Wednesday 16th October 2024
In 2009, I came to Portland to visit Metro paints as one of the organisations that I was supporting through Circular Communities Scotland at the time wanted to set up a paint reuse business. While we there we walked along the street to check out a big reuse facility called ReBuilding centre and I’m pretty sure that’s where the seed of large-scale reuse was first planted for me. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and when I was putting together the itinerary for this trip, it was top of the list to return to.
"ReBuilding Center is a climate justice organization on a mission to make reuse and repair accessible to all as a means to reduce waste, end overconsumption, and empower homeowners and renters by making better use of our existing resources. We know that the ability to perform home repairs is one of the key factors in keeping people safe in their homes and resilient in the face of climate change, especially people living with low incomes. We also know that a tremendous amount of useful building and construction materials fill up our landfills every year. We connect this material to the people who need it, and teach folks how to repair instead of replace"
Audrey, their communications manager, kindly showed me around their facility and it was clear there has been a lot of change since I was last there. Their 30,000 sq ft warehouse is, in the main, filled with construction and home renovation materials. Previously what had really caught my attention was that it was full of pretty much everything including homewares, furniture, upcycled goods (possibly even some textiles?) with room layouts and different sections for the different types of materials.
Audrey explained that the product streams they handle have narrowed now though and there has been ongoing discussion around their ‘north star’ as she put it – the aims and objectives and driving motivations for the organisation - shifting slightly.
In the beginning (it was founded in 1997), it was wholly environmentally driven with the aim of keeping reusable items out of landfill. They became a facility that accepted anything and everything that they could and went about finding new homes and markets for it. Over time, as you’ll see from their blurb above, they have shifted that focus slightly to only take in items that further an additional branch of ‘north star’ of supporting people to stay in their homes through affordable building materials and a wide range of classes designed to upskill people in DIY. A recent blog post explains their “three e’s” of the Rebuilding Centres impact – Economic, Education, Empowerment.
They fundamentally remain an environmental/reuse organisation, but these ongoing discussions and changes have been vital to the sustainability of their business model and crucially changing needs of their community.
They could not carry on taking in everything and everything when the markets were not always there for it. At the same time, there is a dire need in Portland to support people to stay in their homes as the number of people displaced due to inadequate housing is increasing.
"ReBuilding Center continues to work every day to ensure that everyone has access to:
There are ongoing discussions about the whether the organisation is changing from a 'waste diversion' organisation to a 'home repair' organisation. Items are priced to sell and priced to be affordable to their target market. Their market is to meet community demand for products they are in need of at a low cost, a subtle but important difference to being an organisation that takes in unwanted but reusable items and finding them a market.
Their home repair classes are a new addition and support their home repair aim. Again, these classes are a shift from the ‘creative reuse’ classes they still run, but less frequently and for a higher price.
Audrey also explained some history with their deconstruction activity which was originally a core activity and source of materials. Along with others including historic preservation, they campaigned to mandate for deconstruction of buildings over demolition. This allowed them to access reusable materials and significantly reduce the amount of materials going to landfill from these projects. However, reuse was not specifically mandated for, so private sector operators that deconstructed but didn’t necessarily reuse were able to come in at a lower price and change the market.
This had a significant impact in stock and their limiting factor is being able to access enough quality material. Today stock comes from public donations and returned/over stock from a few new retailer contracts.
Their website lays out their ’Rebuilding for justice campaign’ which explains really well why and how reuse and repair supports community resilience, and tackles climate, economic and racial injustice.
They have recently started working with government partners to raise the profile on the value of reuse. Their goals is for reuse to be treated the same that recycling has been in the past. While they receive grants from Metro, the situation they are rightly striving for is an ongoing contract, as a key delivery partner, to deliver against reuse goals.
So, while at first I may have been disappointed about the change in what I saw, it's actually given me loads to think about. There’s a lot of learning for Scotland in terms of developing and pivoting business models and being clear about the goal of large-scale reuse. We are at the beginning of the journey and in some senses lucky that we can jump on some of the learning of those pioneers who have been doing it a lot longer.
There are themes starting to develop on my visits around having a clear product and market focus and the consistent intertwining of reuse and supporting community wealthbuilding ,and community need, with people being at the centre - The real ‘North Star’ of reuse.
More pictures and videos in this album on my flickr page
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