Greenovation: The Re-Use Store

  • The ReStore sells everything from building supplies to power tools to toilets and sinks. (Photo courtesy of the Habitat for Humanity of Huron County, Michigan)

Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

Home improvement projects cost
a lot of money. Some environmentalists
have found a way to save some money,
conserve resources, and help other
people get into homes. Lester Graham
reports:

It seems like my friend Matt Grocoff with Greenovation TV is always working on a home improvement project. Not too long ago, he asked me to go with him to his favorite store. So we headed down the road where all the big box home improvement stores are in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, but that’s not where we ended up.

MG: “Just about anything I need, my first stop is always a re-use center. My favorite is, of course, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Today I’ve gotta find a– a, uh– what do you call them? A sander, a hand sander, a belt sander?”

Matt turned to Jackie Hermann who manages this ReStore. And she pulled a case from the shelf in back.

JH: “This absolutely beautiful Porter Cable professional random orbit sander with dust collection.”

MG: “This is gorgeous. This is exactly what I need. And how much is this?”

LG: “Looks like it’s never been used.”

MG: “Almost new condition. $35.00. And it’s used material that’s not going to a landfill or sitting in somebody’s basement not being used. And here I get to use it and save money. This is another one of the things where we can debunk the myth that going green costs more.”

Okay, so Matt got a good deal and it extends the useful life of a pretty good tool. But the idea is to raise money for Habitat for Humanity to help get people into homes, so I had to ask Jackie about that.

LG: “How much of that money actually goes to Habitat for Humanity and building houses for folks?”

JH: “We have a 12% administrative overhead, so 88-cents on every dollar into a habitat home.”

There are about 600 of these ReStores across the nation. The administrative overhead varies a bit from store to store, but the money raised at each store goes to homes in that store’s local area.

Jackie says, for her area, that’s meant a bit of a shift for Habitat for Humanity. You might have heard, in Michigan there are a lot of foreclosures.

JH: “We’re not building brand-new as much. We are buying foreclosed houses that are already existing in blighted neighborhoods, and we are rehabbing them and making it livable and improving the neighborhood.”

LG: “You’re recycling houses.”

JH: “We are! We’re recycling houses also. So, when Lowe’s, for instance, donated a large quantity of items, we kept a bunch aside for construction. They come and they look though and say what they can use, and then those items are set aside for them. And then as they need them, they use them.”

And anything left over is sold in the ReStore. It’s donations that make ReStore work. It might be overstock from places like Lowe’s or from local contractors. It could be people who are moving or retiring or just don’t need an appliance any longer. They might have extra cabinets, or carpeting, or a perfectly good sink they don’t need.

JH: “The proverbial kitchen sink. Lots and lots and lots of toilets. Light fixtures, flooring, doors, windows, fasteners.”

MG: “Lester, let me show you some of the stuff they’ve got here. My wife and I spent months looking for a really high-quality, affordable, high-efficiency, front-loading washer. This is a front-loading washer and dryer. (taps on appliance) In fact, this is the same model that we bought. We paid $600 for ours. Here, at the ReStore, it’s $200. And Jackie, how do we know that this works?”

JH: “Everything’s been tested. And, it’s guaranteed for two to three months – I’m really not picky about that.”

Some things are used, some are new. It all works.

Matt Grocoff with Greenovation.TV says it keeps stuff out of the landfill, it means perfectly good building materials and appliances for home improvement projects, saves resources, and raises money to help people get into a home.

MG: “It’s a win-win across the board.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Interview: The Price of Cheap Goods

  • Ellen Ruppel Shell writes that we spend about 80% more in a discount environment. (Source: Urban at Wikimedia Commons)

In this recession, we are looking at money
differently. A bargain – getting things cheap –
has been the all-consuming goal. Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a new book entitled
‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ The
Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked with
her:

Transcript

[Please note: the following transcript is for a shorter version of the interview. If you would like a complete transcript, please contact us.]

In this recession, we are looking at money
differently. A bargain – getting things cheap –
has been the all-consuming goal. Ellen Ruppel Shell has written a new book entitled
‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ The
Environment Report’s Lester Graham talked with
her:

Lester Graham: Your book tells the story of how we came to value cheap, but, you know, my dad used to say, ‘cheap things aren’t good and good things aren’t cheap.’

Ellen Ruppel Shell: I think that retailers and multinationals have gone really far to make us not think like that. Your father insisted on value. You know, there’s an old Russian saying, ‘I’m too poor to be cheap.’ You know, this is something that people used to take for granted – we used to know that we got what we paid for. Now, how did this common wisdom get forgotten?

Graham: Most of the products we get, we throw away – because they are so cheap.
We don’t have to worry about the cost of repairing them, because we can simply replace them with something brand-new.

