The WasteShed's 7th Anniversary: We're Expanding!
On September 4th, 2021, the WasteShed celebrated its 7th anniversary. We are so grateful to our incredible community, staff, customers, board and volunteers for helping us achieve this milestone, and especially for your support in the tumultuous last year and a half. The brilliant makers and teachers we have gotten to know in the last 7 years of running Chicago's only art materials thrift store, and the wonderful work that has come out of the city's excess and discarded materials, are truly awe-inspiring, and we are lucky to be a part of it all.
Between 2014 and 2021, The WasteShed has:
received over 46,000 visitors at our Humboldt Park store
provided over $13,532 of free materials to teachers through our Free to Teachers section, and an additional $79,524 of deeply discounted materials to educators since we started counting in 2018
diverted over 160,000 pounds of reusable materials away from the landfill and back into Chicago's creative and educational communities.
This 80 tons of materials is equivalent in weight to a family of sperm whales, and represents an estimated $1.45 million value to the city's makers and teachers.
A family of whales, illustration by the inimitable Anna Jo Beck
In the spirit of spawning cetaceans, The Wasteshed is delighted to announce a new member of our creative reuse family: The WasteShed Evanston! The WasteShed has partnered with Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse (ERW), with the aim of opening a second WasteShed location in a corner of the ERW's building materials reuse center in West Evanston. This ambitious expansion recognizes that these nonprofits' common environmental and social mission present a great opportunity for collaboration and mutual support (and a lot of really fun projects). Many thanks to ERW’s incredible staff for their support and encouragement during this process.
With your help, we can bring The WasteShed's creative, collaborative, and sustainable community resource to a new neighborhood in November of 2021!
Donate Today to Help The WasteShed Expand!
Donations will be matched up to $15,000 until October 8th, 2021!
Thank you to Dana M Pearl for this generous matching gift.
Recurring donations are especially helpful
Checks can be mailed to 2842 W Chicago Avenue, Chicago IL 60622.
Deeply rooted in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, a racially and economically diverse neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, The WasteShed's 10 year plan depends on establishing multiple locations around Chicago. Many of our customers make regular pilgrimages from the North Side, and we anticipate a boom in participation as our programs become more accessible to the people who can't easily travel 10 miles to our transit-underserved primary location.
Between 2018 and 2020, The WasteShed’s materials were in use in over 350 schools and nonprofit organizations in Illinois, with teachers visiting from as far away as Oklahoma, and from every zip code in Chicago.
