SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Creative Reuse Marketplace recently opened in downtown Springfield.
Their mission is to sell used items people no longer want to others to keep them out of landfills.
"I wanted to try and be a part of the solution to create a spot or place or makerspace or something where we could help divert waste in an artistic creative way. So bits and pieces over basically two years kind of came together and this was born." said founder and volunteer manager Adena Rivas.
Adena Rivas is an artist but also a city of Springfield employee who works with trash every day. She said this was the perfect way to merge her passions and get others upcycling too.
"You know you can see people come in here and they're sifting through stuff and they're excited," Rivas said. "You know it's treasures right? An unbelievable amount of little treasures you can find, you can make stuff out of it, and for us, it's really fun because we have been spending so much time with all these little bitty pieces."
Aside from helping women, the store is also providing jobs for women in need.
"You know you change one woman's life, you change the entire community around her and every person that she's connected to. So that's the ultimate goal is that it becomes this self-sustaining system that can literally employ and help women in the long term and obviously divert tons and tons and tons and tons of waste away from the landfill and educate people," said Rivas.
To find out more about the store or their workforce program, you can go to their website: www.creativereusemarketplace.org.
