Every Friday for over eight months, a team of volunteers were busy turning a corner of the Moruya Transfer Station into a solar reuse centre.
Using two shipping containers, a heap of recycled materials and some creativity, the non-profit organisation Repurposing for Resilience (RfR) partnered with Council to create a community hub that intercepts solar panels from landfill.
One container was turned into a workshop where they inspect, wash, and repair the panels and any associated hardware.
The second container is an art space. They are fitted out with 90 percent recycled materials - timber offcuts, roofing iron from the tip and things like bubble wrap from Taronga Zoo used as insulation. And of course, repurposed solar panels power the centre.
Walking into the art space, interesting trinkets made from waste catch your eye - jewellery from old cutlery, baskets from electrical cables. It makes you think twice about how things can be kept forever, instead of throwing them out.
With no time to waste, anything purchased can be taken on the spot – there's no waiting until the exhibition ends.
The huge paintings sold like hotcakes during the centre's opening earlier this year. No surprise the canvasses used were solar panels! They sparked so much interest, RfR ran a workshop to teach people how to prep an old panel for a painting.
Not everyone is handy on the tools or creative, but anyone interested can learn. The reuse centre is the beginning of more great things to come, with a dustfree space on its way to run electronic workshops. The reuse centre wants to evolve and is open for more people to get involved.
