A community event in Oakville is showing how local action can make a meaningful difference when it comes to waste reduction, reuse, and responsible recycling.
REmarket Oakville was created by local resident Ariel Ng Bourbonnais, inspired by the success of REmarket in Toronto’s St. Lawrence community and by her own growing concerns about consumption and waste.
“I’ve always had a little eco-anxiety, which has unfortunately increased over the last decade,” Ariel shared. “After having my daughter, I realized just how many things we own and how many things we throw out on a regular basis.”
That realization led her to explore ways of helping her community think differently about unwanted items. After learning about the St. Lawrence REmarket, Ariel saw an opportunity to bring the model to Oakville and create a place where residents could give useful items a second life while also learning how to responsibly recycle materials that can be difficult to dispose of.
Ariel credits Bruno Leps, co-founder of the St. Lawrence REmarket, with helping turn the idea into reality. He shared his experience with everything from volunteer recruitment and recycling collection systems to event planning, and gave Ariel permission to bring the REmarket name and model to Oakville.
The result was a community-driven event focused on reuse, redistribution, and keeping usable materials out of landfill.
Residents contributed hundreds of contact lenses and approximately 50 pairs of eyeglasses for specialized collection and reuse programs. A further 1,094 pounds of mixed goods were donated to The Salvation Army Thrift Store, helping give clothing and household items a second life while supporting the organization’s community programs. The Salvation Army noted that donations like these help reduce waste, promote sustainability, and contribute to a more circular economy.
Renewed Computer Technology (RCT) also participated by collecting unwanted electronics for responsible reuse and recycling. By the end of the event, RCT had collected three skids of electronics weighing a total of 1,435 pounds.
Together, those results illustrate the scale of what one locally organized event can accomplish: hundreds of items redirected toward reuse programs, more than 2,500 pounds of household goods given another life, and electronics collected for responsible processing.
For Ariel, however, the numbers represent more than simply items diverted from the waste stream. They are part of a broader effort to encourage people to reconsider their everyday consumption habits.
“I know REmarket Oakville is a smaller event, a drop in the water in the grand scheme of things, but I hope the impact ripples and changes our consumerism habits, even just a little,” she said.
Her hope is that events like REmarket encourage people to pause before making a purchase — and before throwing something away.
“We hope as a community we learn to pause before we buy, pause before we throw something in the garbage, and repair or share when possible.”
That philosophy is reflected in REmarket Oakville’s approach: rather than seeing unwanted items simply as waste, the event creates opportunities for them to be reused, donated, repaired or responsibly recycled.
REmarket Oakville hopes to become an annual event, with organizers also exploring the addition of a repair café in the future. The goal is to continue giving residents practical ways to reuse, repair, share and responsibly recycle the things they already own.
For RCT, community events like REmarket Oakville demonstrate what can happen when local organizers, residents, volunteers and reuse organizations work together. Collecting over 2400 pounds of electronics at a single community event — alongside more than 1,000 pounds of donated goods — is a tangible reminder that small actions, multiplied across a community, can create a much larger impact.