Shell: Absolutely, and, of course, that disposability has been marketed to us as a big advantage. And I’ve also gotten that comment from folks, ‘Well, you know, who cares? I’ll just throw it away. I don’t want something that lasts a long time. I want something new all the time.’ Our relationship with objects has really become distorted – I mean, the very idea that you would buy shoes knowing, almost as you leave the store, that they’re not going to last. And, studies show, that if you believe that, you don’t take care of them. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You assume they’re going to fall apart.

Graham: Your book makes it sound as though we’re in a spiral, downward, in pursuit of cheap goods. Why do you make that argument?

Shell: Well, I think it’s a spiral we might, now, have the opportunity to pull ourselves out of. But, yes, I do think it’s a spiral – the idea that prices have to go lower and lower. And the reason for this, of course, is that since the 1970s, incomes in the United States have been essentially flat, controlling for inflation. And even going down somewhat, for most Americans. At the same time, three-quarters of our income goes to pay for fixed costs – those things we can’t live without – healthcare, education. So, what have these low priced goods done for us? Well, I argue, not a lot. It’s made tee-shirts, and shorts, and other things, maybe cheaper than ever before, but we have sacrificed – in terms of our wages, our job security, and our stability as an economy – as a consequence of these increasingly low prices, this incredible – what we used to call ‘predatory’ – pricing.

Graham: Many of us feel we can only afford ‘cheap.’ What are you suggesting we do?

Shell: My goal in writing this book was to get consumers to re-think why they shop in the first place. We spend about 80% more in a discount environment. And, then, we’re getting what we think are these amazing deals. And this triggers in our brain this kind of game-playing behavior – we want to make all these, you know, we want to win. Do we go to buy things that are going enhance our life and add value to our life? Or, is it a game-playing exercise? And I think most of us would say, rationally, well you know, look, ‘I go to purchase things that are going to enhance my life.’ And, if that’s the case, I think that you will actually spend less money, you will buy fewer things, and you’ll think harder about why you’re buying those things, and you’ll get precisely what you want at the price that’s going to work for you.

Graham: Ellen Ruppel Shell is the author of the book ‘Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.’ Thanks very much for your time.

Shell: Thank you. It’s been fun.

Related Links

Businesses Going Lean and Green

  • Marco's Pizza changed the size of its boxes to fit more on distribution trucks. It's also switching to recyclable plastics for chicken wings. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Times are tough for the economy,
so lots of headlines tell us that the
end is near for the burgeoning green
market. But some analysts say the
economic downturn could encourage more
companies to be environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Times are tough for the economy,
so lots of headlines tell us that the
end is near for the burgeoning green
market. But some analysts say the
economic downturn could encourage more
companies to be environmentally friendly.
Julie Grant reports:

When stock prices plummeted this year for Whole Foods
Market, a lot of people saw that as a sign that green
companies were wilting during this dark time in the economy.

Whole Foods has one of the best known names for natural
and sustainably made products and caters to people who
are willing to pay more for them.

“You know, it’s really easy to look at stores like Whole
Foods, or companies selling green products, and see that
they’re not doing as well as last year and saying, ‘oh, the
green economy is tanking.’”

Author Joel Makower has chronicled the rise of the green
movement in corporate America through many articles, and
in his recently published book “Strategies for the Green
Economy.”

“The fact is that no retailer, except for Wal-Mart, is doing
better than last year. They’re all doing much, much worse.
So green products sink and swim along with the overall
economy. The economy is really bad right now, so a lot of
these products aren’t doing as well.”

But Makower says the green movement has a leg up on the
rest of the economy – because what consumers are buying
is only part of the story.

(sound of Marco’s Pizza Shop)

The smell of garlic and cheese and dough baking at Marco’s
Pizza is enough to make anyone hungry when they walk in.
While some of the biggest names in the pizza biz are closing
down stores, this relatively small Ohio-based chain is
growing like gang-busters, tripling the number of stores and
franchising in 14 states.

Purchasing manager Don Vlcek says, earlier this year,
prices of everything from the mozzarella to the plastic cups
were on the rise.

“When all of the costs going into restaurants started going
up, like I’ve never seen, and I’ve been in this industry since I
was 17 years old, we wanted to keep our prices the same to
our customers. So we looked at cost cutting – mainly at the
packaging end.”

Vlcek stresses: they’re not skimping on the pizza.
Marco’s has started doing things like using paper cups
instead of plastic. The new ones are cheaper and
biodegradable. Their pizza boxes used to be colorful,
glossy, and not very recyclable.

“Now our boxes, which the industry has said is the most
impressive and highest cost box in the industry, we’ve taken
that and we’ve put new messages on it, with a non-
varnished look.”

Marco’s also slightly reduced the size of its pizza boxes, so
more fit on its distribution trucks. That’s saved transportation
costs – and lots of polluting truck travel. None of this sounds
too sexy. But these efficiencies have saved Marco’s 2.5
million dollars this year.

