Summit Free Market
After recently moving to Summit, my mom wanted to find a new home for some of our gently used goods we no longer needed. She found that the Summit Free Market was the perfect place for this. She saw the market as a place to give another life to items that otherwise would end up in landfills. What first started as a place to simply donate materials became a tradition of volunteering every month for her to find a new home for the items donated by Summit residents.
Summit Free Market is unique to the town of Summit. It originated as a brain child of high school students and the “environmentalists” in town, who came together in 2008 to try to reduce the waste generated. Their goal was to make Summit a more sustainable, environmentally-friendly town and in turn focus on the sense of community by giving back through the reuse initiative. Initially the project was a makeshift market on the Village Green during Greenfest. Then it was held at the Transfer Station which happened twice a year. Over the last 4 years it has shifted its residence to a permanent location at the Transfer Station on 40 New Providence Ave. The market is open every second Saturday of the month and one Friday a month for residents of Summit to donate any unwanted, yard sale-quality items, or browse through the items and take anything they want for free. Through the effort of the market the town has kept an estimated 160 tons of waste out of the waste stream in the last few years and it has saved the city of Summit more than 25 thousand dollars in garbage tipping fees.
What makes this market so unique is that it is overseen by a committee primarily made of volunteers and Summit High School students. They meet on a regular basis to brainstorm about various initiatives to promote sustainability in town. The committee over the past few years has managed to launch a facebook page to provide a virtual place for people of Summit to share items they are looking to give away. This allows residents to exchange goods even when the Free Market is not open. With the help of the community members, the Free Market has managed to donate much needed supplies to families through Grace, a local initiative helping people in need, and local refugee resettlement projects.
The market is primarily run by the local volunteers from the community and middle and high school students. Volunteers decide on the hours they can work with as little or as much commitment as wanted. The duties consist of directing the traffic to maintain the flow, helping empty the cars once parked, sorting out the donated material and helping organize the goods. High school students hold leadership roles. Middle school students can also work at the market to earn community service hours. Once attuned to the working of the market, they can apply for the leadership roles when in high school. The details about applying for volunteer work are available on the Free Market website.
The eventual goal of the free market, beyond local sustainability, is to train young people towards environmental preservation. When the high school students graduate they would have tools to be able to promote this vision of sustainability all across the country.