Samantha Wittchen is passionate about recycling and “low waste” solutions. Through her work as the interim executive director at Circular Philadelphia, she is aiming to help push the world to be more renewable.
“We are working to build a low-waste, regenerative economy, which prioritizes things like reuse, repair and recycling over landfilling of items or burning them,” she said.
But recycling in Philly isn’t always easy. With limited guidance on where to recycle specific items and a trash strike limiting pickup options, she said there is a need for alternative options.
“We see the amount of waste that we generate on a daily basis,” she said. “There’s nothing like a sanitation worker strike to really confront people with the amount of trash that they generate.”
That’s where resourcePhilly comes in. The search engine helps combat these challenges by making information around recycling more accessible.
“This tool is something that allows people to find alternatives for the stuff they no longer want, rather than sending it off to be burned in Chester at the incinerator there, or to be buried at one of the landfills,” she said.
How it works
The search engine was created by the nonprofits Circular Philadelphia and The Resource Exchange.
The Resource Exchange was initially created to repurpose and recycle materials from the film industry, said Karyn Gerred, the organization’s executive director.
“I used to work as a film and theater scenic painter,” she said. “I was exposed to a lot of the behind-the-curtain waste that happens in those industries, and just the dumpsters and dumpsters of landfill materials. There were perfectly usable materials that were still getting thrown away.”
Over time, The Resource Exchange grew from an all-volunteer organization focused on repurposing old entertainment equipment to an open-to-the-public warehouse and store.
One thing that has remained consistent is the organization’s listings of information about where Philadelphians can offload hard-to-recycle items or donate, Wittchen said.
“There was a list that was on their website for over a decade now, and what they had been keeping track was to give people solutions for places where you could donate items, where you could recycle hard-to-recycle things,” she said. “So things that are outside of what you could put in your blue bin.”
The organization had always envisioned making this a more interactive tool, Gerred said, and the partnership with Circular Philadelphia made that possible.
The new search engine is all about making things easier for the user.
“It’s tricky to look and scroll through a giant list and find the thing that you’re looking for and then map it and do all the things that you need to do to really take action,” she said. “And so I had been wanting a tool like resourcePhilly to exist online as a searchable website for easily almost 20 years.”
The website allows users to “choose their own adventure” by searching, Wittchen said. They can search by item namefor what they’re looking to donate or recycle, or sort using a category list, with designations like “large appliances” and “arts and crafts.”
Users can look to sell, donate, dispose, compost, recycle or repair items they own, or if they are looking for something from someone else, they can choose from buy, rent or borrow options. People can also tighten their options by choosing what condition the item they’re selling or looking to acquire should be in, and if pickup or delivery would be available.
Wittchen explained resourcePhilly is unique in its “prioritization” function – a website feature that will direct people to places where their item could be reused or repurposed before showing options for where it can be disposed or thrown away.
“The big differentiator for this one, which we thought was very important, was that it has a prioritization function baked into it,” she said. “So for example, if you have something that you want to get rid of and it’s still in usable condition — or the thing could have a second life with somebody else — it will prioritize for you the places to take it to so that it’s going to get another life before it tells you where to take it for recycling.”
Gerred describes the website as a “missing piece” from Philly’s current recycling landscape. Wittchen said she is excited to see the strides the new search engine can create for the recycling community, and is hopeful for future collaborations as well.
The importance of recycling
Part of Circular Philadelphia’s goal is to make recycling options more accessible, said Wittchen, who believes this tool will make it easier for Philadelphians to make choices that create less waste.
“We believe this tool will allow people to have access and make better, different choices about what happens with what they have,” she said. “We can start moving away from that single-use economy that we have, where everything gets thrown away and ends up getting burned or buried, and we can move towards one that really keeps things in use when they have a useful life. And if it doesn’t, break it down into its component parts to become, you know, feedstock for the next manufacturing process through recycling.”
She explained that trash that is thrown away never truly “goes away,” which is why it’s best that it has a use beyond its initial one.
She said this tool will make it so that people with all kinds of environmental interests and choices can be a part of the zero waste economy.
“People who are kind of those eco-warriors who have already been making sure that every little bit of plastic that comes into their houses is recycled or reused or put in the right place and somebody who’s just starting out with this, who is just figuring out where, what are these other places for me to take my stuff, we think that this tool gives both of them a way into participating in that circular economy,” she said.
Part of the aim of this new website is education, Gerred said.
“Many folks feel like they don’t know how they can make a difference in leading a more eco-friendly or sustainable lifestyle,” she said. “And I think this is a good step in that direction for folks in the city to know that they can actually make a difference and make a real impact, saving stuff from the landfills and the incinerators.”
While Wittchen is proud of the strides Circular Philadelphia and The Resource Exchange have made, she said there could be even more resources through partnering with the city.
“In other cities where they have similar tools, this is something that is almost always funded by the city,” she said. “ And in our situation, our city has chosen to prioritize other things. They’ve chosen to prioritize twice-a-week trash pickup in certain neighborhoods of the city. They’ve chosen to spend money on numerous other things. So it took two small nonprofits to get a grant from a private foundation to make this thing actually exist.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