The cuts they made have been good for the bottom line –
and for the environment.

Industry strategist Joel Makower says there are thousands of
stories like this.

“Once companies squeeze out the waste and inefficiency
and the water, carbon, and energy intensity and the toxicity
of their products, that’s not going to come back as soon as
oil prices drop, as we’ve seen them do, or when the
economy goes bad, as it has. This is a fundamental change
in how business is being done, and this is just the
beginning.”

Makower predicts that companies will continue to innovate
new ways to save money, and that is going to benefit the
environment.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Toxin Leeches Into Canned Foods

  • (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Environmental activists are calling for
food packagers to stop using a toxic plastic to
line food and beverage cans. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Environmental activists are calling for
food packagers to stop using a toxic plastic to
line food and beverage cans. Lester Graham reports:

The thin plastic lining used in many canned foods and soft drinks contains a chemical
called bisphenol-A.

Canada is taking steps to restrict the use of the plastic in baby
bottles and formula can linings. In the U.S., some retailers have removed some
products using plastic with bisphenol-A.

Aaron Freeman is with the Environmental Defense Fund in Canada. He says this
chemical has been linked to too many health problems to ignore.

“Things like breast cancer, prostate cancer, early puberty in girls, attention deficit
disorder, and so on – those are all health effects we’re seeing sharp rises on.”

Freeman concedes cans lined with plastic containing bisphenol-A have not been proven
to cause the diseases. But he says since the canning industry has other plastics it can
use, it’s just a sensible precaution to stop using plastic with bisphenol-A.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Safer Stain-Resistant Chemical?

Chemists at the University of North Carolina have developed a new material for making stain resistant coatings that they say will not contaminate the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight has the story:

Transcript

Chemists at the University of North Carolina have developed a new material for making stain resistant coatings that they say will not contaminate the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight has the story:


The problem with many stain resistant coatings on clothing and paper goods is that they gradually breakdown into C8, a compound that an Environmental Protection Agency advisory board terms a “likely carcinogen.”


Chemistry professor Joseph DeSimone and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have come up with something they’re calling “C4 plus.” The new material uses a type of fluorocarbon which is less likely to degrade.


Paul Anastas is director of the Green Chemistry Institute and he says C4 plus is just what the doctor ordered.


“What Joe DeSimone is doing is designing our next generation of substances so that they are not going to be harmful to human health and the environment.”


Anastas says manufacturers could switch to the “greener” ingredient very soon.


For the GLRC, I’m Fred Kight.

Audio Postcard: Food Bartering

  • These are "zooks." They're a form of currency used by the Zook Society, a group that barters for homemade products. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:

Transcript

People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned
way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta
sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended
a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:


“Hi, it’s nice to see you again.”


“Have mostly baked goods today.”


“Maple syrup, grape syrup, eggs.”


“Apple butter, squash soup, and frozen split pea soup. Um hm.”


“Worm juice! What the heck is worm juice?”


Buckley: “My name is Jenifer Buckley, and I’m one of the people who got the Zook Society together. This is an informal bartering group of people who home-process and garden.”


“We have lefse! We went down to the farm this part weekend, and Mary learned from her mom, so it’s totally homemade. And we would like two zooks for each bag.”


Buckley: “We decided on the zook as a unit of currency, because everybody agreed the Zucchini is easy to find. We wanted to make sure, for example if I have sauerkraut and somebody else has eggs and somebody else has jam, that we could all three of us barter for those things, so we decided on the zook as currency.”


“This is the three-generation salsa, my grandma’s salsa recipe. My grandma just died this summer. I made some with her last summer, but this summer I made it myself.”


“We have a pint of applesauce from this year’s crop, a good year for apples, and I guess this is about a three-zook item, does that sound fair?”


Buckley: “What often happens is that people are asking relatively little for their products, so people will say, ‘That’s not enough, you should ask for more for that!’ Because in general, I think people tend to undervalue what they do; a lot of time goes into baking and processing and so forth.”


Rhodes: “My name is Gina Temple Rhodes, and this time I brought some new things that I had never brought before. I brought Hinkelsteins, which are cookies made from oat flour, dates, So that was pretty popular. It’s a little strange – you bring things and hope they’ll sell because if they don’t you feel a little disappointed and have to take it home.”


Buckley: “It’s about bringing trade and economics down to the community level; it’s about trying new products. So in that respect there’s little bit of incubator going on here.”


“Try Paula’s? They’re a zook apiece.”


“Dave, are we supposed to eat these or plant these?”


Susie: “I’m Susie, and I brought worm juice, from our worm compost bin. It’s full of nutrients and you can use it to boost your house plants or in your garden. And I see nobody’s snapped it up yet, so I may have to go out and do promotion.”


