Turning trash into teacher treasure
A warehouse tucked at the back of The Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) is piled high with all of the supplies a teacher could need. There are stacks of binders, rows of books, piles of colored pencils and markers. It functions like a normal store, teachers can look around the warehouse and pick up the supplies they need, but when it’s time to check out instead of paying, they weigh their items and take them home for free.
“The impact is huge. The number of people who come in and say, ‘I had this on my Amazon wish list, and now I don’t have to spend my own money on it.’ It’s amazing for teachers,” Reuse Coordinator for Athens-Clarke County Solid Waste Sandy Cedarbaum said.
Cedarbaum runs the reuse store and is responsible for screening and organizing donations and works with a team of volunteers. The store is stocked with donations from the Athens community, businesses, government agencies and the University of Georgia (UGA). Aside from the everyday classroom materials, Cedarbaum keeps her eye out for unusual items.
“We take things that you think of for a typical classroom: storage containers, shelving units, art supplies, crayons, pencils, scissors, all of your typical things. But we also try to think of not just your typical classroom, but maybe (agriculture) teachers, drama teachers, that sort of thing,” Cedarbaum said. “Last month, EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency) contacted us, and they had these buoys. There’s not really a reason that a classroom teacher is going to use that, but I posted something about it and then they were gone because it’s perfect prop.”
Stephanie Lewis co-teaches science and English at Cedar Shoals and is a frequent customer at the Teacher Reuse Store. She goes once a week to decompress after work and search for interesting classroom items.“You just walk in, it’s a warehouse with rows of shelves, and it’s just magical junk,” Lewis said.
Lewis started going to the Reuse Store during the pandemic. After finding out she’d be teaching from home, she heard about the store and retrieved a free computer monitor to use for her classes. Since then Lewis has filled her classroom with recycled items and has also helped out her colleagues with their own needs.
“If I see some type of office supply or something like that, I usually already have a teacher in mind that has expressed ‘I need this.’ So if I spot it while I’m there, I just go ahead and get it,” Lewis said. “Usually by the time I leave my trunk is full of prizes that I bring for the next day.”
Star Scott is the founder and manager of the UGA Sustainable Science and Green Labs Program. Since 2016, the program donates regularly to the Teacher Reuse Store as part of their dedication to keeping UGA’s labs sustainable. Scott is impressed with the impact that the reuse store has on Athens.
“The value of the teacher reuse store can’t be overestimated. It’s an incredible value to our community, to our local teachers, to our schools who are underfunded. We’re building community through the teacher reuse store. They strengthen community resilience. They’re doing some really incredible things,” Scott said.
“We take things that you think of for a typical classroom: storage containers, shelving units, art supplies, crayons, pencils, scissors, all of your typical things. But we also try to think of not just your typical classroom, but maybe (agriculture) teachers, drama teachers, that sort of thing,”
The store’s purpose works hand-in-hand: providing resources for teachers while diverting trash from the landfill. In the 2024-25 school year the program kept 54 tons out of the landfill. Cedarbaum has a background in wildlife biology and has been interested in sustainability for a long time. She was initially drawn to working at the reuse store because of its mission to keep useful items out of the landfill.
“I used to be a wildlife biologist, then I ran an eco-friendly store, and this seemed like a good segue to running the store. The idea was, ‘how do we keep things out of our landfill? How do we get more use out of items that still have use in them?’” Cedarbaum said.
UGA Green Labs works with the 1,900 research labs on UGA’s main campus to donate their supplies. Because of changes in scientific processes, many labs end up no longer having a need for supplies, like old lab glassware, that are in perfectly fine condition, so UGA Green Labs ensures they don’t go to waste. Scott’s team makes sure the items are in good condition before offering them up within the university first. If nobody takes them they are then brought to the Teacher Reuse Store.
“These are really expensive, valuable materials, so we wanted to be good stewards of those resources and keep them in use, and one great way that we could do that and also serve our community was to connect with local teachers,” Scott said.
To encourage return trips and recognize top shoppers, the store keeps a leaderboard of the teachers who have diverted the most waste. With her classroom being full of items from the store, Lewis has made this list in the past. She has found many interesting items at the store, including a lamp that she later found selling retail for $250.
“The store engages the community in the benefit of finding a use for something rather than just filling our landfills. Some of the stuff that is in the store that was slated to be in the landfill, tons of metal, tons of plastics would be underground for hundreds of years, if not longer,” Lewis said
The Teacher Reuse Store is an important community resource to Athens, supporting local teachers and schools and diverting waste from Athens’ landfills.
“We can no longer afford a society where we are using a product once and throwing it away. We’ve got to move to a society where we’re keeping items in use or repurposing them,” Scott said.
