The Green Garage

What's next for Recycle Here! and recycling in Detroit

Recent news that the city of Detroit is moving forward with privatized curbside recycling has generated much enthusiasm in light of the fact that Detroit has been the largest US city without curbside recycling for decades.

For many, though, the excitement has been tempered by the fact that a curbside program leaves the future of Recycle Here!, Detroit's one-of-a-kind community recycling center (and, until now, the city's primary official recycling program), somewhat in doubt.

Matthew Naimi, Recycle Here!'s founder and director of operations and a longtime friend of the Green Garage, stopped by the GG during community lunch last Friday to give a brief history of Recycle Here! and outline the future of the center, which has become, over the years, much more than just a place to drop off your recycling.

Recent history

Recycle Here! got started, Matt reminded us, in what is currently the Green Garage's parking lot! (How's that for kismet? At the time, the building was being used as a warehouse.) That's where, in 2005, he and some friends and neighbors set up a dumpster and hung a sign that said "Recycle Here!" Recycle Midtown, as it came to be known, set up shop every second Saturday for the next year, until its success motivated the city of Detroit to call and ask Naimi to work on getting an official city recycling program off the ground.

Flash forward to January 6, 2007: that's when Recycle Here! as we know it officially opened in its massive Holden Street warehouse, with the expectation that it would develop into a curbside program in 10 years. Around 100 families showed up to recyle that first day. 

Holden St. dropoff site. Photo courtesy Recycle Here!

To date, Matt reported, the center has provided recycling services to 275,000 Detroit residents and been responsible for recycling 13 million pounds of materials. Money from salable recyclables, meanwhile, has gone to support Green Living Science, Recyle Here's nonprofit educational organization that works with young Detroit students  to turn them into "little green agents of change," as Matt put it. And the warehouse and its grounds have become sites of both environmentally conscious art making and installation as well as places where Detroiters come together every week to advance the common good in a festive, welcoming environment.

The future

So what's next? During his presentation, Matt took a minute to express what a milestone the new curbside program is for Detroit. The curbside rollout hasn't happened exactly as he hoped or envisioned, but, as he put it, "Curbside is a sign of a successful city."

He then went on to outline some particulars of the new curbside program, expected to launch this summer, including the following:

• The city is partnering with two different companies to provide curbside service, Rizzo Environmental Services and  Advanced Disposal, who will divide the city's residences between them.
• Residents will have to opt in to the every-other-week service by purchasing a 58 gallon container for $25. 
• The service does not cover apartment buildings or businesses, which will need to establish their own contracts with private waste companies if they wish to implement a recycling program.

How does Recycle Here! fit into this new world? Matt sees the dropoff & community center remaining an integral component of a robust recycling system in the city for the foreseeable future. And the city seems to think so too, having just extended Recycle Here!'s contract for 14 months.

In addition to continuing to provide dropoff service to businesses and apartment dwellers who may not end up with curbside service, as well as homeowners who opt out of the curbside program, Recycle Here! will continue to function as a place to recycle styrofoam, plastic bags, and computers & other electronics, which are typically not accepted in curbside pickup. Additionally, the Holden St. warehouse will remain the best place in the city for people to visit to ask questions about what can or can't be recycled, as well as get help figuring out how to reuse materials. And as the reach of curbside service expands through Detroit's neighborhoods, satellite dropoff sites will be closed, allowing the Holden St. center to remain open more days per week. (Currently, it's open only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.) 

The long and short of it? Recyle Here! is not going anywhere anytime soon. Great news for all of us who love to recycle with our neighbors and who have watched these true green pioneers grow from a single dumpster in a vacant lot to a thriving, vital community service.

Friday lunch recap 10/18/13: Designing a treehouse

Let's say you're designing a treehouse. What would you like to see in it? Are there any features you remember from a favorite childhood treehouse you'd like to see included (or updated)? How would you design it so that it could fill multiple purposes for multiple kinds of people (kids and grown-ups alike)?

We were considering questions like this during our Friday lunch community design session on 10/18 lead by designer-in-residence Kevin Gardner. Kevin's working on the design of a treehouse that we're thinking about building on the site of the El Moore, our residential project down the street from the Green Garage. (For more info on the El Moore, visit our wiki and check in the bottom left corner of the homepage.)

