San Antonio’s First Creative Reuse Center Opens Doors

December 25, 2020 - San Antonio

Spare Parts and their Center for Creative Reuse is one of San Antonio’s first creative reuse centers. The center officially opened their doors to shoppers in December 2020 and will continue to host shopping appointments as well as online shopping with curbside pickup. Photos: Ismael Rodriguez

By: Valeria Torrealba - Staff Intern, San Antonio Sentinel

With a pandemic taking its toll across the globe and forcibly shifting the focus of everyday life, San Antonio’s first-ever center for creative reuse has planted the roots for a thriving art and educator community to grow. Spare Parts and its executive director Mary Elizabeth Cantú’s vision have diligently come to life, starting with spare landfill materials to recently opening the doors to a massive hub for artists and educators to get the materials they need for their craft. 

“We started up 10 years ago. I went to a business that was going to throw away a bunch of things that they didn’t need anymore, but on the other hand would make awesome art projects and teaching experiences. I scooped it up, and they asked me to bring a U-Haul because of all the things they had,” Cantú said. “The effort was bigger than me and what I needed, and that’s when we started Spare Parts.”

Cantú’s view of the materials being wasted by corporations allowed her to donate and sell them back to the community. Teachers across the state are massively underfunded, with many expected to buy their own supplies purely out of pocket. Cantú believes that educators are the best recipients of these materials –– because they know exactly what to do with them.

“Teachers are very resourceful, they’re very creative folk and they know what to do with these materials we get. For about six years, we had a materials giveaway. We signed up 100 teachers to receive the materials, and people from every school district were represented,” Cantú said. “It wasn’t just art teachers –– it was kindergarten, pre-k, theater teachers that took advantage of all of these materials. Now we have a reuse center, where people can bring up their donated materials. We give them out to [the community] at a very discounted price. We work with local artists, architecture firms, stores, materials, people who are at-home crafters, it really ranges from individual to agency.”

The creative reuse center, located within the Downtown Wetmore Shopping Center at 13491 Wetmore Road, brings artists, teachers and crafters a space where they can source materials and buy them at a highly discounted rate. However, given the pandemic and the rise in COVID-19 cases in San Antonio, the brick-and-mortar branch remains closed to the public for now. All materials are still accessible online, and a second weekend of private shopping will be offered in January of 2021. 

“We have started an online store so people can access lots of materials and supplies for very affordable prices, and we are offering personal 30-minute shopping experiences for folks,” Cantú said. “We have one coming up mid-January, the 16th and 17th.”

For board member and art instructor Eric Cavazos, Spare Parts has allowed him and his teaching community to find a hub of affordable materials they otherwise would have had to buy entirely out of pocket.

“As an educator, when I ran across Spare Parts and I found out about their mission, it just aligned so specifically to me personally –– how I approach teaching and the way that I use materials in my own classroom,” Cavazos said. “When you walk into the store, your mind just starts coming up with all of these ideas of what to do with the objects that we have. Once we are able to have it open for the general public, that experience inspires you to come up with new ideas and see objects in a different way.”  

Cavazos’s start with Spare Parts was at their first teacher giveaway. He recalls the situation akin to that of walking into the famous Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory –– overwhelming, exciting and a tremendous opportunity to grab the materials needed for his classroom. 

“Every year as an educator, we are told that we’re going to get more kids, but less money. It’s constant. It’s budget cuts, budget cuts –– sorry –– budget cuts, budget cuts, and expecting us to do not only what we did last year, but more,” Cavazos said. “It’s kind of the expectation in my school district. When I realized we were going to get these free materials, I didn’t know what to expect, but as I walked in, it was like Willy Wonka –– oh my God, there was so much stuff. I was thinking supermarket sweep, this was for my kids, I’m gonna get down and dirty if I need to and grab as much stuff as I can. I saw a box of markers, and said that if I was to get them, I’d save so much money.” 

Over the last 10 years, Spare Parts has created a community and culture of reuse. Cavazos networks with other professors, informing them of the many benefits that Spare Parts has to offer. 

“Now we have a place where we can all come together and use it as a resource,” Cavazos said. “It was a really great resource, but also a snowball effect. One event created a whole culture, which then created a community of these teachers –– that was really, really cool.”

“We really challenge people to rethink the things around them. There’s a quote that says ‘Everything you see around you is trash.’ If you really think about it, everything that surrounds us can be trash.” - Mary Elizabeth Cantú

For Cantú, Spare Parts’s mission is to challenge how people think about the materials and the world around them. It speaks to climate change –– landfills are constantly full of materials that can be recycled, and everything has a purpose and way of being repurposed. 

“We really challenge people to rethink the things around them. There’s a quote that says ‘Everything you see around you is trash.’ If you really think about it, everything that surrounds us can be trash,” Cantú said. “There really isn’t any more room in the world for this stuff. Buying pre-loved at places like Spare Parts or other stores is a way to reduce the amount of things they feel that they need. We’re challenging people to rethink things around them, buy pre-loved, and find a way to be creative in their lives.” 

Cavazos believes that Spare Parts was doing what was necessary for teachers at the time. San Antonio lacked a brick-and-mortar reuse center, so the addition and installation of the Spare Parts Center for Creative Reuse undoubtedly extends those resources to those communities that need it the most. 

“It was this cool idea that you wanted to let everybody in on. At that time, I was so impressed by what they were doing that I felt it was necessary for every art teacher to do this,” Cavazos said. “I think that as a community, it was a little wildfire –– after a couple of people found out, everybody needed to know. It was like preaching the Spare Parts gospel. We wanted everyone to benefit from it, and we don’t have this in San Antonio.”

As the future and new year approaches, Spare Parts continues to grow. Cavazos hopes to see success in the creative reuse center, hopeful that an expansion throughout the city will come eventually. He recalls fondly of his upbringing in the valley, noting how the school budget there is even tighter than in San Antonio –– yet another reason for expansion across the state.

“For me, I would love to see that this center for creative reuse is successful. I know we’re a non-profit, but I want us to be making money so that we can put it into our programs and our programming,” Cavazos said. “What I would like to see is for us to have more than one location here in town, and then start maybe thinking of branching down to other cities further down the road. I’m from the valley –– I know they [really] don’t have a budget. I would like to see the idea popping up in different locations in Texas and spreading the word. Overall, I’d love for Spare Parts to expand and for us to become vendors for all the districts in San Antonio.”

For now, the focus of Spare Parts remains on the opening of the creative reuse center. The nonprofit offers the community a center where creativity can thrive; one where stories are waiting to be told through recycled materials. The community impact has been tremendous, harboring relationships between the San Antonio community and its underfunded instructors. It is truly a place to get one’s hands dirty and let creativity flow. 

Spare Parts is looking for volunteers for its creative reuse center, as well as board members. For more information, visit https://www.sparepartssa.org/volunteer/. 

Valeria Torrealba is an opinions columnist and public relations assistant at the University Star, a student publication of Texas State University. Email her at reporter@sasentinel.com

Full Disclosure: B. Kay Richter is a board member of the nonprofit Friends of Spare Parts. She was recently re-elected as Board Secretary where she holds the position until January 2021.