What is your name?      

Chelsea Myrick

Where do you work and what do you do?           

I am a Production Worker at Free Geek. I tally up the items that people donate and I also supervise volunteers as they sort through bins of donated materials and separate them according to what can be sold in our store/online and what should be recycled.

Tell us how you enbrace recycling/sustainability into your home or workplace?

I just upgraded to a smartphone after having the same "dumb phone" for five years. The main reason I decided to upgrade was because the phone was not working right. I like to use things up and wear them out. I have had the same laptop for four years and I plan to use it to the point where replacing the bad parts of it won't help any more and it can be recycled. I bike or use public transportation to get around. I don't go shopping unless I have a reason to and then if I do see something I want but don't need then I make myself think for a few days about whether the item will make my life better, is it a useful item? Do I currently own anything that I can use instead, even if that means re-purposing it?

What motivates you to recycle and live sustainably?

Through my own research, I have found out that so many items that contain valuable virgin materials wind up in the landfill instead of being recycled. I read the book Cradle to Cradle a couple of years ago and it made me realize that how important it is to change our take-make-waste system to a closed-loop one, so that materials could be used over and over again instead of being piled into a hole where they will be useless to us.

If you were an animal, which one would you be and why?         

I would be a beaver because of how they use natural materials to make a home. If their home got destroyed it would not look unnatural because they make their homes out of limbs and branches.

How did you learn about AOR?

I learned about AOR from researching sustainable materials management.