This blog will document findings, and download thoughts from my Churchill fellowship tour round the USA. Over the next 5 weeks, l will be visiting and learning from large reuse facilities and their impact on communities. The trip takes in New York, Minneapolis, Portland, Eugene, the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin.
As someone who founded a community reuse project and has a day job supporting the sector and trying to mainstream reuse in Scotland, there’s a lot that I’m looking to learn – from ideas on creative displays, to how to garner multimillion pound investment for something epic.
Some questions I'm looking to have answered:
What does large-scale reuse looks like here and what makes it work?
How did they get started and how are they funded?
What is the reuse culture like in these places, who shops second hand and why?
What are all the other non-waste impacts and how do they measure them?
What draws in customers and how is it marketed?
What cool ideas can we borrow to make reuse more mainstream and accessible in Scotland?
So, not too much then! I have lots of questions but I’m trying hard to not focus on finding answers, and instead be curious and open to what I see and learn and giving it all time to digest.
Having these five weeks and this space is a huge gift which I intend to enjoy wholeheartedly…but of course fully intending on coming back with all the answers and a gut full of passion to put it all in to practice :-)
My hope is that this blog will help inspire others to want to make change happen in Scotland, whether through policy and support, or making things happen on the ground.
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