Building Hope for a More Sustainable Future with Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery Center
When you shop at Youth Homes Thrift Shop, every item you purchase makes a difference; not just to your wardrobe or your home, but to someone’s life. To continuously offer fresh inventory, our team actively seeks new and sustainable partnerships to keep our shelves filled, and give customers more opportunities to shop and make a difference.
One of these impactful partnerships is with Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery Center (MDRR) in Pittsburg. Each week, our thrift shop team visits MDRR’s facility to choose unique items that can find new life at our boutique-style shop. The treasures they find vary from beautiful garden chimes and ceramic vases, to brand new tool sets, entire dinnerware collections, and amazing purses and shoes. These items rescued from the waste stream have generated thousands of dollars in additional revenue for our thrift shop - all of which directly supports Youth Homes’ mental health services for underserved youth and young adults.
Led by CEO Kish Rajan, the MDRR team enthusiastically supports our mission. They tell us when they’ve been out collecting, when there’s an abundance of high-quality items, or when something comes in that meets a client’s specific need. We are so grateful for their collaboration, and our shared vision of sustainability and community impact.
MDRR’s re-use program, Recycle Smart, plays a major role in this partnership. Twice a year, residents in Contra Costa County are invited to set out items they no longer need instead of sending them to the landfill. These items are brought to MDRR’s Pittsburg facility, where nonprofits like us can pick them up and give them new life, significantly boosting our revenue to support Youth Homes’ services. It’s an inspiring example of what can happen when sustainability and compassion intersect.
This partnership is more than a recycling initiative; it’s about making a connection to do good in our community. The items exist, and the needs exist; it’s simply about bridging the two. Together, we’re proving that doing good for the planet and doing good for people can go hand in hand.