 

Kevin's early in the design phase and wanted to turn to the community for input, as we have on many occasions at the GG. He gave a bit of background on the project, then asked for suggestions and sketched as we talked. Given the opportunity to think like kids again, the community's ideas flowed freely. They included:

• Make it bi-level: create at least two distinct spaces inside the treehouse.
• Expand the space with fabric and light -- create a tent formation in the trees above the house accessible by a ladder.
• Add skylights for more natural light.
• Since the site is very close to the sidewalk/street, connect the house to the street somehow. Create a swing out of reused materials, for instance, that reaches down almost to ground level.
• Create some lookout spots for kids to be "sneaky" and spy on the neighborhood goings-on. Install a periscope? 
• Build in bookshelves and invite kids in the neighborhood to contribute to the book collection.
• Keep simple toys inside that inspire creativity: wooden blocks, for instance. Encourage them to use the blocks to design and build their own mini-buildings.
• Build some of the walls in such a way that they can be drawn or painted on.
• Plant more trees on the site so that eventually, it'll be more of a hideaway, nestled in greenery.
• Encourage kids to bring blankets and sticks so that they can make temporary treehouses in the trees above and around the built structure, making it a temporary treehouse village.

Who's ready to move in?

 

Friday lunch recap 10/4/12: Solar thermal panel seasonal prep

The subject of Friday, 10/4's lunchtime presentation was solar panels. More specifically, the Green Garage's solar thermal panels, which we've recently turned on in preparation for the coming cool weather.

Joe Gallagher, who did construction design and management for the Green Garage (and is currently doing the same work for our residential project, the El Moore),  is responsible for keeping an eye on the GG's panels. He gave us a quick introduction to the GG's solar thermal heating system, which includes an array of ten panels on the roof that heat 5,000 gallons' worth of water. When the temperature drops and the building starts requiring heat, the water is pumped through tubes in our floor, providing radiant heating.

Joe walked us through the process by which the tanks start heating the water, which started on September 2nd. By September 3rd, we saw an increase in the water temperature in the tanks of 20.8 degrees.

Joe's goal around this time of year for the past couple years has been to get the water in the tanks to a temperature of 160 degrees. Are we there yet this year? Joe thinks so (an external sensor suggests the temperature recently hit 155, and since it's just outside the tank, he thinks the water is in fact hotter), but our sustainability labs are going to get a firmer answer today, actually, with the use of a very long thermometer.

Whether we get to 160 or not, though, we're optimistic that we'll be able to comfortably heat our historic, 12,500 square foot building all winter with free energy we're harnessing from the sun. (But we'll get to 160.)

 

Friday lunch recap 9/27/13: Getting ready for winter

The last two Friday lunch presentations had to do with the approach of winter. September 27th's, by retired engineer and Green Garage welcome desk volunteer Tom Besemer, was about some basic steps that every homeowner can take to get ready for the colder weather. October 4th's was by Joe Gallagher, who manages the Green Garage's energy systems, and offered a look at the solar thermal panels that are an integral component of the GG's heating system. We'll briefly recap both presentations, starting today with domestic winter prep and continuing next week with the solar panel talk. 

Preparing the Home for Winter

Tom Besemer broke down the steps we can all take to prepare our homes for winter into three categories: the furance, living area, and insluation. Here are some of his thoughts on each:

Furnace

• Turn it on -- now! Don't wait until it's cold enough to need it and then find out there's a problem. Turn it on, let it work for a few minutes, and see if it's in good working order. The earlier you notice there's trouble, the less time you'll have to wait for the repair folks, who get inundated after the first really chilly night.
• Now's the perfect time to replace your furnace filter, which should usually be done once a season (depending on the filter) -- a dirty filter can cause furnace performance problems.
• Make sure you know where both your supply registers and return air registers are in your house. Double-check to make sure all are clear of obstructions, such as furniture, rugs, etc.
• Thermostat setbacks: now's a great time to start thinking about the thermostat setpoints you use to reduce hot air output when you're away from the house or asleep at night.

Living Area

• Take a few minutes to consciously observe points of air infiltration (drafts). Where does it frequently get chilly? Try to determine where the cool air is coming from. If from windows, make sure they're closed all the way and locked. If still drafty, think about recaulking them or adding plastic covers.
• For doors, does your weather stripping need replacing? If you're thinking about making an investment in an energy saving tool, one of the best would be a storm door, if you don't have one. This creates a "threshold seal" that helps reduce the amount of cold air entering the building. 

 Insulation

• Insulate, insulate, insulate! How's the insulation in your attic? Your basement? Between the joists in the basement? Between your basement blocks and wood? How about empty rooms that don't get used much? Can those be better insulated? Again, now's a great time to be asking these questions.

