LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 13, 2025) —The Thrifty Cat, UK’s new ‘campus free store’, started as the independent project of Olivia Smith, a UK Recycling intern through the Sustainability Internship Program.
Smith joined UK Recycling as an intern in Fall 2024. Inspired to offer a creative and long-term solution to the amount of waste generated during move-out each year, she developed a proposal for a ‘campus free store’ and surveyed student interest in the potential initiative. Her survey, and the continued interest in and growth of UK Recycling’s annual Thrift Shop Pop-Up, showed that there was a real student demand for this type of resource.
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