T SEEMS WE'RE always trying to find our way around the middleman. And why not? It generally saves a buck or two. But NYC24 -- through some scavenging of our own -- has found that not all middlemen are out to serenade your piggy bank. Some don't even raise the price of their products.

Actually, the ones we're talking about don't charge anything at all. They're the middlemen of material exchange programs. From "onesies" for a toddler and a desk for a new apartment to empty guava cans for an art project, if you're in need, there might be a material exchange program and a middleman that can help. With coordination as their MO, these middlemen keep usable goods out of the landfill and get them into needy and creative hands.

Tag along with NYC24 as we see how one of these programs works.

Material for the Arts (MFTA) is a material exchange program run out of a 21,000-square-foot warehouse in Long Island City. They take stuff, from fake eyeglasses to fluorescent fabric, that people don’t need and they make it available to their customer, for free! More than 2,500 non-profit arts organizations are signed up as MFTA customers. They range from public schools to burlesque performance artists.

MFTA is a part of New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, but they also receive funding from the department of sanitation. This is because they help keep hundreds of tons of stuff off of New York’s garbage barges.

MFTA is also a scavengers’ paradise. Just imagine, 542 tons a year of other people’s castoffs all at your disposal. Harriet Taub, MFTA’s director says she has the best job in New York City:

Material for the Arts was founded in 1978 by an altruistic artist named Angela Fremont. She was working at the Parks Department and heard that they needed a refrigerator to store medicine for animals. She turned to a local radio station for help broadcasting the problem. It was all too easy—a flood of calls met her plea—and MFTA was formed.

Today, it’s painters and art teacher who reap the rewards. Every Tuesday MFTA customers can make ‘shopping’ appointments. They use their time slot to comb through the shelves of buttons, racks of fabric, boxes of fake flowers, stack of paint, and lines of old desks that fill MFTA’s Queens warehouse.

On a recent Tuesday, NYC24 went out to check out the pickings.

Gina Goodman was shopping for decorative material—anything with tropical colors—for a fund-raiser at PS77. Nicole Blackman was hunting for materials to construct the set of her play The Courtesan Tales, which she’ll be performing at the art space PS 122. Yungshu Chao sorted through leather strips, looking for materials for an interactive community art project that will be going up at the Queen Museum of Art. Carmen Soto found some material for an arts project with the older members of the Henry Street Settlement, one of New York City’s oldest social services organizations.