Resource Revival: Bikes are Cool!!

We recently had a chance to chat with Resource Revival Founder, Graham Bergh and National Sales Manager, Jim Hassert. We started carrying their bottle opener last year after we discovered how they make them. Resource Revival pays for bike shops to ship them used bike chains and other parts. These parts are then reused to create functional art. An established company, Resource Revival is a focused company making a difference in this world.

LiveGreen: How did Resource Revival begin?

Graham: The idea behind Resource Revival came to me in 1991 when I had a flat tire riding to work. When I took out the inner tube I realized the potential for reusing bike parts. The city of Portland had a pretty cool program called "One Percent Well Spent" Which they discontinued in the mid 90s. It was a program that gave one percent of their solid waste budget out as grant money to people with innovative recycling ideas. It was a motivation for me that if I could think of something cool I could get like $100,000. That was the motivation behind getting the company rolling and we incorporated in 1994.

LG: Very cool...so, how big is your company right now?

Graham: If you hold your hands out as wide as you can...that's about how big it is. Seriously though, we don't actually give out metrics...but for employees we have only five. But that changed...a while back we had ten people. We're smart about the way we grow and partner with our vendors to do certain steps for us.

Jim: That's an interesting thing about our company too. In 2004 we moved out of the city to a more rural location...from a 10,000 square foot building to a much smaller building. This has made us more efficient and not as wasteful with space. We went from a bigger building and a bigger crew to a smaller building, smaller crew...but we're pumping out more work then we ever have.


LG: That's interesting. I was just over at New Belgium and saw a bunch of your stuff. My friend was with me and I didn't even notice that we were sitting on your stools until he pointed them out to me. He's interested in buying them. They're really impressive in person...the photos on your site just don't give them justice.

Graham: One of the long term plans for our site is to get more shots of our product in place. The flip side of what Jim was describing is that Jim and I are kind of the core two people that run this company and it's actually gotten pretty big. So there's just a list of projects that would make sense but we don't want to staff up and go further into debt, we'll just get them done when we can. Really, it's a very sustainable business plan if you think about it. All things in time. And it forces us to prioritize.

LG: What other sustainable plans are in the works?

Graham: The long term vision is that we will actually generate our own electricity here onsite. Maybe a five year vision...we've got good wind and good sun in the summer so we could have some micro-power generation going on. I just read a couple articles...one is about these micro turbines that you can actually put on the face of the building, they look like pinwheels, they're a little bigger but no stand alone tower that would actually be blown over here in a big storm. On the facade of the building we could have these on the west side facing the gorge and it could be a very artistic thing. Solar panels, we're looking at some new roofing tiles that would also be photovoltaic. So when we need a new roof, which will be in the next ten years, maybe we'll do those.

LG: We work with a company here in San Diego called Clean Power Systems that partners with Sun Power. They have a really cool building integrated PV. I think if you are going to replace the roof it's a great way to split the cost of two financially intensive projects.

Graham: Well especially in San Diego or Phoenix...it's ridiculous that any of those cities use coal or nuclear or anything, it's crazy.

LG: I see that you have computer parts in some of your products. Are there any plans to incorporate other recyclables?

Graham: Actually we are beginning to focus more on just bicycle parts. We had an idea to be the everything recyclable shop but now we are doing just bike parts. Bikes are cool! We like riding bikes, bikes are good for the environment, we have the relationship with the bike shops..and that's kind of enough. It makes our product line very focused too. And yet, one interesting thing about bikes is that you're not just stuck with one look. You know, if you're recycling sweaters you're stuck with wool or cotton, whereas with bikes you've got the chain, the frames, the tubes, tires, seats, handlebars...there are a lot of different options for us.

LG: I really dig your relationship with the bike shops. You pay for them to ship their broken chains and parts.


Graham: That's the great thing about this program...the shops are already taking these pieces apart. You know, instead of saying lets disassemble this thing and send it to Resource Revival, they're already disassembling this thing...already repairing the bike and taking pieces off...so just put it in a box and send it to Resource Revival. So we're capturing work that's already happening.

LG: Have you thought of offsetting the waste generated from shipping?

