Hello! My name is Ev (short for Evelyn) Greenberg and I am the owner of R-Cubed. Due to my European upbringing where not much went to waste, I have always been passionate about reusing and recycling. As a kid, I remember my Dad showing me how to roll the toothpaste tube up from the bottom so that I would use every last bit. Rather frustrating at the time, but some of these habits have stayed with me. I just wish that my own kids would have put the top back on the tube as they were growing up. I dared not pursue the ‘roll-up.’
In an attempt to pass this ‘no waste’ attitude on to my kids in their younger years, they were quite dismayed that I refused to purchase new binders and folders for them each school year. They were forced to reuse these items from the prior term. Maybe in another few years, this will be the ‘in’ thing rather than focusing on brand new school supplies each fall.
The ‘no waste’ way of life, though, does have a downside – too much stuff, based on the mindset that it might come in handy one day. It finally caught up with me a several summers ago! I grew increasingly overwhelmed when a couple of my young adult daughters temporarily moved home, and I was forced to directly confront the amount of unnecessary stuff we had accumulated. Somehow the basement had become very full over the years due to my limited ‘face time’ with this space – out of sight, out of mind. It had turned into a bad habit of just placing more things there, allowing the boxes’ boundaries to slowly expand over time.
But now I was faced with a dilemma – either pay for renting outside storage space, or clear things out to make room for my daughters’ possessions. I went with the latter, and thus began the daunting task of responsibly cleaning out our house. I soon saw that this was no easy endeavor – it’s a very fragmented area. Most organizations limit the types of items they take and the hours they are open for drop-offs. Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all.” What was I to do with my 20+-year-old business school books? Not used since that time, I came to the conclusion there was nothing they could really help me with. Those boxed-up packing materials that I had been saving for the next kid’s move were spilling over with their messy, clingy packing peanuts. And what about those binders that I had been saving for my kids to reuse over the years?
After much research and investigation, I am happy to say that we now have a fairly de-cluttered household. I found homes for about 90% of our family’s stuff. Unfortunately, I was not quite at zero-waste. But after further exploration, I now know where my trashed items could have found better homes.
My trials and tribulations to get to this point led me to create R-Cubed. If I had this much trouble, I was sure that others were experiencing the same. At R-cubed, we consolidate reuse/recycling information for customers, making it easy for people to responsibly find organizations where their household goods can be reused or recycled while reducing the amount of waste sent to landfills. We are very excited with this venture – helping people feel good about decreasing their clutter while making a small dent to protect the Earth’s valuable resources.