Keep America Beautiful!

By Lia Mack of BeGreenDesigns

Have you looked outside lately? Take a walk around the block. Hike through the woods. Or just look at your own yard after a windy day. It's a mess. Plastic bags, ignored roadside newspapers, candy wrappers, water bottles and more. All just lying around cluttering up the landscape. On a recent hike I actually found a ceiling fan in the woods...A ceiling fan!?!? It is a sad absolute that when I take my children outside, they will see more trash laying around than other children playing and wildlife put together. Just as with violence on TV, the more they see it, the more immune they become to litter being a part of their world. If we don't do something about it, together as a family and a community, litter will become a permanent part of our great outdoors.

One way for communities to get together to tackle the problem is underway right now! Keep America Beautiful™, the nation's largest volunteer-based community action and education organization, is hosting The Great American Cleanup™ in communities, both nationally and internationally. "The Great American Cleanup™, [is] the nation's largest community improvement program, [which] takes place annually from March 1 through May 31, involving an estimated 2.8 million volunteers and attendees…The hardworking volunteers donated more than 7.7 million hours in 2007 to clean, beautify and improve more than 17,000 communities during more than 30,000 events in all 50 states and beyond. Activities included beautifying parks and recreation areas, cleaning seashores and waterways, handling recycling collections, picking up litter, planting trees and flowers, and conducting educational programs and litter-free events.

"Keep America Beautiful™ believes that each of us holds an obligation
to preserve and protect our environment.
Through our everyday choices and actions,
we collectively have a huge impact on our world."

Get Local & Get Involved!
"There are more than 565 certified community affiliates of Keep America Beautiful™ doing good works." Click here to find a group near you.

Can't find an affiliate in your area?
Start one of your own. "Organize a clean-up committee by seeking out a few people who share your passion for the cause. Set a meeting date and let the ideas flow. Decide which project everyone wants to tackle." Click here to learn how you can Organize your own Great American Cleanup™

Here are just some ideas of how you can get involved from Keep America Beautiful™:

• Host a tree planting party
  
• Put a new coat of paint on a graffiti-marked wall
  
• Adopt a road with your friends and plant flowers
  
• Sponsor a litter collection contest
  
• Clean up a river or field that has become an illegal dump site
• Collect recyclable and reusable items on your block and deliver to a recycling center
  

Together we can make a difference. The possibilities are endless!

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.