As WestSide Baby‘s car-seat-collection drive was wrapping up at 2 this afternoon, that dumpster was packed full of car seats for recycling – about 400 collected today and at a Ballard dropoff last Saturday. The dropoffs today also included about 50 reusable car seats:

Today’s drive is in an expansion facility that WestSide Baby is finally ready to start talking about in a big way – it’s a former auto shop right behind their 15th SW headquarters in White Center, but it fronts on 14th SW, and gives them lots more room to accept donations for local families, and for volunteers to work on sorting those donations, starting in early November. WestSide Baby’s Nancy Woodland explains that it means not only can they accept more items to distribute to local families in need, they also can separate the pickup and dropoff areas, making it easier for people on both ends of the equation to deal with WS Baby. The expansion building – which is being remodeled with donated materials and labors by many businesses, groups and individuals (including WSB sponsor West Seattle Design Build) – is at 10027 14th SW; it’s also where the diapers collected in last July’s Stuff the Bus were taken for storage (here’s our report with video). If you missed today’s car-seat event, by the way, no worries, Nancy says they hope to have more!