Free market seeks organizer

By Liz VandenHeede
Staff Reporter

The search is on to find someone, or a group of people, to help continue the “Really Really Free Market” on campus.

Nola Wiersma, a 2011 Western Michigan University graduate who majored in Environmental Studies and Anthropology, began the market here and has continued holding it about twice a semester for the past three years.

After graduating, Wiersma was hired for a temporary position at WMU, assistant to the manager of Solid Waste Reduction. The Solid Waste Reduction office is a division under the Office of Sustainability.

Wiersma will be leaving at the start of summer and is hoping to find someone to take over the growing market then or in the coming fall.

The free market is modeled after a national movement promoting sustainability, which has been gaining momentum in recent years. The idea is that people donate things they don’t want anymore, then people find and take things they want or need. It’s not necessary to donate before taking, or vice versa.

Wiersma started the free market on campus when she began working for Solid Waste Reduction in 2008. Upon moving to Kalamazoo from Grand Rapids, she said she found no evidence of a free market like the one she knew in Grand Rapids.

“I’ve been doing it basically by myself the past few years, just had people volunteer to help set up and take down,” said Wiersma. “Ideally, we’d get a small group of people to get the ball rolling,” she said on the topic of her replacement.

The resources are nearly all readily available for anyone interested in taking over the Really Really Free Market after Wiersma leaves. As an intern with the Office of Sustainability in the spring of 2011, Wiersma created a business plan for a “Bronco Share Space.”

This would basically include having a permanent location for the free market, which is now set up and taken down on the days it’s held in the Bernhard Center.  The floor plan, budget and connections with administration are already established in the plan.  She’s looking for someone to step up.
“Ideally, we’d get a small group of people to get the ball rolling,” she said.

Carolyn Noack, manager of Solid Waste Reduction, has been very happy with the progress Wiersma has made with the free market.

“I’m hoping someone comes through and is willing to do it; I will continue to support it,” she said. “It’s really valuable to the university community.”

The free market helps support Noack’s goal of having a 55 percent diversion rate by 2015, meaning keeping that amount of the total waste out of the trash bins on campus.

“People are starting to grasp the concept that just because you don’t want it, someone else might,” Noack said, “This throw away society is not the best way to do things.”

This is the same message that Wiersma has been trying to send and that she hopes will continue after she leaves.

“I think the message of the free market is to try and get rid of this thing called perceived obsolescence—the idea that things go out of fashion,” she said, “It’s not real, it’s an idea that society teaches us.”

To help keep the Really Really Free Market going and continue this message, contact Wiersma at nola.c.wiersma@wmich.edu or to keep up with the free market visit “Bronco Share Space” on Facebook.  Look for the next Really Really Free Market to be held during Earth Week in April.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=29404

Posted by thehair on Feb 5 2012. Filed under Breaking, Campus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry