The Chemical Control Centre is offering surplus products to faculty, staff, and laboratory personnel, but it's a bit of a misnomer to call it a garage sale, manager Chris Busch admitted.

"Everything is free, so it's hard to beat our prices," he said.

The event, which runs 1:30 to 4 p.m. Thursday, July 8, in room 173-3 Essex Hall, is an exercise in sustainability. It seeks to find new use for items ranging from glassware like flasks, test tubes, and piping to general lab supplies and small pieces of equipment.

Busch points out that re-using is a higher level than recycling on the waste hierarchy of reduce, re-use, and recycle.

"Of course labs can find uses for this stuff, but I'm always impressed with the creative ways people on our campus re-purpose it," he said. "Visual artists like to use it for their art projects.