Cascade Alliance

Five Headline Friday (4/20/18)

Come and get your Five Headline Friday to see what’s been going on this Earth Week!

• The Scrap Exchange, our partner, expands with the opening of Scrap Thrift!
• In Turkey, a fun street featuring recycled materials helps local business thrive
• A sustainability center in Ireland, featuring furniture repair and repurposing, thrift, education, jobs and more
• A new and better plastic-eating enzyme is developed, timely for this year’s Earth Day plastics theme.
• A deep but important dive into a trend we’re reading more about retail toward circular economy initiatives.  If more businesses begin adopting this, would there be an impact on donation-based thrift retail?

Scrap Exchange in Durham provides platform for sustainable practices

We’re excited to share this news about our partner Scrap Exchange which is celebrating the grand opening of their new Scrap Thrift store today!  Cascade Alliance’s own Bethany Cartledge was there to help!  More news about that on the way.  Until then..

Turkey’s Van doubles down on recycling efforts

An encouraging story about a town in Turkey that made a whole street out of recycled materials.  People were inspired to see creative recycling/reusing to enhance urban spaces,  and local businesses benefited significantly, as the effort drew more people to the area. Link to video in story may not work, here’s the direct link to video:

Furniture is forever

We would love to visit this place in Dublin, Ireland.  The Rediscovery Centre has teams working on recycling, upcycling, building, repairing and creating items – from furniture to clothing, to bicycles to paint – from already-existing material.  It’s a one-stop shop for sustainability, with creative projects being built and sold on site, an educational center and school outreach, and with a cafe, a place for locals and staff to hang out and mingle.  The Centre offers employment opportunities and skill development for further career development.  There’s so much more, it’s worth the dive into this inspiring story…

This enzyme eats plastic and could revolutionize recycling, scientists say

This year’s Earth Day theme is focused on the problem of plastic pollution.  Here’s a hopeful story about an innovation that could help.

Keeping Customer Connections

This report advises retailers: “customer relationships don’t have to end at the point of sale”. It was created with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and several members of The Circular Economy 100 (CE100) group, to help retailers start exploring and applying circular economy thinking.  We believe it shows trends in retailing that can have impacts on donation-based retail thrift business models.