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THE GREEN BIN

Urban Ore: King of Reuse

     “There’s so many things here!” says a twenty-something woman to her friend as they pore through stacks of cookbooks. We’re at Urban Ore Ecopark, a 3-acre reuse and recycling facility in Berkeley, where indeed the number of items for sale is staggering. Here you can find everything from wedding dresses (displayed next to life-size papier mâché giraffes) to surfboards, eyeglass frames, electronics and vintage toys. And of course there are building supplies: old doors, windows, sinks, everything you need for a DIY construction project. “We’re a construction-related business,” explains Dan Knapp, Ph.D., founder of Urban Ore. “About 50 to 60 percent of our sales are building materials, including cabinets and hardware.”
     Knapp started out as a sociologist but quit university teaching to “do something more active in the community.” Partly by necessity he became a scavenger, salvaging at the Berkeley landfill and selling items right at the dump. He founded Urban Ore to end the age of waste with two partners (who later moved on), and 30 years later, Urban Ore still scavenges daily at the dump under license to the city of Berkeley, removing a few tons every day, which they’ll later clean, sort and sell at the store. “We essentially legitimized the scavenging business,” says Knapp.
    Only 10 percent of their items come from the landfill; the other 90 percent come from truckloads picked up from homes and businesses throughout the Bay Area, and the hundreds of loads dropped
off daily by trash haulers, junk dealers and
average citizens.
     Of all the things they’ve salvaged, Knapp is most proud of 20 boxes of old papers rescued from the dump that turned out to be priceless records from the first NAACP chapter west of the Mississippi. To Knapp, this save “demonstrates the value of reuse over recycling. Because that same set of boxes would have brought $2 to $5 as scrap but is this priceless resource now in the University of California library system.”
     There are more treasures to be had at the store. This writer picked up a three-ring binder for 10 cents and a Filofax Organizer (retail $35) for $2. Another woman had come in to find a replacement cap for
a 1950s Coleman thermos and not surprisingly
found exactly what she needed. Knapp says that kind of thing happens all the time. “I buy everything here,” the woman said. “There are bargains, bargains, bargains.”       

Urban Ore, 900 Murray St., Berkeley, (510) 841-SAVE