the campus community. This service aims to encourage the campus community to reconsider their traditional notions of waste and incorporate reuse into their daily lives.

WHY
Reuse saves money and resources on labor, freight, and reprocessing and is thus environmentally preferable to recycling. Since UC Berkeley is seeking to reduce its waste stream into landfills, it must employ the diversion technique of reuse, which has been highly underutilized on this campus in the past.

THE GOAL
Re-USE seeks to divert 20-30 tons of material annually, as this amount was identified as reusable in campus waste audits.

WHO
Re-USE serves the UC Berkeley campus community including students, staff, and faculty and is a subset of the Campus Recycling and Refuse Services.

Mission Statement prepared by Rhoda Chang, Howard Chong, Alexis Petru, and Garth Schultz.

 

History

Re-USE stands for Re-Used Stuff Emporium. The origin of this idea came about by the student group SOURCE. Members of this group set up material exchanges once or twice a semester by setting up a table on Sproul Plaza, enabling members of the campus community to donate and pick up items.

In 2000, with funding from the university as well as support from the California Integrated Waste Management Board and the blessings from SOURCE, ReUSE set up a shop for UC Berkeley students, staff, and faculty to donate and pick up materials in the MLK garage. This shop operated for eight years as a central location for reusing materials.

In 2007, ReUSE began to expand further into the campus, setting up stations in campus buildings for more accessible, visible and speedy reuse of items. The stations reside in areas where students, staff and faculty that use the buildings can easily take the free items and bring some of their own reusable materials to donate.

The shop has been turned into a staging location for moving items out into the stations and the stations are expanding into more buildings.

The goal of this program is promote the concept of reuse to the campus population and to divert reusable materials from landfills.

 

The Staff

ReUSE is a student run program that is run through a University department called Campus Recycling and Refuse Services (CRRS) which is part of Physical Plant Campus Services. As a student group, we tend to have a high turn over of staff. Past staff have included:

Our Current Staff:

Halley Finkel, ReUSE Manager

Sarah Cowan, ReUSE Assistant Manager