We're all intimately connected to seasonal change in this part of the world. As Tom made clear, learning to live more sustainably includes learning to observe, understand, and adequately prepare for the distinct energy demands of each season. At the Green Garage, we designed our building to respond directly to seasonal flux by installing a solar thermal heating system; check back here next week for a closer look at how it's working!

Friday lunch: introduction to permaculture

Last Friday, Matt Sitek of Pill Pouch, a family business-in-residence at the Green Garage, presented an introduction to permaculture.

Matt's been interested in the subject of permaculture for some time. Recently, he attended a nine-day permaculture workshop in Wisconsin, and he's started facilitating an open, informal weekly lunchtime discussion group at the Green Garage about permaculture's 12 principles and their application in the GG's rooftop farm. (Tuesdays at noon.)

Matt started his presentation with definitions and a history. Permaculture ("permanent" + "agriculture," later "permanent" + "culture," too) is a way of designing systems based on natural processes and relationships. It's "ecosystem mimicry," in Matt's words. He briefly outlined its origins, after Australian naturalist Bill Mollison's years of ecosystem observation and seminal observation that "nature needs no external inputs."

Permaculture's roots are in agriculture, in designing agricultural systems based on observation of ecosystems in which all of the elements achieve a mutually supportive balance. Over time, it's evolved to include designing systems of all kinds, Matt noted, including buildings and landscapes.

Permaculture is a pair of glasses, Matt said, "lenses through which you see the world."

A copy of Matt's presentation is below. For more information on permaculture, he recommends checking out Permacultureprinciples.com or joining the lunchtime conversation group.

Friday lunch: the life in the soil

Last Friday, our resident rooftop farmer Kirsten Lyons spent a few minutes disussing the microbial life in the soil around us.

Kirsten, who manages the Green Garage's urban rooftop farm, has been playing in and learning about Michigan soil for decades as a gardener, farmer, and landscape designer. Some years ago, her passion for soil brought her into contact with the work of Elaine Ingham, a soil biologist who advocates for an ecological approach to soil management. 

Rather than relying on chemicals and tilling to nourish healthy soils, Ingham's approach consists in learning about the astonishing abundance and diversity of microbial life that calls the soil its home, then naturally creating the conditions in which that life can thrive. A thoughtfully balanced microbial ecosystem should yield an abundance of productive, healthy crops, a hypothesis that Ingham's practice confirms repeatedly.

Kirsten discussed her own love of the soil and explained the basics of Ingham's work while showing a serires of microsope videos taken by her, Helen Bradley, and Caroline Peterson, two other Green Garagers who've been heavily involved in the rooftop farm. The short videos offer a remarkable glimpse of our microscopic relatives that thrive in the vast, teeming world beneath our feet. Here are two of them:

 

 

 

Friday lunch: the buzz about bees

Well, hello there! After more than a year away, we've decided that it's time to dust off the old blog, in part to extend the reach of our Friday lunch conversations.

If you've never attended a Friday lunch, we hold them every single Friday (except major holidays) at noon. Everyone brings a lunch and introduces themselves, then we introduce the work that goes on at the Green Garage and host a brief presentation, either about our work in sustainability or the work of one of our businesses-in-residence. (After lunch, starting a few minutes past 1:00, we give a tour of our building.) 

From here on out, we're going to do our best to recap all the presentations here on the Green Garage blog so that folks who can't make it to lunch can still connect with the material & the people presenting it.

Last week, we invited Rich Wieskie, an avid local beekeeper, to talk a bit about beekeeping in Detroit. We met Rich in June when we interviewed him for a beekeeping-themed entry in Green City Diaries, our monthly sustainability series.

We changed our presentation format this time, hosting a Q & A between Matt Piper, the author of Green City Diaries, and Rich. Joan Mandell, Rich's partner in life and bees, was also in attendance and chimed in to help answer a few of the questions.

Rich & Joan in the Green Alley

We touched on a lot in a brief conversation: the history of beekeeping in Detroit, its current state, the ecological significance of the honeybee, the meditative personal dimension of beekeeping, as well as the life cycle of these fascinating creatures. A great insight from Rich was how relatively healthy urban bees have remained during the recent decades' honeybee crises, compared to bees that live near large agricultural sites. The diversity of urban flora (a diversity that is, in fact, promoted by bees) and smaller-scale use of pesticides in cities has helped urban honeybees stay safe. Fascinating.