With Penn in the midst of the nationwide RecycleMania competition, the University community can find a model campus reuse-and-recycle project right here in West Philadelphia.

Penn Transit Services, which operates the shuttle buses and vans that transport students, staff and faculty around the University and throughout neighboring communities, made a move of its own this past December to a new site at 34th Street and Grays Ferry Avenue. It was previously located at a surface parking lot on Walnut Street.

Penn Transit’s new home is the 23-acre site of the former DuPont Company’s Marshall Laboratory, which the University purchased in September to use as the new headquarters for its transit operations and storage.

On Wednesday, Feb. 23, Penn Transit is inviting the University community to an open house from 1 to 3 p.m. to see its newly recycled space up close and personal, and also to illustrate how the transit operations have been improved.

“The garage allows us to work on our vehicles all the time, so we don’t have to worry about the weather,” says Brian Shaw, director of Penn Transit. “We took the shelving and other equipment from buildings throughout the site that had been left by the prior owner and reused and repurposed it.”

Staff and drivers have new offices and a break room as well. “All the space in here was repurposed,” Shaw says. “As little that needed to be changed was changed. We reused a lot of material that was in here—furniture, existing electrical outlets, the HVAC system—for a lower cost, but also to make use of what was already here.”

Penn Transit will provide free transportation to and from their new site for the open house. To take a tour of their new digs, gather at any one of the nine Penn Transit stops around campus and a Transit vehicle will swing by and pick you up.

For more information about Penn Transit, visit www.upenn.edu/transportation.