The final days

This week I’ve been in Raleigh, North Carolina at the first reuse conference in the USA, or the ‘Woodstock of reuse’. It took me back to the first days of the CRNS when peace and love and talk of meat waste was in the air, although considerably larger volumes of whisky were consumed in the early days on our side of the Atlantic. There were some extremely inspiring speakers including the keynote address which was about the history of reuse from the Egyptians onward.

One of the things that’s really struck me about reuse in the USA, is how involved the creative community is and how good they are at raising awareness of reuse. The conference had a reuse fashion show and there were talks from designers and eco-artists. Artists took up around half of the exhibition space. I think this is something we can learn from in Scotland.

North Carolina is an extremely friendly place and I seemed to spend a much of my visit, both in and out of the conference, in discussion with people about whether Scotland or North Carolina has the unhealthiest food. We have deep fried Mars Bars, they have deep-fried Snickers. We have haggis, they have cheese burgers inside Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Maybe they win.

I’m back in New York now, having taken my last Amtrak train journey today. Tomorrow I’ll be flying back to Scotland with a fuller brain, a heavier bag and a rounder middle.

Art, geeks and cupcakes

Portland may only be the second most environmentally friendly city in the world but it must be the number one for reuse. With its many vintage shops and non-profit reuse organisations, the only question who is buying the new stuff that eventually ends up in these places?

On Thursday, I visited SCRAP, a creative reuse organisation or what in the UK would be called a scrapstore. It takes in donations of all sorts of things from yarn to bottle tops. In short, anything that fits in the shop and could be used creatively. When I visited, their shop was packed with teachers, artists and moms rummaging through piles of textiles. They also run a reuse education programme in schools and have an on-site art gallery that was filled with masks made of reused materials when I visited.

Thanks to the success of the shop, SCRAP is completely self sufficient financially.

On Tuesday, I went over the river to Vancouver, Washington to visit Divine Consign. As far as I can tell, this is a completely unique operation. It works by selling fairly high-end furniture on behalf of people and taking a share of the profit which is then distributed to local charities Their shop is laid out by a professional designer. Last year, they added another element to the business – Divine Cupcakes. People come into the shop to buy cupcakes and end up buying furniture. I can say, with a complete lack of self-interest, that this is a fantastic idea that should be adopted by CRNS members.

The Rebuilding Centre wasn’t on my original itinerary but so many people told me What a great organisation it was that I thought I should squeeze in a visit and I’m glad I did. The Centre takes in timber, baths, sinks, tiles, kitchens, light fittings etc and retails it to the general public. They turn over eight tonnes a day, seven days a week. In addition to the retail centre, they offer a complete house deconstruction service. 80% of their staff come from outwith the construction industry and are put through a comprehensive training programme. The Centre seems to really focus on developing its people and you can feel the friendly atmosphere as soon as you walk through the door. The Rebuilding Centre’s mission is to support the local community and it takes this seriously. One of the other organisations I visited said that the Rebuilding Centre had been responsible for bringing the area it’s based in back to life.

My final visit was to Free Geek, an IT reuse and recycling organisation based in east Portland. After two days in
Portland, it was clear to me this was a well loved project, based on the amount of people I’d seen around town in Free Geek t-shirts. This is a big organisation, with 30 staff and 700 volunteers. A quarter of the IT equipment that’s taken in is reused and the remainder is deconstructed for recycling. Volunteers learn how to build and deconstruct computers and earn their own PC after donating 24 hours. Much of their training is available on their web site: free geek

Oregon

This week I got back on the Amtrak and headed north to Oregon. I’m spending a couple of days in Eugene, Oregon visiting St Vincent de Paul (SVDP), before heading north to Portland on Thursday.

Yesterday, I saw furniture from HomeAid West Lothian and New Start Highland being sold in one of SVDP’s thrift stores. A customer was sitting in the middle of the shop playing a piano from Scotland. The charity (or thrift) stores here are on a scale that is unimaginable in the UK. Hundreds of thousands of square feet in Eugene are used for thrift retail in a town with a population of 150,000. SVDP sells so many books in its shops, it’s now bigger than any of the new booksellers in town. In total, the organisation processes 100 tonnes of books a month.

This morning I had a flashback to the 1980s when we went out to see a former rollerdrome that SVDP is considering turning into a thrift store. The original floor was still in place, as was the red carpeting on the wall. The building manager told us that he and his wife still go down their with their rollerskates sometimes.

