PARIS – A yard and bake sale will be held Saturday to benefit the creation of a swap ‘n drop shop at the Norway-Paris Solid Waste Transfer Station on Brown Street.

Volunteers and donations are being sought for the sale, scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall on East Main Street, beside the Handy Store.

Directors of Norway-Paris Solid Waste agreed in October to sign a five-year lease granting space near the old tire pile for a building for “Ruby’s Gold Mine,” named after NPSW employee Ruby Wilson.

Donations of cash or materials are being sought to put up the building.

The nonprofit operation will be run as a separate entity from Norway-Paris Solid Waste and be staffed by volunteers. It will allow transfer station users to drop off furniture or other clean, used items in good condition.

Now, anyone who takes furniture to the transfer station pays a $5 fee to cover the labor involved in stripping an item. The wood goes to the Frost Hill stump dump and everything else goes into the transfer station hopper.

Once the gold mine building is built, people will be able to stop off and see if there’s anything they can use. If so, they can make a donation and take possession of the item.

“It’s a great idea,” one that has been duplicated at other area transfer stations, said Alison McCrady, solid waste general manager. “Anything that takes garbage out of the waste stream is wonderful.”

Ruby’s Gold Mine will be funded using money from donations. If people can afford it, they will be encouraged to make a donation either when they are dropping an item off at the gold mine or when they are picking one up. Either way, if they cannot afford to pay, there will be no charge.

The gold mine would only be open during times that volunteers are available to staff it. The volunteers may reject furniture that’s too shabby or broken. In such cases, the person bringing it in would have to pay for the rejected item at the transfer station.

McCrady said solid waste employees will not be involved in the gold mine operation because their involvement is barred under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Helping Wilson with the project is a board of directors, which includes Art Hill, Richard Record, Henry Mail and Jerome Perry. The group had secured help from a local contractor to pour a slab for the building, but cold weather set in before that could be done, Record said.

“It’s a way for the needy people of the area to get a chance to use again all of the things that are disposed of,” he said.

ggeraghty@sunjournal.com

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