The Scrap Box

Specialties

The Scrap Box is a tax exempt organization whose mission is to promote creativity and sustainability by providing inexpensive recycled materials to the public. Through our workshops, The Scrap Box teaches eco-​friendly ways to recycle.

Since 1985 The Scrap Box has been collecting an ever-​changing warehouse full of unique recycled materials, making them available at affordable prices to our community. These materials from manufacturers and businesses would otherwise end up in landfills.

Remnants, samples, seconds, overruns, & excess inventory are the «good junk» you’ll find in the store. It can be recycled into useful materials for art classes, learning games, science projects, crafts, & more.

It’s a win-​win situation: factories have lower dumpster costs; teachers, parents, artists, and crafters have unique, low-​cost materials.

Creativity happens when children and adults are able to create with materials that have no preconceived ideas about how they must be used.

History

Established in 1983.

In 1983 Karen Ensminger was looking for something to do when her son started kindergarten. She had known about the recycling program at the Children’s Museum in Boston, which became her model for Ann Arbor’s Scrap Box.

The Child Care Network agreed to sponsor The Scrap Box as one of their programs offered to early childhood workers. At first The Scrap Box was open only on Thursday afternoons for two hours. It was a humble start.

The Scrap Box formed its own non-​profit organization and moved into the basement of Westside Methodist Church on 7^th Street. From there The Scrap Box moved three more times, to finally settle in to our current location in a 9,000 square foot warehouse.

For about 10 years, all the work was done by volunteers. We now a number of part-​time employees and numerous volunteers. Many different companies from throughout southeast Michigan regularly save scraps. By donating scraps and discards to The Scrap Box businesses them out of the landfill.

Meet the Manager

Karen E.

Manager

Karen founded the Scrap Box and has been its unpaid director for the past 30 years.

She grew up in Ann Arbor, graduated from Ann Arbor High, and earned a secondary teaching certificate in English and social studies from U-​M. Soon after graduation she married her husband, Bill. She taught high school in New Jersey and afterward edited textbooks in New York. When they moved back to Ann Arbor in 1982, she stayed home to raise their son, but became restless. «I decided I needed to me more than Alex’s mom,» she says.

The Scrap Box started as a hobby: She had visited the Boston Children’s Museum’s recycling room. As a parent volunteer in a church nursery school, she pondered all the fun kids could have making things from this scrap material. She and a couple of friends began collecting reusable castoffs, and selling them cheaply to teachers and parents.

She had no idea what she was getting into! Customers with young children often note that they shopped at The Box when they were kids.