BILLINGS-
A lot of new additions are popping up at the old Granny's Attic Building on Minnesota Avenue.
This weekend the Blue Bin Outlet a by-the-pound thrift store celebrates their grand opening.
"So this is the grand-opening of the Blue Bin Outlet, which is a new store here in Montana,"Blue Bin Outlet Co-Owner Nathan Belden said, "There hasn’t been anything like this before, and the reason is because it takes a lot of volume to make a store like this really happen,".
The Blue Bin's goal is to limit the amount of textile waste in our area.
"We collect about 200,000 lbs a month of textiles that would really normally go to the land-fill, so instead we re-direct that now to the store, sell it one last time here in Billings," Belden said, "They can buy what is very lightly used clothing, there’s nothing wrong with the stuff. For the vast majority of what we have, it’s really good stuff, it can have like new tags on it, maybe worn once or twice by someone".
So how does it work?
"All day long the bins are rotated, and what that means is that the table gets taken off the floor, emptied, and refilled with complete new stock where it will sit for about 6 hours, total, so nothing has a long shelf life," Nathan Belden said.
Their pricing varies based on how much you're buying, and the weight.
"We’re talking like men or women’s jeans, they’re going to weigh about a lb. So you’re looking at 2 dollars for a pair of jeans", Belden said.
He says to never underestimate the power of a good outfit.
"You know these new people who are coming in, haven’t seen this before, so they’re going to watch people go through the bins, and kind of ooh and ahh about these cool things that they’re finding, and that’s really cool to see, because they’re finding these treasures," Belden said.
Keeping with the theme of re-cycling, the Outlet said that one thing that they can always use is more cardboard boxes, in efforts to lessen the amount of plastic given out.
Visit their Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/BlueBinOutlet/
