Pearce, an artist from El Sobrante, was in North Oakland -- just over the border from Berkeley -- making his weekly pilgrimage to the East Bay Depot For Creative Re-Use.

Amid stack after stack of file folders, petri dishes, three-ring binders, wallpaper samples, composition books and thousands of other items, he had just unearthed his treasure on Monday: a cheap imitation Japanese print encased in an elaborate frame.

"I'll throw away the print, of course, but look at this frame!" he said. "It'll be perfect for one of my works."

His 9-year-old daughter, Tianna, was happy, too. She was lugging home a large sack of new books and toys.

"You always find what you want at this place, no matter what you're looking for," said Pearce.

"Even if you didn't know you wanted it before you got here," added his wife, Danielle, who was carrying their 7-month-old son, Escher, in her arms.

The East Bay Depot For Creative Re-Use is a nonprofit organization founded in the early '70s -- nobody is sure of the exact date -- by a group of teachers in the Oakland public schools. They envisioned it as a place where they could collect, stockpile and share materials to supplement their classroom supplies.

Teachers and artists still form a large proportion of the Depot's customers, but people from all walks of life are loyal devotees. The Depot is supported solely by its sales.

When if first opened, it concentrated on common household items such as toilet paper tubes, coffee cans, bottle caps, and anything else that could be used in science, drama or arts and crafts classes. But it soon branched out and began soliciting local businesses, industries and institutions for materials they otherwise would throw away.

The bottle caps and toilet paper tubes are still there, but these days they share shelf space with electronic calculators, manila folders, staplers, test tubes and countless other items crammed into the sprawling, 2,000-square-foot main store.

Two blocks to the south, larger items such as garden supplies and tools are sold in the Depot Annex, which opened earlier this year.

"There's only one rule if you want to shop here," said Pearce. "If you see anything you like, you'd better grab it now. Because I guarantee it won't be here the next time you come back."

"That's true," said manager Nikola Clark. "Last week, we were up to here in bolts of cloth. Now there are only a few scraps left."

The Depot has a working arrangement with curbside recycling programs in Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville and Oakland in the Second Chance/First Chance Program, in which it rehabilitates items collected in these programs and donates them to other nonprofits.

It also partners with the West Contra Costa school district in an artist-in-residence program called Art in the Heart, which brings local artists into after-school programs to help students create original artwork.

Each year, the Depot joins with the Alameda County Waste Management Authority to sponsor Trash to Treasures, a juried art competition that honors creative reuse. Amateur and professional artists are invited to submit works that are displayed in public places throughout the county.

"We want to share our passion for making something out of nothing," said Clark, "and our belief that everything has value and that any material can be used creatively."

Contra Costa Times
Knight Ridder
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