Bring Us Useful Stuff!

What we're looking for: Soda bottles and soda bottle caps. Any brand is fine as long as it's the shape of a standard round 2L soda bottle. If you've got a bottle without a cap or a cap without a bottle, bring them by anyway and hopefully they'll balance out.

How we use them: Ecobricks, funnels

How to prep them: Just give them a quick rinse and let them dry before you put the cap back on.

Token Rewards: Depends on quantity and cleanliness.

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 empty cereal boxes, preferably flattened for transport and storage

How we use them: Cardboard tags, Quest cards, Signage

How to prep them: Just open the panels on the top and bottom so they'll lay flat. Find a spot in your house where you can store them, and when that spot gets full, bring them down to the Market.

Token Rewards: If it's a decent bundle of boxes, 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 boxes 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: 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: Acrylic paint markers like these. Popular brands include Posca, Molotow, DecoColor, and Pen-touch.

How we use them: Distributing them to kids and other new artists who want to get into making Hour Tokens but don't have their own paint markers yet.

Token Rewards: Depends on quantity and condition

What we're looking for: Wire mesh wastebaskets in all sizes

How we use them: storing kindling or biochar that needs to dry out

Token Rewards: Depends on quantity and condition

What we're looking for: Yarn, preferably in natural fibers but the acrylic stuff has its uses as well. Also knitting needles and crochet hooks in all sizes.

How we use them: Giving out to folks at the Market who want to learn to knit or crochet so they can keep practicing at home

Token Rewards: Depends on quantity and condition

What we're looking for: We use reclaimed fabric whenever we can, but it's nice to be able to fill in the gaps with commercial yardage or fat quarters. Cool patterns are always nice, and bolts of white or unbleached muslin are a huge windfall.

How we use them: Making just about anything we might need out of fabric.

Token Rewards: Depends on quantity and condition

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: Birch bark is an incredibly useful material for everything from getting campfires going to making canoes. And we're a little worried about the lack of young, healthy birch trees around town. So if a birch comes down on your property, we would love the opportunity to put every branch and log to use. And if you have a birch that's producing seeds, PLEASE let us know as early in the season as possible so we can help you monitor the seed crop and collect as many as possible when they're ripe.

How we use them:

• Raggedy pieces of bark are used for campfires down at the Artisan Market, and distributed in campfire kits.
• Nice pieces of bark get saved up and passed along to the Culture and Language departments of local tribes so that traditional crafters can use them to pass along their skills.
• With branches and logs, we do our best to peel the bark off in big strips and patches so that the crafters can make best use of them. Then we use the wood inside for the community sugarbush.
• If we're able to collect seeds, we'll partner with local nurseries and conservation districts to help those seeds turn into plantable seedlings.

How to prep them: Do not peel bark off of living trees! Instead, visit the tree regularly and check the ground nearby for bark that's been naturally shed. Collect any fallen branches that get knocked down by the wind, and invite us to come take a look if you notice signs that tree might need help.

Token Rewards: Depends on the specifics

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 would use it: 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?

What we're looking for: A heated indoor space that meets the building code and zoning requirements for a space that's open to the public, which we could renovate to meet our needs, and which we could use for at least five years without having to raise enough cash to pay rent.

How we would use it: We would establish a commoners' meeting house, which would combine retail space, gathering/teaching space, common tools and materials storage, and workshop space for community projects. We would be able to serve as a drop-in center, a mutual aid and preparedness hub, and a way for community members to get into equipment-intensive hobbies like woodworking without having to buy a bunch of expensive equipment. We could even start a pilot project for community-scale recycling.

Token Rewards: Official "Coolest Landlord Ever" status, and exemption from any anti-landlord jokes we might make in the future.