Give Us Useful Stuff!

What we're looking for: Clothing that's too beaten up for the thrift shop, but still has useful fabric left. Natural fibers only. We need to be able to compost any scraps we can't make better use of.

How we use them: T-shirt yarn, Dry-Pods, quilts, rice bags, basically anything you can make out of fabric.

How to prep them: Wash anything that needs it. Otherwise, no prep necessary.

Token Rewards: If it's a decent bundle of clothes, we'll give you a 15 minute token for the effort of bringing them down to the Market. If you go the extra mile and collect up clothes from other households, log your time and we'll count it.

What we're looking for: CLEAN aluminum beverage cans, any size/brand

What we use them for: Camp stoves, plant tags, roof shingles for firewood racks

How to prep them: If you only have a few, you can just rinse them in the sink. If you have a bunch of them, use the Two Bucket method. This is where you fill two buckets with clean water, and then submerge as many cans as possible in Bucket A. Wait a few minutes for any gunk to dissolve, and then start emptying the water out of the cans back into Bucket A. Submerge each freshly-emptied can in Bucket B. While those are soaking, you can put a fresh round of dirty cans into Bucket A. Now empty the water out of the Bucket B cans back into Bucket B and set them to dry. You can use this method to wash hundreds of cans before the Bucket B water starts getting dirty.

Token Rewards: Our experiments have shown that we can wash about a can a minute using the Two Bucket method. So if you bring us clean cans, we'll give you a minute's worth of tokens for every can you bring in. (Token denominations start at 5 minutes, so there may have to be some rounding.) If you bring us cans that still need to be cleaned, we'll say thank you, but you won't get any tokens.

What we're looking for: Letter-sized (8.5x11") paper that's blank on one side. Junk mail, old flyers, and meeting agendas are all good sources.

How we use them: Seed packets, notepad refills, art paper for kids

How to prep them: Check the pages to make sure you aren't giving us any personal information you wouldn't want out in the world. We've got a roller stamp like this one available at the Artisan Market if there's anything you want to redact.

Token Rewards: This one's a fairly low-labor material, but if you bring in a stack of 100+ sheets, we'll give you a 15 minute token in recognition of the effort involved in collecting the paper and bringing it down to the Market.

What we're looking for: Standard plastic shopping bags. All colors and brands accepted, but colors other than white are most appreciated.

How we use them: Plarn, ecobricks, fused plastic projects

How to prep them: No prep needed, though sorting by color would definitely be a bonus

Token Rewards: We all know that the real reward for giving us your plastic shopping bags is getting them out of your house. That being said, if you go out of your way to get us bags from other towns in interesting colors, and you tell us the story when you turn them in, you might get a token or two.

What we're looking for: Locally grown seeds from identified plants. We're open to pretty much any species, as long as it's not a noxious invasive.

How we use them: The Commoners' Seed Library

How to prep them: Seed saving is an art, and way too complicated to convey in a paragraph. If you're interested in learning how to do it, come talk to us and we'll pair you up with an experienced local gardener.

Token Rewards: Do your best to log your time on this one. Collecting and processing seeds can take radically different amounts of time depending on species and growing conditions.

What we're looking for: Corrugated plastic yard signs. (The stiff kind, not the kind that's like a plastic bag.)

How we use them: Making boxes, jigs, retail displays, any application where you want something lightweight but reasonably sturdy. This stuff is up-cycler gold.

How to prep them: No real prep needed. If they're actively muddy, maybe hose them off.

Token Rewards: If it's been hanging out in your garage and we're taking it off your hands, we'll give you a five minute token for bringing it to the Market. If you put time into cleaning them up from public land, tell us that story.

What we're looking for: Wooden shipping pallets. They don't need to be in perfect condition, but ideally better than scrap.

How we use them: Compost bins, firewood bins

How to prep them: No prep needed! We'll even pick them up if you can't bring them down to the Market.

Token Rewards: Depends on whether and where you can deliver them.

What we're looking for: A magical amulet that pauses time for everyone but the wearer, and also solves the physics/breathing/etc complications that would cause.

How we use them: Being able to actually implement all the cool projects we have in mind without seasonal pressures or global emergencies getting in the way. (Seriously, look at all the cool stuff we do without having one of these, and then imagine what we could do if we had one. We would be worthy collective keepers of it's power, and only very occasionally use it to draw on people's faces while they're on live TV.)

How to prep them: If only we knew...

Token Rewards: All of them?