Saving the planet can be daunting.  Getting others to help is even harder.  The trick is to make it easy.  Easy to get rid of things you no longer want, easy to get things you are looking for.  That sounds simple, but when you are turning over entire houses as well as furniture, household goods and computers, there is a level of complexity that requires a plethora of different skills.  For the past eight years the Ithaca ReUse Center has made all that look easy.

"We want it to be easy for people," says Executive Director Diane Cohen.  "It has not been easy for us.  But if we can make it appear easy to the public, that's what we want.  Drive up, drop it off, here's your receipt, thank you very much.  Hopefully people will look to our stores first when they're shopping for furniture or building materials to see if they can not only do the right thing, but save some money while they're doing it."


Since the first store opened its doors in the Triphammer Marketplace eight years ago the ReUse Center has grown.  A lot.  After two years the original store expanded from 7,000 to 13,000 square feet.  Last year the ReUse Center purchased and renovated a 17,000 square foot building on the other side of town to house a second store, administrative offices and processing and program spaces.

It has grown in other ways as well.  It employs 26 people, almost 25 of whom fill full-time equivalent positions that are paid living wages.  Between 30 and 40 volunteers are active at least once a week.

All that growth has meant that employees and volunteers have faced a steep learning curve.  The stores process a huge volume of stuff every day, but Cohen found that she also needed to process ways to improve the experience of the people who work and volunteer there, and to create a culture in which they could get satisfaction from the work they do.


"After the ReUse Center was open for a couple of years I realized it's not about the stuff," she says.  "It's about the people.  The reason we're trying to divert all this stuff from the landfills: it's the health of humankind.  It's not just external to this organization.  It made me wake up and realize we need to have a healthier work experience here.  We've been a living wage organization from the beginning, but now we try to be thoughtful about how we can be a healthy organization."

This thoughtful approach has created a culture of devoted employees and volunteers, some of whom have been with the ReUse Center since it first opened.  Cohen says it attracts people who like to work hard for something they believe is important.

"We've watched it happen as a phenomenon," she says.  "The nature of the work is very engaging.  That is something I have found myself observing more and talking more about.  It gets overlooked.  Reuse is simply to reduce waste and divert things from the landfill.  It's really about providing opportunity.  It's a great way to keep people busy with meaningful work.  There's a broad spectrum of skill sets you can develop here, from basic cleaning and organizing to high level technological problem solving.  That's been an exciting component in a world where jobs are drying up and the nature of jobs that are out there are less engaging."


In 2013 another category of reuse was added: people.  The RESET (Reuse, Skills and Employment Training) program provides training especially for people who need either retraining to gain employment, or those who may have taken a break from work -- to have children or for some other reason.  RESET started as a practical solution to train people to work at the ReUse Center, but has grown into a unique way to jump start a return to the workplace.

"It was less that we felt we had become experts and were ready to train others, and more that we needed help and needed to figure out a way to build up our capacity," Cohen says.  "Was there a mutually beneficial program that we could offer where people could come in and learn marketable job skills and gain some work experience if they have a gap in our resume."

There are currently three versions of RESET.  The computer and construction sessions are in a classroom setting.  Eight to ten people attend 20 hours a week for ten weeks, learning skills and hearing lectures by a variety of area professionals. Tuesday a Cornell computer expert taught a class on IT security.  Brightworks Computer Consulting, the City of Ithaca IT department, and other local professionals have contributed lectures to the program.  The program is free both ways -- no tuition and no pay.


These students also gain practical experience in taking donated computers and parts, securely wiping the hard drives clean or installing new ones, loading operating systems and turning them into products that can be sold.  At the end of each RESET session one or two apprentices are hired for 15 weeks.  They are paid in part from the proceeds of the computers they turn around, and partly from grant money.

RESET has also been a valuable resource for people returning to society from jail or prison.  The endless cycle of losing opportunities because of an enforced work history gap is replaced by special training, a recommendation and a job interview.

"Helping someone create new patterns and build new community seemed to make a lot of sense," Cohen says.  "It seemed to me that the Reuse Center is a really good place for people who are trying to turn over a new leaf and learn some new skills and get reintegrated into the workforce."



Cohen takes pride in the deconstruction service, and points to the start of a lumber yard across the parking lot from the new store.  The ReUse Center has a special crew that will carefully take apart a whole house, or just remove salvageable parts like kitchen cabinets, windows, or door frames.  The crew is licensed and insured, offering a service that benefits homeowners and contractors as well as the people who purchase the used building materials.  Contractors often sub-contract the ReUse Center, making the service a marketable benefit of the package they offer their own customers.

"It's win-win because they have reduced expense with the trash," Cohen says.  "They can sell it to the homeowner as an environmental solution, and the homeowner can get a charitable tax receipt.  It goes to a good cause, you get a tax write-off, and that offsets the cost of the project.  Those are the sorts of things that we hope will continue to grow."


Good works or no, the bottom line is the bottom line.  Cohen says a hard working finance committee keeps a close eye on the fiscal side including business planning and data tracking.  The Triphammer Marketplace store actually saw an upturn in customers in the first quarter since the new store opened.  Cohen says that the new store is providing visibility to the old store, and ofeten people will look for furniture and other goods at both.

Growing pains are the major challenge, but Cohen says they also provide opportunities to expand programs and to keep still more items out of landfills by reusing them.  She says that having the second store greatly enhances the convenience of dropping items off to be resold, as well as for shoppers.

"We have a broad mission, which is a triple-bottom-line based mission: to enhance community, economy and environment from reuse," she says.  "I think people get that as a driver.  They realize they are doing good for the planet.  They see there are opportunities being created for others.  Anybody that's been here sees people transformed because they empower themselves by showing up and working and getting something accomplished each day.  It's kind of a phenomenon.  The nature of the work is special."


Even so, it takes a village to make a thing like this work... or in this case, a county.  While the ReUse Center has a long way to go, it is making it work.  The local community has embraced the business on the donation side, she shopping side, and the training side.  The center has managed to become much more than just a thrift shop by engaging and partnering with the community and local businesses.

"I think it goes beyond the Ithaca mindset where people don't like to waste," Cohen says.  "I think that has a broad appeal.  Whether its community leaders or regular shoppers, people have been cheering us on and expressing gratitude.  That's a lot of people, and that's profound.  A lot of people have helped make this happen in a lot of ways."

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