Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 19/00) - Why go shopping for expensive clothing when you can search through the city dump for quality attire?

"Why not reuse them? There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's not like they're worn out and tattered ... they just need to be washed and they're fine," says Yellowknife resident Walt Humphries.

The long-time Yellowknife artist and prospector can be found searching through the bins at the city's solid waste facility almost every day of the week.

"When I take something from the dump and use it, I think that's recycling -- I'm taking it and I'm recycling it into a different use," he says.

Many and most of us do recycle paper products, tin cans, plastic and glass. But Humphries says the other aspect of recycling is his method of salvaging, or using things over and over again. At one point, he found an abundance of letterset (or letterpress) that he distributed to several schools and individuals who wanted to put lettering on aircrafts, and he even used some of it himself.

Letterset are plastic sheets of stencilled letters that were once used for newspaper and magazine layout before the invention of the computer.

"People get a lot of fun out of using this stuff, even though it's `passe' now ... for kids, for playing, it's great stuff."

And there are other goodies to be found at the dump as well.

Humphries and some of his buddies grab gardening supplies from the site every spring. It could be old bags of dirt, flower pots -- anything goes!

He tells the story of a woman who made good use of recycled paint. "There's all this paint there and it's for free. So she went out and she got all sorts of different colours and then brought it home and painted her fence a nice fanciful pattern for the kids," says Humphries.

If you would like to paint something with a variety of different colours as well, the dump is the place to go. Just remember to bring your trusty screwdriver to make sure the paint is usable.

Another quality product to be found at the dump is lumber. It can be chopped up for firewood or can be used for making crafts. In fact, there are all sorts of supplies that can be found and used for crafts.

"There's lots of people out there if you go out on any given day. There's lots of people salvaging stuff ... just go out there on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and there's a dozen people out there picking stuff up," says Humphries.