Around 640 kg of items like expired car seats, used toothpaste tubes and old raggedy shoes and more are getting the chance at a second life thanks to the Guelph Tool Library’s annual Re:Purpose Fest held Saturday.
The festival, which started in 2019 after the GTL received a provincial grant to run sustainably-focused programs, gives people the chance to recycle or repurpose items that would normally end up in the landfill.
“We just thought it was a really good way to get people to rethink their waste, and that not everything that we’ve assumed is trash needs to go to landfill,” said Steph Clarke, communications and outreach coordinator for the GTL.
The festival paused during the pandemic and started back up in 2022, when they collected 3,500 kg worth of items, including around 100 car sets, tons of camping gear for the BIPOC Outdoor Gear Library and scrap metal for Habitat for Humanity.
It gets a bit bigger every year; this year, held in the Quebec Street Mall, they added a sustainable vendor market for the first time, with upcycled art and more.
It’s a collaboration with the Guelph Tool Library and the City of Guelph; donated items are collected on behalf of more than 20 different organizations to help keep goods out of the landfill.
This year, the GTL collected 23 expired car seats, 7.5 kg of cork, 7.5 kg of coffee bags, 10 cell phones, one laptop, 25 pairs of glasses, five power tools, 15 kg of disposable razors, comic books, personal care packaging and more.
The Freehub Community Bike Centre collected two bikes and repaired several more; Danby’s Circle Home Furniture Bank collected five sewing machines and some sewing supplies, and Art Not Shame and Community Hearts collected 200 kg in art supplies and more.
For many people, old shoes or broken items might just get chucked into the garbage. But even if you choose to recycle something in the blue bin – a lot of what gets put in doesn’t necessarily get recycled, Clarke said.
Whereas if you repurpose something, “it goes right to somebody who needs it, or can be put to use versus being broken down into something that can’t be recycled further.”
The goal of the festival, besides recycling and repurposing, is to get people to think differently about their waste products – to think of it as a resource instead of waste.
“Our motto is to help people find the joy in sharing, and you can share waste as a resource – not just things that you’re personally going to put to use,” Clarke said.
It’s helpful, too, because when people drop their waste off to be repurposed or recycled, they can learn about what happens to it from city staff or other organizations.
For instance, she said people often don’t realize wine corks can be recycled.
“Natural cork is one of the materials that’s highly recyclable,” she said. “So we know a company that’s based out of Mississauga that will take cork to recycle for things like flooring and other products.”
Expired car seats are another one. Most facilities don’t accept them because it requires so much work to strip them down to their raw materials. But the City of Guelph collaborates with the GTL to pay a third party recycler to do that work.
“It puts it more top of mind for people. When they go to their grey and green and blue bins at the end of the week, they might think, there’s another place for this. It doesn’t have to even go into our traditional recycling streams – maybe there’s another step before that.
“Our hope is that events like this can help break that mindset (of just tossing stuff into the bin), and allow people to think, what’s another opportunity for this piece of waste?”