Graham: We've been looking into that. We have a global warming meeting once a month. I think in the short term we're more focused on what we can do here. Adding more day lighting, limiting employee car trips, things like that. Ultimately it would be great to offset...the way I'd like to offset the waste is instead of buying credits I'd rather produce energy here. Enough energy to power not only the onsite production but to offset all the associated carbon emissions. I think it's totally doable, but not realistic in the next year or two...I think five years is a realistic goal.

LG: Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Graham: We have some cool variations on the products that are coming out in a year or so. The website is being updated...we'll have more information on it, in certain cases less information about things that were more important to us a while back. We want to have a more interactive site and ideally some video showing products being made and the recycling process.

LG: Your company reminds me of the attitude over at New Belgium. You're just doing what you love, you know you love bikes...let's make stuff our of them. You don't have time to just sit around and think about this stuff.

Graham: We've worked really hard...a lot of time making it work. The sense right now is that we're not a start-up company, we're looking to the future and where we want to take it. We don't want to take over the world, we don't want to focus on just making money or recycling...we want balance.

A Tour of the New Belgium Brewery - Act One

While bumming around Fort Collins, Colorado, LiveGreen had the chance to meet with New Belgium Brewery's Sustainability Specialist Nicolas Theisen for a tour. New Belgium is not your average brewery. Along with making beer, the creators of Fat Tire are pushing the envelope of sustainable business development while incubating a culture of eccentric genius. Come with us as we take you through the first part of our journey through Nirvana.

First stop is an explanation of the Process Water Treatment Facility where waste water from the brewery is pumped into anaerobic (without oxygen) and aerobic (whith oxygen) ponds to reduce the amount of organic waste and water sent on to the Fort Collins municipal plant. Initially built in 2001, the facility was expanded last year to double its capacity. The ponds harness the power of a diverse set of microbes to reduce organic waste. A balloon placed over the anaerobic pond captures methane released from bacteria degrading the organic waste which is then used to power a combined heat and power engine. Last year, New Belgium ran the engine for six months to produce 400,000 kW of electricity. At full load, there is a potential output of 100,000 kWh per month which could meet 15% of the brewery’s needs for electricity.

Step along to Brew House One. Not used anymore for daily brewing, there are plans to use this original brew house for specialty brews or to handle overflow from Brew House Two. Brew House Two is a bit loud and hot because this is where the magic happens. Everyday, three truck loads of grain are used for brewing. The amount of energy needed to heat the large volumes of water used at New Belgium is drastically lower than normal breweries. On the ground floor of Brew House Two can be found heat exchangers that use counter flow technology to save energy in the form of hot water. By passing the hot wort (unfermented beer) next to cold water coming in to be heated, the hot wort warms the cold water, thereby reducing the amount of energy needed to boil the water as well as cooling the wort, which reduces the energy needed to cool the wort. Water is one of the most energy taxing molecules to heat or cool, so using water as a type of energy battery is very efficient. This is just one way in which New Belgium uses heat exchangers. Another heat exchanger uses glycol to capture heat which is then used to heat the loading docks to eliminate the need for deicing.

Come up the stairs to a pavilion on top of the three huge brew tanks. It’s even hotter up here…we’re standing on top of huge tanks heated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. This area is used for tours and entertaining. The brewery opens the pavilion up 10 times a year for local non-profit organizations to hold events and provides catering and a New Belgium bike to raffle. All free of charge. This is all part of the New Belgium philanthropic and sustainable attributes. Employee-owned, New Belgium contributes $1 for each barrel sold to a philanthropic cause within its distribution zone. This resulted in $400,000 last year alone. With a doubling in capacity expected this year, New Belgium could donate almost one million dollars next year! Check out the website to apply.

At 400,000 barrels per year, New Belgium is the third largest craft brewery (15,000 to 2 million barrels per year) in America today, surpassed only by Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams. A new packaging facility coming online right now is excepted to double this number. Truly amazing when you hear that back in 1992, New Belgium started in the basement of founders’ Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan's house.

So, how is this magical elixir made? Nic took us through the process as we looked into the first tank.

