Recycled Books and Bags at the Campus Bookstore
The Recycling Crew at Warren Wilson is constantly trying to think of new ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. One of the more creative ways we have come up with is to make notebooks and bags out of materials that come out of our community's trash.
The notebooks are made from the covers of discarded library books and one-sided paper. We cut the old paperback library books and recycle the pages. We turn the old book covers into new notebook covers and fill them with pages that have print on one side but are blank on the other side.
Our recycled "Trash Bagz" are made from scrap fabric that comes through the trash. Sometimes we cut up old jeans that have too many holes to put in the Free Store, or we use belts for straps. If you look closely at many of our Trash Bagz, some of their linings are made out of old T-Shirts. We collect ripped sheets, ugly curtains, fabric samples, all kinds of trash-worthy cloth in our bag workshop to produce the hippest recycled bags around! We are currently producing one-of-a-kind trash couture handbags, reusable grocery bags, tote bags, and ipod-cases.
RADICAL
You can purchase a recycled notebook or trash couture bag at the Warren Wilson College Campus Bookstore, located in downstairs Gladfelter. The books are $3 each and the bags range from $7-$9. We set the prices low to encourage our community to buy things made out of recycled material instead of new material.
Check out this wonderful story about Trash Bagz from Keri!
"Hello Recycling Crew & Jessica, I just wanted to share a funny little story with you, about you. A few minutes ago I was in the bookstore looking for gifts when Kendra Powell yelled from across the store "hey look at this purse made by the recycling crew". I gazed over and burst out laughing....the purse is made of old jeans and off-white material with very colorful red, blue, green, and orangeish almost butterfly shapes as the pattern. A blue-grey belt is the strap. I just wanted to let you know I gave that material to your beloved free store a few weeks ago during a MAD cleaning frenzy. The material came from Ghana, West Africa. I purchased it when I was in the Peace Corps in '96 , right after I graduated from WWC. I bought the material at an open air market full of used clothing...so who knows where it originally came from! For almost 2 years I used the colorful material in my little house, in the village of Daffiama, as a curtain. Anyway I was really glad to see it had been turned into a purse.
Yeah Recycling Crew! Love, Keri"
