Tax Cappers Could Learn A Lot In Teacher ‘Soup Line’
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Due to the economy more and more students are attending school without the basic supplies and are being left behind. Teachers spend $500 to $1000 on classroom materials using their own money. Kids can’t write their name without a pencil. Most of this lies on the shoulders of the teacher.
Throughout the year kids attend school without basic school supplies. Everyday businesses are disposing of good, reusable office supplies and furniture. Ruth’s Reusable Resources has bridged the gap between business and education by transferring donated supplies to teachers free of charge. For 18 years 3Rs has been collecting new and used items from businesses and individuals, saving millions of pounds of waste from landfills, and placing more than $41 million of new and reusable product into schools.
Schools and districts pay a yearly membership fee of $3 per student or a minimum of $500, whichever is greater. Each school year hundreds of teachers obtain pencils, pens, paper, furniture, books, and over 5,000 other donated items for their classrooms. Overstock, items that don’t pertain to classrooms and items that don’t move go into the public store where prices start at just a penny!
More than 7,500 teachers from ME, NH, and MA, and more than 70,000 students benefit from 3Rs. In the 2011/2012 school year, 3Rs gave over $4 million away in only 149 shopping days! One of the most popular categories of items are ‘hands on learning’ pieces. Items such as foam, wood, metals, and plastics are turned into anything a child can imagine! Over 317,000 pieces have been turned into art, theater costumes, science projects, math manipulative kits and more. Because there are businesses that care enough about the earth and education, children are free to be creative while learning. 3Rs could not do what they do without the help of volunteers and since its beginning in 1994 they have had over 3,500.
3Rs also repurposes donated items. 3-ring binders are taken apart and the inside chipboard is reused and recycled, metal rings are recycled, and the vinyl is cut on diecut machines. Hanging file folders are cut down for diecut trees. Heavy report folders with inserts are stripped of metal, trimmed and placed in the teacher store as colored oak tag. Magnetic letters sets are made from donated sticky magnet sheet and cloth samples. These sets are going into literacy kits for kindergarteners and into the public store for sale.
With the help of local businesses, 3Rs has filled more than 8,300 backpacks for students in need. 3Rs has also given away almost $2.5 million of brand new furniture. Most people are unaware that pens and pencils have expiration dates. Who wants to buy pens to find out they’re dried up, or pencils with hard erasers or tape that is no longer sticky? Retailers must dispose of these items when they expire or don’t move. These are reusable supplies; why should they be thrown out when they can help students and schools around the U.S. and stay out of our landfills? Please do your part when your place of work moves, does a clean out, downsizes or orders wrong. Donate to a school or a reuse center. Your old talking greeting cards could become a student’s science project!
More About This Charity
Region
Northeast
Category
Educational Advancement
Name
Ruth’s Reusable Resources
Mission
3R’s Mission is to ensure that students and classrooms have the basic tools for learning, by transferring surplus business supplies and merchandise into the hands of school children through teachers.
Impact
- This Achievement helped 100,000 people
- This Charity has helped 85,578 people in the past year
- Over $41 million of unwanted surplus supplies put into schools in ME, NH, MA. Distributed over 8300 backpacks. Gave away $2.5million of new furniture
Works In
United States
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