Recycling store provides art supplies to non-profits, teachers

Mary Kay Baker has made a career out of garbage.

As the reuse coordinator and recycling center supervisor for Monroe County, she collects anything from milk jugs to old newspapers and, in one instance, a bone collection – all to be used by different non-profits around Bloomington.

She runs the Materials for the Arts Center at the Monroe County recycling center on South Walnut Street, a center that takes all sorts of items and donates them to local non-profits to reduce waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

“You never know what someone is going to want,” Baker said.

She has several volumes of newspaper articles about different community projects for which she and other employees have helped find materials.

She has helped collect costumes for local theater groups, old appliances for WonderLab’s “take apart classes,” hundreds of old CDs for the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, 1,200 milk jugs for an igloo, old newspapers for the Bloomington Animal Shelter, a bone collection for a science teacher, and she has even helped find homes for pets.

“I can’t think of anything we can’t find a home for,” Baker said.

Thank-you cards and numerous craft projects, including a snake made from bottle caps and a paper mache angel, decorate the walls and ceiling in the cramped store. Baker can tell you the story of almost every decorative item; she said the bottle cap snake was made by IU students completing community service requirements after getting different drinking citations one Little 500 weekend.

“If there wasn’t a recycle center, these projects wouldn’t happen,” said Martina Celerin, developer for the Fourth Street Festival of the Arts and Crafts.

Celerin said she is a regular at the center.

People can rummage through the center every Thursday from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. or by appointment.

“We’re all breaking the speed limit just to get here,” said Charlie Hamm, a local Head
Start teacher.

“Every week I find something that surprises me. It’s like Christmas,” laughed Kim Meyer of the Youth Services Bureau. 

She has been there a couple times – once to find toys to attach to the Lotus bicycle and once to find general craft supplies.

“It makes me wish more people give here because everything stays local,” she said.
Beth Harris, another teacher for Head Start, agreed.
 
“We want other businesses to know not to throw stuff away,” she said.

Because Head Start works with low-income, underprivileged families, she said she is always trying “to provide many families with as much stuff as we can,” she said.
“We can find anything here,” Harris said.

She gloated about great finds, saying one day she was “so excited to find a Polly Pocket.”

If the goods aren’t picked up inside, Baker will move them outside for the Sidewalk Exchange, where residents can also take items for free, so long as they promise not to sell them later. She said she has had many college students looking for apartment furnishings, while she has had homeless people looking for shower curtains to use as tents.

“We have so many needy people in Bloomington,” Baker said, and “some people won’t get rid of anything ... every community should have something like this.”

Baker helped open the art supplies center when the recycling center moved from its Rogers Street location.

“We always saw such good stuff thrown away, so we got the idea to have the room here to keep stuff from the landfill,” she said.

Because of the reuse center, if someone wants old National Geographic magazines or wants to get rid of an antique chamber pot, they can post requests on a bulletin board outside.

Baker said the outside items go within a matter of minutes. She said she’s never seen a fight, but a chamber pot almost caused an outburst.

“There’s no end to what people want,” she said. However, “people can’t keep throwing everything away.”