ADAMS, Mass. — Leni Fried and Mike Augspurger have turned the Old Stone Mill Center into a "Zero Waste" maker space. 

 

The two updated the Board of Health last week on their efforts, highlighting several of the facility's waste-reducing and upcycling initiatives.

 

The mill offers opportunities to recycle plastics, books, bicycles, textiles and more. The two purchased the building, a former wallpaper and textile print mill, in 2015 and have been working on initiatives to upcycle items ever since.

 

"We see the mill really as a research facility. We're doing research," Fried said.

 

The center works with several local organizations, including first-responders, Aladco Linen Services, Youth Center Inc., the Northern Berkshire Solid Waste Management District and others. Fried, Augspurger and a small number of volunteers collect discarded items and find ways to repurpose or redistribute them.

 

"A lot of what we've been learning about is that our surplus is huge scarcity in other places," Fried said.

 

In addition to redistributing locally, the group also sends items to other countries, where they would not become waste. Last year, the mill worked with Great Barrington resident Pauline Dongala to send 26 bicycles, along with bags, linens and other items, to the Republic of Congo, specifically to Daniel M. Milondo Primary School, in her home village of Bikie.

 

"She came to our building to look at the sheets, and she's walking by all these bicycles, and she says, 'well how much are those?' And so that spawned the idea of outfitting them with really sturdy racks and sending them over there," Augspurger said.

 

Another recent initiative was the introduction of book and textile collection bins outside of the building. Within two weeks, Fried said, the bins are filled to capacity.

 

"We have a great location for that. You don't have to wait for the transfer station to be open and it's used constantly. Three, four times a day easily, people are driving up and dropping off clothing or books," she said.

 

The mill, Augspurger said, is able to act as a middleman for an item, holding onto it until it can be recycled or repurposed.

 

"The first leg is people throwing things out, and the last leg is someone saying, 'Yeah, that's great. I'll take it.' But those two don't necessarily connect," he said. "What they need in between them is storage and a little bit of time to make the connection."

 

Their goal, according to Fried, is not to shame industries that waste but rather to do whatever they can to help them reduce waste as much as possible.

 

"That's the way the industries are. That's where we have to make this change," she said. "And I just feel like if there's any way we can help, along with legislation like the textile waste ban, that's where we have to go."

 

Fried said there is always an opportunity for volunteers, noting they need a wide-range of skillsets for the mill's projects.

 

"A lot of our decisions are based on longevity," she said. "The building's 160 years old, it's 1860," she said. "And we want it to go on for a long, long time. So we're always thinking what can we do that doesn't involve us that will help keep the building going for future generations."