This afternoon, I saw the Aurora Glass factory which turns waste pane glass into ornaments, tiles and awards. The colour of the molten glass when it came out of the foundry was almost too much for my video camera to cope with. We really need to have something like Aurora Glass in Scotland.

California

Hello from California,

On Monday, I visited Amazon Paint riverside just outside Los Angeles. Amazon takes paint from household hazardous waste sites run by the US version of local authorities. Around one quarter of what they collect is turned into recycled paint which is sold locally or exported. The remainder is used to produce a low carbon biomass fuel or a concrete additive. Lewis Perales who manages the project gave me a very comprehensive overview of the whole operation and I came away with pages of information.

After visiting amazon, I had the interesting experience if driving in LA in the rain. I probably burned off all the burritos I’ve eaten on the trip in just an hour. The rain was such an unusual event that it was the headline story on the LA news that evening.

On Tuesday, I took the Amtrak up to San Francisco. The train runs along the side of the beach for part of the trip and we could see dolphins and seals in the water.

Now I’m recharging the batteries for a few days in San Francisco ( recycling rate: 72%).

Heading west

On Tuesday, I spent a night at the Earthship Biotecture in Taos, New Mexico. The houses are built out of used tyres, packed with mud and then covered with an adobe shell. Power comes from solar panels on the roof and water is repeatedly recycled so they have a minimal impact on the environment. Mike Reynolds is the man behind the earthships and a film has been made about his battles with the authorities: www.garbagewarrior.com. The buildings are beautiful and it was great fun to stay there and learn about how they work in practice.

Since leaving on Wednesday, I’ve been travelling west on my way to visit Amazon Paint on Monday. The journey has taken me through some beautiful landscapes. I seem to be saying ‘that’s amazing’ every 30 seconds. Yesterday we travelled through Navajo country with its stunning red sandstone formations. Tonight I’m stopping off on the Kaibab Plateau 40 miles north of the Grand Canyon. It even has it’s own Kaibab squirrel although unfortunately I ran over one today. I’ll be glad to get back onto the less destructive Amtrak on Tuesday.

Colorado

Hello from Colorado,

Elgar – yes I have been finding out their square footage – huge! Especially the Furniture Bank of Central Ohio which had 18,000 square foot of retail space and a two and a half acre yard.

On Saturday night, I jumped on the Amtrak for a 19 hour journey west through the American plains. I was hypnotised by the miles and miles and miles and miles of cornfields in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. It must be strange to live in a place where you have to travel hundreds of miles to see something other than a cornfield. My first experience of Amtrak dining was fun, especially watching the waitress trying to deliver my bowl of pasta which was in a very runny tomato sauce that kept threatening to slosh off the edge of the plate. The diners at my table told me something interesting about homelessness in the USA. Some states give homeless people a one way ticket to Hawaii because they can rough sleep there the whole year round without getting hypothermia. It makes Scottish homelessness policies look very progressive.

Yesterday I picked up my rental car and navigator from Denver Airport and then had the hair-raising experience of driving into the city. Not only was I driving on the wrong-side of the road, negotiating six lanes in the dark with little idea of where I was going, but halfway through the drive the headlights and the dashboard lights both went off. Some people pay to go whitewater rafting or bungy jumping on their holiday for thrills, I just need to try driving a car.

By this morning, I had the car under control and headed off to Boulder to visit Ecocycle which runs numerous zero waste programmes including the Centre for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM), the Boulder MRF, business waste collections and a zero waste education programme delivering 1200 in-class lessons per year. CHaRM takes on one new difficult material to recycle every year and it’s the first recycling centre I’ve ever seen that has a recycling bay for yoga mats! The idea that most caught my fancy was their events recycling packs. They sell packs for small, medium and large events that contain compostable crockery, compost bins and information. They even have video instructions for people who want to run large zero waste events. Not only do these packs help to cut waste at events but they also spread the message about zero waste. While I was at CHaRM a member of the public was talking about a party she’d had in her house using the pack and all of her friends were asking her about zero waste.

Tomorrow I’ll be saying goodbye to Denver and heading off to the Earthship Biotecture in New Mexico.

Chicago

Hello from the brassy, breezy town.

