An addition to the back of the house leaves you with piles of usable but odd-sized wood, wood you`d feel guilty about just throwing into the garbage.
Unfortunately, few curbside recycling haulers will collect such items, and most resale shops either refuse to pick them up or have no room for them. But starting Saturday, Westmont residents will have the chance to alleviate some of that ecological guilt when R2 Reuse Centers Inc. begins service at the Westmont recycling drop-off center, 111 E. Burlington Ave.
Available from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the first and third Saturdays of the month, the service will accept usable building material, household items, office equipment and commercial or manufacturing leftovers, said R2 President Catherine Wells.
”People automatically think of saving big items like furniture,” she said. ”But if you look at all the things we can save, it`s astonishing. There`s all this perfectly usable stuff-paper, pie plates, corks, wood, gaskets.”
R2 will pick up the materials at the center and transfer them to a 20,000-square-foot warehouse at 9690 W. 55th St. in Countryside where they will be organized and displayed for sale to the general public, Wells said.
Based on a similar operation in Berkeley, Calif., the center`s alternative disposal method fills a huge gap in the the current waste-hauling cycle, she said.
”The service helps close the recycling loop and capture the economic value of discarded materials,” Wells said. ”It also reduces the volume of materials going to the landfills and gives people a place to find some real interesting things.”
The program has already caught the attention of local residents. One woman has already offered to donate a 6-foot wooden fence, Wells said.
Though R2 is currently trying to set up similar programs in other areas of the county, Westmont will be the benchmark for the service, Wells said. And when R2`s truck stakes out a spot at the drop-off center Saturday, Wells and an assistant will be on hand with fingers crossed, ready to distribute literature and encourage residents to drop off unwanted but reusable goods.
”I`m hoping that people will come just to get educated,” she said.
”Westmont is basically the grand startup for this program. This is where it could all happen.”
