2024 Community Reuse Grant Winners!

The NYSAR³ Reuse Committee is excited to announce the funding of four projects through the 2024-2025 Community Reuse Grant.

Alchemical Nursery Bike Depot, Syracuse, NY

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The 713 Marcellus St. Bike Depot is a member and volunteer-run community bicycle shop founded in 2022. At the Depot, you work on your bike with depot tools and spare parts. Volunteer mechanics and other members are on hand to advise. Our volunteer team has a range of bicycle repair experience, from professionals to amateurs. We are united by love of bicycles and our appreciation for the health, social, and economic benefits of bicycle transportation.  Our project focus is to create a renting and lending bike program in addition to replacement of single-use items through procurement of reusable materials.  Our goal is to keep bicycles working for as long as possible through repair and replacement of parts and to return bicycles to use that have been abandoned or left for dead.

Bed Stuy Clothes Swap Brooklyn, NY

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:  Develope an Upcycling Club based in Bed-Stuy: participants will be coming to biweekly sessions over the course of six months and learning different upcycling techniques and skills. Importantly, they will be bringing their own clothing or reusing clothing we have collected from our previous clothing swaps. The goal is to keep clothing out of the landfill while also empowering historically marginalized communities to extend the life cycle of their items.  As Bed-Stuy is a rapidly gentrifying area, people who have historically lived here cannot necessarily invest in sustainable or ethical clothing because of its lack of affordability. Upcycling represents a green alternative to consuming fast fashion items which due to their short lifecycle contribute more to clothing waste. 

Dish Truck, Mecklenburg, NY

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:  Dish Truck is a dish rental/consulting company that provides low cost, reusable dishware, compost collection and event management services to help people host zero waste events. Initially started as a non-profit in 2015, we have kept over a quarter of a million pieces of garbage out of the landfill, and captured over 750 gallons of compost.  Currently, clean dishes are delivered to events, used and then transported to a commercial kitchen for washing and sanitizing after the event. Our project is to retrofit a box truck to hold a solar powered commercial dishwashing system to enable us to wash dishes onsite at large events. We would also like to incorporate a gray water capture system to harvest this nutrient dense resource for reuse in a managed wetland garden. This project will take our operations to the next level of sustainability.

Running to Places Theatre Company, Ithaca, NY

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:  Running to Places Theatre Company (R2P) is eager to build a free Theatre Lending Library for Tompkins County and develop a reuse eco-system amongst regional theatres and performing arts organizations. Local theatres struggle with constrained budgets & very limited storage space. By building a Theatre Lending Library, we aim to address these issues while strengthening resource sharing, improving reuse & repair practices, and advancing sustainability in regional theatre operations.