Recycling - SCARCE

Finder's keepers and reuses
Nothing goes to waste at a self-proclaimed Dumpster diver's group. Old keys are melted for their metal, and wine corks go toward classroom art projects.
LA Times: May 10, 2010 by Heidi Steven, Chicago Tribune

Kay McKeen has sent microscopes to Ghana, zippers to Ethiopia, textbooks to India and a baby grand piano to a high school on Chicago's South Side.

She outfits classrooms across Illinois. She turns wax nubs into bright, gorgeous crayons. She collects, sorts and donates hundreds of thousands of books.

She's equal parts environmentalist, Dumpster diver and missionary, and her motivation is simple: "If we don't rescue it, it's in a landfill forever."

McKeen, 59, of Wheaton, Ill., is the founder and executive director of SCARCE (School and Community Assistance for Recycling and Composting Education), an organization dedicated to collecting people's unwanted stuff and finding a use for it — from bottle caps and old keys to overhead projectors and, in one case, a 16-foot balance beam.

"It came from a school whose insurance no longer covered gymnastics," McKeen recalled. "We found a magnet school in Chicago that just happened to need a new balance beam."

When you walk though the front door at SCARCE headquarters in Glen Ellyn, Ill., tidy suburbia gives way to delightful chaos. Thousands of books line the walls from floor to ceiling. A shelving unit holds containers of American flags, dried-up ballpoint pens, eyeglasses, old keys, wine corks, cellphones and other items that often get tossed.

"It's not trash," McKeen said. "It's resources."

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"We're throwing out stuff that can help save lives." READ MORE !