This is our mill, we have all of our grain silos out back. We get three truckloads of grain a day. As it comes in we mill it and put it in here with hot water. At this point, the hot water is breaking down the starches into fermentable sugars. It’s just like a hot cereal with barley, sometimes oats or wheat…we don’t use rice or corn. This is what really effects the product that comes out. The heat of the water and how long you keep it in the tank changes the amount of sugars available. It’s not only the ingredients that effect beer, it’s also the process.

Come on over to the second tank where Nic points out a mosaic surrounding the tank.


These mosaics are done by a local artist. New Belgium likes to support local artists…all of our labels are done by local artists. This mosaic is “A Day in the Life of a New Belgium Employee”. They get up, go on a bike ride…check it out. This tank is the Lauter Tun, lauter is german for straining. This is where we’re going to separate all that grain from the liquid. This grain is by far our largest waste product. We get three truck loads in a day and three truck loads out. This by-product is sent to a local feed lot and is a great example of a closed loop system.

Over to the last tank which is the prized energy saving design, the Merlin Brewing Vessel.


The brewing process is by far the highest energy use of the brewery. Nothing compares to heating all of this water, so the more energy you can capture, such as in the energy transfer plates, the better. This is an example of using less energy. You’re bringing the wort up to very high temperatures for multiple reasons. One is to sanitize the beer, so when you add the yeast there is no contamination. Two, you boil off impurities which in this case are in the form of aromas. This doesn’t effect the taste really, but can save your beer from smelling foul. And then three, this is where we’ll add herbs and spices as well as the hops. High temperatures are needed to get the flavors out.

The standard way of heating is a jacketed tank that heats the liquid from the outside. What we use is a cone and a quarter inch of liquid is poured down the cone which flash boils it. This instantly boils the wort, what would normally take hours takes minutes to heat. So we save 65-75% of the natural gas needed to heat it. And then, rather than piping that steam out, which is energy, we have a copper coil running through there to condense and capture the water which is then used to clean the tanks as well as capturing the heat.

Having fun? This place is awesome. Here we stop for a taste of New Belgium’s seasonal beer, Springboard Ale. While at the bar, a tour invades and the host starts a funky music video…watch it here!




Talking with Nic, he tells me of plans to start generating even more power onsite using wind and solar. The brewery is situated on the northern end of town and has a great wind potential from Wyoming.

That ends this part of the tour...check back soon for our next segment!

Green Drinks: Simple, Unstructured...a talk with founder Edwin Datschefski

LiveGreen recently had a chance to sit down for a pint and a chat with Green Drinks founder Edwin Datschefski. Actually, it was virtual...Edwin being in the UK, LiveGreen from San Diego. ;)

Communication is key...we are very grateful to Edwin for allowing us an interview with one of the visionaries behind the fastest-growing environmentally aware communities in the world. In more than 200 cities around the world, Green Drinks is an unstructured, informal and random networking idea that brings people together every month to talk about all things green. I think the logo for Green Drinks Chattanooga encompasses the philosophy behind Green Drinks best.

The beginnings of Green Drinks is unlike any I’ve ever heard of. In 1989, Edwin found himself in a northern London pub called The Slug and Lettuce. While sharing a pint with several of his green design colleagues, Edwin noticed an enviro-minded acquaintance at a table nearby. As it turned out Edwin said, the friend was sitting with a few of his eco-conscious mates, so we pulled some tables together…and so a movement was born.

The original founders of Green Drinks are Edwin Datschefski, Yorick Benjamin and Paul Scott. A few years after starting Green Drinks, Edwin focused on setting up the greendrinks.org website in order to spread this great idea to other cities. Such a simple idea has brought like-minded people together in places like New York, London, and Amsterdam…all the way to places like Buenos Aires, Malta and San Juan.

What does Edwin see for Green Drinks in the next five years? More cities! Apart from that, we've toyed a lot with the format, but the basic theme of unstructured, informal random networking seems very stable and I don't see it evolving much though we give it every opportunity to do so.

Visit the greendrinks.org websites to find a local meeting near you. All you have to do is show up, grab a drink, and start talking. Cheers!