Image via Chute Gerdeman

As CG’s resident Materials and Trend Specialist, one of my key duties is keeping our studio’s materials library up-to-date. With a focus on what’s new, there are items that inevitably get pulled off our library shelves. I’ve been hanging onto unwanted items, waiting for an opportunity to recycle them, rather than dumping everything into the trash. As it turns out, there are others outside of our industry who find value in my unused porcelain tile samples or a discontinued wallcovering binder. And IIDA has created a program to bring us together and reduce the waste.

ZeroLandfill™ is a wonderful event, hosted by IIDA in various chapter cities, where designers and architects can donate old library samples, binders and other items that are taking up valuable real estate in a materials library. This reuse program offers discarded materials to local artists, teachers, DIYers or anyone else who might be able to repurpose these products.

This year, our local ZeroLandfill™ event took place over two weekends at Eartha Limited. The industry drop off was Friday, September 27th, and Friday, October 5th, with the community pick up days the following Saturday.

Image via Chute Gerdeman

The local Columbus IIDA volunteers at ZeroLandfill™ did a great job organizing the items by category to make it easy for the community to shop.

Image via Chute Gerdeman

Image via Chute Gerdeman

Here are the items Chute Gerdeman dropped off on September 27th. We’re glad these samples were able to find another home and were hopefully put to some good creative use.

Image via Chute Gerdeman

Image via Chute Gerdeman

Image via Chute Gerdeman

For information on the Columbus ZeroLandfill™ event, check out the Columbus Dispatch‘s coverage here.