The Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub aims to help mitigate the effects of climate change, with a mission to “revolutionize how people think about ‘things’ and to provide a place where almost anything can be recycled or reused,” according to their website. “There are so many things tied to consumption that people need to have a better understanding of,” says the Hub’s managing director Colleen McSwiggin.
McSwiggin is a microbiologist and a former chemistry lab manager at Mount St. Joseph University. She was also a member of the sustainability committee at the school and headed up multiple recycling initiatives there and in the community. She founded the Hub last year with Carrie Harms, one of the originators of ZeroLandfill Cincinnati, a reuse center dedicated to design and architecture samples, which was absorbed into the new effort. There are now more than a dozen board members who help oversee the nonprofit.
The idea for the Hub grew out of the obvious need for a permanent center McSwiggin saw during the community electronics recycling events she hosted, particularly one in Oak Hills. “We had 764 cars through the line in two and a half hours. We filled five semis, and I still had 150 people in line that I had to say, you know, we can’t take your stuff,” she says. “That was where I had the idea of, we need a permanent place, where if we have too much stuff coming in, we’ve got a place to put it until a truck can come back and get it.” The Hub opened its doors on April 1 of last year.