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The Green Bin

East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse

     It’s 5:45 on a cold, dark, rainy January night. A well-dressed man walks into the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, just as it’s about to close. Wearing an expertly tailored suit, expensive wing-tipped shoes and holding the hand of a 6-year-old boy, the stylish man looks like he should be in an Armani ad rather than a discount arts center. “Can I help you?” asks Linda Levitsky, director of the depot. The man looks her in the eye and says one word: “Spaceship.”
     “Spaceship?” Levitsky asks, “When?”
     “Tomorrow,” the man replies. The staff springs into action, searching the store and gathering materials — oatmeal containers, foam core, tubes, leftover hoses. “And off they went into the night to build their spaceship,” Levitsky recalls. It’s one of her favorite stories.
      For 14 years Levitsky has been director of the depot, which she calls, “an ecological treasure trove.” Founded 30 years ago by two Oakland teachers with the mission of providing reused materials at rock-bottom prices (or for free) to educators and artists and diverting usable material from landfills, today the depot serves just about any creative type. Its reuse program has kept about 400 tons of material from the landfill last year alone.
     The depot operates a retail store on Telegraph Avenue, attracting as many as 200 paying customers per weekend day. In addition to giving deep discounts to teachers and social service agencies — like donating sewing machines to a program to teach low-income women to sew — the depot also conducts outreach programs, such as Art in the Heart, a Richmond after-school program, and a reuse program in Contra Costa County.
      Open daily, the depot accepts all kinds of craft donations. “We just love stuff like beads, art and craft materials, crayons, paper and yarn,” says Levitsky. “Used calendars. And National Geographics, which are in huge demand.”
      The oddest donation? Four wisdom teeth in a jar, says Levitsky, though her staff prefers the dreadlocks in a jar.

East Bay Center for Creative Reuse, 11 a.m.–6 p.m. daily, 4695 Telegraph Ave., (510) 547-6470, creativereuse.org.