Audio story by Lauren Quijano
The rising prices of retail clothing may inhibit Cal Poly students’ financial ability to shop sustainably, but Cal Poly’s Green Campus team aims to change that. The organization’s new on-campus thrift store, “The Loop,” opened on Friday and was three years in the making. The items are free for all students, campus faculty and staff.
Offering clothing, kitchenware, household items, school supplies and more, The Loop is located in Cal Poly Surplus (Building 82), off of Mt Bishop Rd. Volunteers reported helping 65 total visitors by the halfway point of the pop-up’s opening day on Friday.
Sitting at the front and checking in visitors was Evelyn Navarro-Martinez, a child development freshman and member of College Corps. Navarro-Martinez manages Green Campus’s coordination with Cal Poly Surplus, email outreach and the organization’s marketing.
Navarro-Martinez also participated in the clothing exchange, alongside volunteering.
“I’ve already taken stuff, and then took something for my dad because he works in the sun a lot. So, I got a thick shirt for him,” Navarro-Martinez said.
Lilly Salcedo, an environmental earth and soil sciences sophomore, discovered The Loop while volunteering at this year’s Open House. Green Campus was tabling at the event, and they were advertising the upcoming free clothing exchange.
“They told me that they accepted donations and I was like, ‘Wait, that’s perfect,’ because I have stuff to give, and I don’t know where to put it,” Salcedo said.
Salcedo appreciates the thrift store as a free alternative to the prices of downtown thrift stores and its closeby location to her residence in Poly Canyon Village.
“I know that there’s a Goodwill, but I haven’t been yet, so I’m really happy that this was at least somewhere on campus, so that I could feasibly get to this,” Salcedo said.
Other students echoed the same sentiment, with accessibility and affordability as the main reasons for the thrift store’s appeal.
Amy Davila, a psychology freshman, learned about the event through Green Campus’s Instagram marketing.
Davila emphasized that it’s difficult for freshmen to get off campus to go thrifting, making the on-campus aspect of The Loop appealing. She also appreciates that it’s student-owned.
“A lot of the time, to be sustainable, it’s very costly and it becomes very expensive. It’s hard to continue these practices when everything is continuously getting more and more amped up in prices,” Davila said.
Nereida Herrera, the Energy, Utilities and Sustainability Associate for Cal Poly, supervises a team of eight Cal Poly students as they work on various climate-focused initiatives within Green Campus — the thrift store being one of them.
Herrera, a Cal Poly Pomona alumnus, worked for Americorps VIP at the San Luis Obispo campus before the program was terminated by the former Department of Government Efficiency. In her new role, she assists students with planning, coordinating with campus partners and managing projects aimed at making the campus more sustainable.
“I get to work with my department, with the Green Campus students, and work on trying to spread more sustainable initiatives that are here to help Cal Poly be more sustainable and help students, as well as meet their basic needs, and hopefully build projects that’ll live as long as Cal Poly is living; [The Loop] being one of them,” Herrera said.
Herrera noted that the biggest obstacle was finding a space for The Loop to call home. Now that the pop-up will recur inside the Surplus building, Herrera hopes that The Loop can eventually become a permanent installation.
The Loop has two more pop-up dates coming up, with one on May 1 and May 8 — the next two Fridays following the opening day. Both upcoming pop-ups will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and will be accepting donations. For more information, visit Cal Poly Green Campus’s Instagram.