I’ve been to see two organisations over the past two days. The first was Sharing Connections, a Furniture Bank (as they’re known here) out in the suburbs. The project, which is run by Ann Wohlberg, largely helps the working poor with basic furniture and clothing. Around 4,000 individuals a year benefit and their average salary is $11,000 per year or 8,000 pounds. I went through the whole process of getting furniture with one of their clients, a Hispanic woman called Noemi who spoke no English. She and her five children had been sleeping on blankets before a support worker referred them to Sharing Connections. For a $50 access fee, she was able to pick out most of the furniture and clothing she needed and load it into her neighbour’s pick up truck. Like the Central Ohio Furniture Bank, Sharing Connections is heavily dependent on fundraising and all of their Board Members have to commit to raising $5,000 for the organisation every year. Also like Central Ohio, the project is run by a very dedicated team of staff and a huge number of volunteers.

Ann and her husband Mark kindly took me on a tour of Chicago after my visit. We stopped at all the hot spots (literally, it was still 88F as the sun was setting).

Today I visited the Rebuilding Exchange in the south of Chicago, which reuses all the stuff that we’re not so good at reusing in Scotland – kitchen units, sinks, baths, windows and doors, alongside timber and other building materials. It’s only been running for 18 months but I get the impression it’s already an institution in it’s community. Megan, one of their staff members told me the story of a local family. The grandparents had been determined that their daughter and her kids should have a home. They bought a wreck of a house for $25,000 and have been coming into the Exchange every month to buy what they need to repair it. They’ve become such a part of the project that they now bring in doughnuts for the staff and the Exchange gave the grandmother a reused toilet on her birthday! The Rebuilding Exchange really believes in making it possible for people on a low income to be green. This weekend they’re running a class on repairing windows as they know that not everyone can afford to replace their windows and the Chicago winters are very, very cold. Donations of building materials and fitted products by private individuals are tax deductible. Kitchen fitters can therefore bring a smile to the faces of their customers by suggesting that they donate items to the Rebuilding Exchange and save money on their tax bill. To see some of the amazing things that have been made out of items bought at the Rebuilding Exchange, look at their blog: http://rebuildingexchange.blogspot.com/

Columbus and onwards

Hi, I’ve managed to reconnect to the internet after three days in wi-fi wilderness. Since my last post, I’ve travelled to Columbus, fallen on my face and visited the fantastic Furniture Bank of Central Ohio.

On Sunday night, I took the overnight Greyhound from New York to Columbus, Ohio, spending the night at the back of the bus with the fresh and fragrant aroma of chemical toilet wafting over me. On Monday, I had the afternoon to look around the city in record-breaking heat. I was staying in a beautiful area called German Village which was settled (unsurprisingly) by Germans who build streets of tightly-packed, gingerbread-style red brick houses. My day didn’t end so well though when I tripped on a crack on the sidewalk and landed on my face. I was concentrating too much on the deliciousness of the burrito I’d just eaten and not enough on where I was going. On the bright side, it’s been a good way to meet people because strangers keep coming up to me and asking what happened!

On Tuesday, I spent the day with Joanne and Jim and their staff and volunteers at the Furniture Bank. It’s a very efficient operation, helping 75 families and individuals with furniture every week. They receive no state support and raise most of the $1.3million it takes to run the organisation through fundraising. They couldn’t get enough donations of tables or dressers (hard to believe if you come from Scotland) and have started to make their own from particle board ‘seconds’ they get from a local furniture manufacturer. Their web site is well worth a look:www.furniturebankcoh.org At the end of the day I met some of their Board and volunteers. Anyone from the West of Scotland reading this will be pleased to know that I can travel all the way to Ohio and still get some (gentle) abuse for being an east coaster – of their volunteers (Winifred) originally came from Helensburgh and moved to the USA in 1948. I’ve taken away lots of useful information from the Furniture Bank which I’ll be writing up into a report.

Today I arrived in Chicago and I’ll be visiting an organisation called Sharing Connections tomorrow.

It’s autumn in New York. I’ve got a few days here before I head west on my reuse odyssey. So far, I’ve learnt that Virgin Atlantic does recycle newspapers but if you want to stop your fizzy juice bottles from being incinerated you have to wrestle the cabin crew to the ground and if you happen to relieve them of a couple of pots of chocolate mousse at the same time (vegetarians get fruit salad), then that’s even better. I arrived at New York at just the right time of day. I’d forgotten the visual impact when the airport train swings round the corner and you see the Manhattan skyline for the first time. Yesterday there was a beautiful orange sunset behind the Empire State Building.What a welcome. My hostel is in Brooklyn and as I walked to it from the subway, all the second hand stores and thrift shops were still open. It’s too early in my trip to try and fit a retro standard lamp in my suitcase though

Reuse in the USA

Welcome to my blog. My trip begins on the 17th September. Go to my Google Map page to see the organisations I’ll be visiting.