The Free Store is Awesome

Something pretty big is on the way and we think that you should be excited about it. The Free Store at the University of Ottawa is undergoing a change, or maybe a better way to say it is an evolution. But this evolution comes at a cost and before the end of this blog post, I am going to try to give you such a compelling argument that you will want to help us pay this cost. Because what comes afterwards might be the most fundamental shift in the way you deal with waste in a generation.

Now that I have the hype out of the way, let's talk a little about history. uOttawa's Free Store was born from the dream of a place that could never really exist. It was a concept or an idea that people whispered about; more of an urban myth than an actual place. Think about it... a store where everything is free. What does that even mean? How could it sustain itself without an income?

When I was a student back in the early 2000's, I had heard that there was a Free Store over at Carleton University. I couldn't even wrap my head around it. The idea tangled my imagination like a staircase in an Escher drawing. I was so excited to visit the place, to figure out how it worked, to see the stuff, to experience an economic ecosystem that shouldn't be possible.

When I finally saw the store, my heart sunk. It was nothing more than three cardboard boxes in the closet of the local OPIRG office. "Take what you want, leave something if you can", that kind of thing. No disrespect to them; there was just no way anything they showed me could have lived up to the insane ideas I had dreamt up. And I should have known that before I started dreaming so big. But even a few days after I visited the space, I couldn't shake those strange ideas of a store where everything was free.

Soon after, we started out at uOttawa with a few boxes on a table. Arguably the exact same formula as the Free Store I had seen but with a bit more space. Then those few boxes turned into a pile of boxes, one table became a dozen, and before you know it, the administration of the University saw fit to give us a house to work out of. In 2012, our dream of an actual store came true, and since then we have been working hard to keep the space awesome.

But, as is the way of things, we slowly outgrew our space. Each year, we collected more and more stuff to put into the store. A few boxes of collected stuff transformed into 8.2 tonnes of donations during this past summer alone. Our little red house has become overrun with things to give away. And even though we keep growing the number of people who come through the door and the number of charities we donate to, we just can't keep up.

Here is a list of our biggest problems.

1. We do not have enough space to sort all the stuff. Space comes at a premium on campus and getting enough of it to sort clothing and books is really hard.
2. The Free Store is inaccessible in a variety of ways. In terms of physical barriers, there are staircases all over the place and really small hallways. In terms of location, it is slightly off campus on the other side of a busy street. Too far away for some people.
3. There are too many items bunched up in the space. When multiple categories of things get tossed into boxes, it is really hard to find the stuff you want and so people give up looking.
4. The space is too messy. I know this doesn't seem like a real problem but it is. There is a perception out there that people who use second-hand stores lack social status. The more disorganized the space, the easier it is for people to come to this conclusion.

Naturally our team at the Office of Campus Sustainability started trying to figure out how to deal with these problems; after all, the Free Store must go on! It all boiled down to one common element, we needed a new space. But there are no spaces on campus that are sufficiently large enough to house all our cleaning, sorting, and showroom needs (especially since we don't have any money to pay rent). Ultimately, we decided to decouple the two major functions of the store. Have one space as a show room, and another for cleaning and sorting.

Concepts and ideas collected for the new design of the Free Store.

By decoupling the store's functions, we can be more efficient. The showroom could be located on campus, clean, well organized, and accessible. A space that the public would enter into and be even more impressed that everything inside of it was free.
The sorting space isn't open to the public and so we could become more efficient at batching up items for donations to charities, fixing small items that need a little love, and keeping seasonal items off the shelves until they are actually needed. Essentially a warehouse.



We got to work on some plans and this is what we came up with (see picture above). After identifying a few spaces on campus and we determined that we could make this happen fairly quickly. And the upside of a showroom space would be gold.

• An accessible space located on campus, making it even easier for you to use
• Seasonally appropriate items that are well sorted, making it easier for you to use
• Staff and volunteers dedicated to keeping the space organized, making it easier for you to use

And on the warehouse side of things, the purpose-designed space would allow us to sort items more thoroughly and donate only the best stuff to charities. The additional space would also allow us to store more items and thus save more things from landfill. Not to mention, we could do more testing to make sure that donations work properly, disassemble and recycle more products that can't be used anymore, and even run workshops on how to repair and mend things like clothing.

Last year, a group of fourth-year students conducted an economic analysis of the Free Store for us and determined that it had a social return on investment of 17 to 1; meaning that for every dollar invested into the store, $17 of good was put back into the community. This is far greater than the majority of programs run on campus. And the improbability of transforming what is essentially garbage into joy is not lost on the community. The Free Store has been covered by virtually every media group in the city, from the CBC, to RDI, to TVA and Le Droit... in newspapers, on the radio, on television, and more. What's not to love about a place where the castoffs of society, the unwanted things we have discarded, the underdogs if you will, become the heroes?

The results of the 2017 Dump & Run, which is the source of the majority of the Free Store's donationd.

To date, almost 60 tonnes of materials have been processed through the Free Store. Every time a student comes to the store and takes some stuff, it allows them to potentially save hundreds of dollars. Money that can spent on tuition, or going to see a show, or visiting family and friends; basically anything that brings them more joy. This is a testament to a new paradigm of responsibility for the things we consume. Slowly we are beginning to understand that our waste doesn't stop at us and can be used again.

The Free Store offers the community piece of mind, knowing that their old stuff isn't going into landfill. Instead it is finding a second life and doing some good out there. The Free Store has donated stuff to people who have lost their belongings through fire or theft, it has donated to shelters who help people get back on their feet, it has given binders and school supplies to kids headed back to class, it has even given stuff to make art installations and theater productions.



Now let me ask you a question, how much do you think all of this is worth to you? What is the value of having a place to bring things guilt-free and to take things that make your life better? What would you be willing to give to make sure that the Free Store keeps this amazing idea of the circular economy going strong? What would you be willing to part with to keep the planet safe and our communities healthy?
So what we really need you to do right now is reach down into your purse or pocket, pull out your wallet, and then put it right back!

What? Did you think I was going to ask you for money? No, no, no no... that wouldn't be very awesome... and I said the Free Store was awesome!
Not okay...
Not alright...
Not pretty good...
Full fledged 100% awesome! The kind of awesome that makes you do a double take. The kind of awesome the makes you wish everything was this good. The kind of awesome that makes you think that maybe we can solve this whole environmental issue just by caring a bit more.

You see, I don't have to ask you for money because others have already covered the costs. Community Life and Housing Services are giving us the space, and Facilities is helping us get some new and reused furniture. The only thing I want you to do is grab your phone and send  a little thank you message. By telling these people what the Free Store means to you, you are telling them that this is the kind of stuff you want to see on campus.
twitter.com/uocampus
www.facebook.com/uOCampus

We launch the new space in September so keep an eye on our social media for specific details about the location and our hours. We never have enough volunteers so if you want to help us keep this dream going, send us a message. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss out on big news like this, sign up for our newsletter.

~ jonathan rausseo - campus sustainability manager