So you've renovated your bathroom, and you're wondering what to do with the old cabinets, sink, bathtub. They're in good condition and it seems like such a waste to just haul them to the dump. What do you do?
If you live in San Francisco, you call Building REsources. The non-profit salvage yard accepts tax-deductible donations of clean, reusable building materials. They'll pick them up, free of charge, with advance notice (only within city limits). Your stuff doesn't end up in the landfill. And Building REsources then turns around and sells items to builders, artists, renovators, scavengers at a low cost. Everybody wins.
Or you can post them on Craigslist under "free".
That way people will use their own gas to haul them away - and even thank you for them.
I had good luck last week listing a toilet and sink.
Granted they were in decent condition...
In the East Bay there are several resources in addition Berkeley's Urban Ore and Ohmega Salvage. Next door to each other on San Leandro Blvd in Oakland there are the Habitat for Humanity Restore: www.habitateb.org/restore/
and the ReUse People: www.thereusepeople.org/
A recycling database that is searchable by material type can be found at www.stopwaste.org.