Melissa Kansky went along with me and shot this video.
In the Artist's Marketplace, one can discover everything from an adorned Chinese checkerboard, a necklace made with spoon handles, purses, decorative buttons to a cardboard construction of WALL-E.
And that just scratches the surface of the layout of The Scrap Exchange in Durham, N.C.
The creative reuse center is a place for artists, children, teachers, collectors and anyone with an imagination. Its mission is "to promote creativity, environmental awareness and community through reuse."
The nonprofit is 90 percent self-sufficient, and it supplements all activities through fundraising, support from the city of Durham, different grants and foundations and individual donations.
The Scrap Exchange's materials come from different industries. The center specializes in industrial discards, but it has opened the door to residential waste. Businesses and manufacturers get rid of leftovers by giving them to sustainable stores like The Scrap Exchange.
The store receives more than 800 drop-off material donations per year in addition to collections from regular visits to more than 250 businesses around Durham.
"There's only 44 creative reuse centers in the country in 13 states, and we are the only one in North Carolina," Executive Director Ann Woodward said.
Since the store is a destination location for people looking for strange and unusual materials, Woodward said they attract people from across the state.
Chris Rosenthal, an immigrant who worked for a similar organization in her home country of Australia, started The Scrap Exchange in 1991. Rosenthal, along with her husband, got together with some other people interested in the project.
Woodward started in 1994 when she did outreach for a creative art service. She directed hands-on programming, drove to factories to pick up materials and helped with almost every job.
She minored in sculpture at Buffalo State College, where she found a particular passion for metal.
"(I) just realized there is a lot of power in found objects and found materials, and I'm very interested in how things fit together," she said.
Bethany Yoder has been to The Scrap Exchange on several occasions, but was there for a particular reason this week.
Along with her 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter Lily, Yoder was searching for materials to make Christmas gifts for her nieces and nephews. She wanted to make fuzzy little critters with eyes and noses, flags, wands or caterpillars. In the past, Yoder has come to the store to buy rugs for her home, materials for sewing projects and supplies to make birthday gifts.
"It's very neat," Conner said. "Kids like it a lot. It's a good way to recycle things."
In addition to birthdays, The Scrap Exchange offers hands-on creative arts programming at festivals and big fairs, visits schools to host creative arts workshops, trains teachers on how to use the materials in their curriculums and leads corporate teambuilding workshops.
School visits cost $1.75 per child.
Woodward came to Elon years ago to lead a professional development course with students training to be teachers. She brought materials and gave an introduction about where they came from.
Woodward said her goal in leading workshops like these is to explain how the process of reuse centers work so the participants know there are resources out there.
"It's like teaching people how to farm," Woodward said. "If they know how to find the materials, they can use that for the rest of their life."
Woodward said her favorite materials in the center are the fire extinguishers and the construction and demolition waste, especially the metal.
"People bring in their collections of fabric, which I think is one of my favorite things that happens," Woodward said.
One woman was making saris with fabric she collected from the 1960s and 1970s and brought in her leftovers. The Scrap Exchange is well known for its fabric and for what it sells from the blue barrels. The barrels are filled with random items with which patrons can fill a bag for a set price.
The Scrap Exchange also has a "Green Gallery," where it exhibits more than 100 artists per year.
"The gallery promotes artists who are using reuse materials in their artwork," Woodward said.
Woodward said the center has a no-glue policy. When people don't use glue, they begin to think about the properties of the materials, Woodward said.
"You're not sitting around waiting for the glue to dry," Woodward said. "You're actually having this vibrant, active conversation about what you're doing with the materials.And you're creating community. You're talking to the person next to you."
The education students Woodward works with have to make something and do a critique at the end of the workshop to talk about what they made and why.
"I like function," Woodward said. "I'm a big form and function person. I want things to be beautiful that you can use on a daily basis."
Exhibit A was the orange flower pinned to her chest. It was made out of a smashed aerosol can top.
"I just think collecting and disseminating used materials should really be a part of the future because we really need to conserve resources," Woodward said. "We can't keep cutting down trees. We need to keep what is valuable out of the landfill and put it in the hands of people who can use the materials."
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