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BUCKFIELD, Maine — It’s often said that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
For Mark Silber, it’s also an opportunity to help his neighbors and strengthen the community.
Silber is a member of the Buckfield-Sumner Swap Shop Committee, even though there is no swap shop. And there’s the rub.
The town closed the swap shop last year after two decades of operation. Silber, a former Buckfield Select Board member who helped create the swap shop in 2005, is tired of watching residents dump things at the Buckfield-Sumner Solid Waste Transfer Station — and on the sides of roadways — that have the potential for more life.
He wants the swap shop back — to reduce the town’s waste costs and to help his fellow residents during these tough economic times. He’s not alone.
“It’s a visible and working representation of a community’s willingness to help one another instead of throwing things away in the trash,” said Azalea Cormier, another Buckfield Select Board member working to reopen the swap shop. “It was really nice seeing community members helping community members.”
‘Grassroots endeavor’
A swap shop is where people can trade or give away secondhand items, things such as furniture, clothing and household items. Silber said the idea for the swap shop arose after he saw items dumped along the roadside and the trail along the former Buckfield railroad bed.
“People in Buckfield at that time saw picking things out of trash as below them,” Silber said. “I saw picking up what could be reused or repaired as a boon to the community.”
Silber and others got the swap shop going and for 20 years, it was a staple of the community.
“This was truly a grassroots endeavor that would help people exist,” Silber said.
But last May, the Buckfield-Sumner Solid Waste Committee voted to close the swap shop due to moisture and mold issues in the building. The committee did not feel the structure was worth replacing.
Fast-forward a year and residents, including Silber, Cormier and others, see the revival of the swap shop as important to the towns, not only as a place that helped divert more than 40 tons of expensive waste from the towns’ waste stream annually but which also was a meeting place and a way of helping residents.
Advocates for the swap shop’s return have been working on fundraising ideas.
Cormier estimates a new swap shop would cost about $45,000. She has been trying to secure state grants and has gotten $10,000 from the Maine Community Foundation’s Community Building Grant Program.
If a grant application she’s filing with the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future is approved, Cormier said, they’d have enough money to start building the shop, envisioned as a 20-by-30-foot building closer to the station’s gate. It would have a lean-to outside the building for furniture and bulky items.
She’s hopeful the towns could have a new swap shop next year.
“I’ve heard no shortage of comments of people asking when it will be back, why it’s taking so long,” Cormier said. “It was so popular and it surprises people that it would go to the wayside like this.”
Cormier believes that whatever the towns have to contribute to reopen the swap shop will ultimately be worth it financially.
According to Cormier, the cost to dispose of the towns’ waste at Maine Waste to Energy in Auburn will rise next year from $57 to $88 per ton.
She said the swap shop’s ability to take 40 tons out of the waste stream yearly could save the towns $3,520 annually under the new rate next year.
“From a cost-effective angle, we believe this project justifies itself,” Cormier said.
‘We need it back’
Lori Hand was moving to Sumner in 2009 and was in need of a few kitchen items when she discovered the swap shop.
She said she remembers walking out that first day she was there with six high-end Lenox cups and saucers. From that day, the swap shop was something she looked forward to visiting when she could. In 2015, she decided to volunteer there until the pandemic in 2020.
“My heart was broken when I found out the swap shop closed,” Hand said. “It is a community need and there were people that relied on it. I was upset for the community, I was upset for the volunteers.”
Hand shared a story of a young mother and her son who came every year to get clothes. Sometimes, she said, young families found new outfits for their babies.
There were times, she recalled, when she opened the swap shop Saturdays at 9 a.m. and a line of people were waiting to get in.
On those days, Hand said, she would see at least 50 people using the swap shop in a three-hour period.
“I look at that [swap shop] and I know that’s part of Sumner, that’s part of Buckfield, that’s part of our fabric. We need it back,” she said.
“This was a community builder in a place where sometimes we need a little help,” she said. “So many people have benefitted from this place, and we need to continue to make sure this keeps happening.”
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Matthew Jaroncyk can be reached at mjaroncyk@sunjournal.com