ROCKS Helps Donate Clay

From Heather Greenwood, Recycling:

Marlene French of the Crotched Mountain Foundation pulled onto campus October 19th in a massive U-Haul. ROCKS employees Scott Criscuolo, Allie Cardinal, and Emmanuel Kinoshi worked with Recycling Program Coordinator Heather Greenwood and Ceramics professor Paul McMullen to load a 3,000-pound clay donation onto the truck. Marlene is working to establish a ceramics program within Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center and this massive donation will serve as her starting inventory.

The donation came after Paul McMullan decided to reorganize the very full and very dusty campus ceramic supply shed. Obsolete clay (slip) in large 50- and 32-gallon barrels filled the shed, making it difficult to bring in new and innovative materials for his ceramics program. Brick kilns sat in two of the shed corners, looking more like two precarious Jenga sets than valuable pieces of equipment.

He assembled a team of knowledgeable campus stakeholders to determine the best way to reuse or recycle these materials: Interim Purchasing Manager and Surplus Program Manager Renee Harlow, Assistant Director of Physical Plant and Head of Grounds Bud Winsor, Grounds Worker Extraordinaire and Surplus Coordinator Travis Ellsworth and Recycling Program Coordinator Heather Greenwood. Together, the team determined that the brick kilns would be carefully dismantled and sold out of the Surplus House, and the clay would be available as donations to any interested parties.

Heather cast a wide net looking for someone to take the clay. After several weeks of looking, she was contacted by Marlene. The rest, as they say, is history.