Dawson: “I’m Katie Neff Dawson. We came away with some canned peaches – I’m kind of a peach freak so we got those. Cooper was into the peanut butter things, they look like Bit-O-Honey things, they’re really good. I think we all got lip balm because that was a good deal – lip balm for one zook. It’s a real diversity, and you come away with a wonderful meal, and it’s just a good community, good people getting together.”


“Bye, all! Thanks for the good food!”


HOST TAG: “Bartering home-made goods in Duluth, Minnesota. Stephanie
Hemphill produced that report for the GLRC.”

Related Links

A Lighter, Brighter Christmas?

  • Author Bob Lilienfeld suggests that we find ways to express our love for each other in less material ways. (Photo by Denise Docherty)

The message from advertisers this holiday season seems to be: buy more because you and your family deserve it. Retailers are hopeful we’ll all spend just a little bit more to make the holidays shiny and bright. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham went to the shopping mall with a guy who thinks we ought to scale back our spending during the
holidays:

Transcript

The message from advertisers this holiday season seems to be, buy more because you and your family deserve it. Retailers are hopeful we’ll all spend just a little bit more to make the holidays shiny and bright. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham went to the shopping mall with a guy who thinks we ought to scale back our spending during the holidays:


Bob Lilienfeld is one of the co-authors of a book called Use Less Stuff. As you might guess, he’s an advocate of using fewer resources, including buying less stuff during the holidays. We asked him to meet us at a big shopping mall to talk about why he thinks buying less means more.


Lilienfeld: “I want you to go back to when you were a kid. Think about the two or three things in your life, the things that you did that made you really happy. I guarantee none of those have to do with physical, material gifts. They have to do with time you spent with your family or things you did with your friend. But, it wasn’t the time you said ‘Oh, it was the year I got that train,’ or ‘the year I got those cuff links,’ or ‘when I got those earrings.’ That’s the principle difference. We’re trying so hard to be good and to let people know that we love them, but the things that we love about other people and that they love about us have nothing to do with material goods.”


Graham: “There’s a certain expection during the holidays, though, that we will get something nice for the people we love and here at this mall as we’re looking around, there are lots of enticements to fulfill that expectation.”


Lilienfeld: “That’s true, but we’ve been led to believe that more is better, and to a great extent more gifts is not better than fewer gifts. Quality and quantity are very different kinds of thoughts and we’ve been led to believe economically that quantity is more important. But, in reality it’s the qualitative aspects of life that we long remember and really are the ones we treasure.”


Graham: “Now from the news media, I get the impression that if I don’t do my part during the holidays in shopping, that it’s really going to hurt a lot of Americans, the American economy. $220-billion during the holiday season. It’s 25-percent of retailers’ business. So, if I don’t buy or if I scale back my buying, won’t I be hurting the economy?”


Lilienfeld: “It’s always been 25-percent of retailers’ business, even if you go back 30 or 40 years, and that’s probably not going to change. It comes down to your thinking through what’s good for you, what’s good for your family, what’s good for your friends and not worrying so much about what’s good for the economy and what’s good for big companies.”


Retailers are expecting sales to be better this year than last year. So, that simpler lifestyle that Lilienfeld is talking about is not widespread enough to have any real impact on the overall shopping season. But apparently the economy isn’t strong everywhere.


We talked to some shoppers about their holiday shopping plans and the idea of simplifying things. Many of them told us that the economy was forcing them to cut back on gift buying…


Shopper 1: “Well, because of my limited budget, I have to buy, like – I have a list – and I have to buy one at a time, so, being pretty poor is being pretty simple. I’m kind of already living that way.”


Shopper 2: “I don’t need to celebrate Christmas by buying people gifts. And I can give people gifts all year long. And I — Christmas is kind of sham-y to me.”


Shopper 3: “This year, yeah, my family is like, ‘Don’t get me anything.’ I’m going to do something, but hopefully it will be smaller and less expensive and all that.”


Shopper 4: “Well, I don’t feel compelled to buy something because an economist says it’s my part as an American. And I think people are going to get smarter and smarter about how they spend their money and the almighty dollar.”


With the constant messages on television, radio, the Internet and newspapers to spend, there’s a lot of persusive power by advertisers to buy now and think about the cost later.


Since Bob Lilienfeld is such an advocate of a simpler lifestyle, it makes you wonder about his own shopping habits.


Graham: “Do you ever find yourself in the shopping mall, buying stuff for the folks you have on your Christmas list or your holiday list?”


Lilienfeld: “All the time. But, what I try to do is two things. One is think about the fact that more isn’t necessarily better. But the other thing I really try and do is look for gifts that are what I call ‘experiential’ as opposed to material. Tickets. Things where people can go to plays or operas or ball games so that they have an experience. Same thing with travel. I mean, if I could give my father a gift or if I could help him afford to go somewhere, like to see me and the kids, that gift is probably worth a lot more to both of us than if I just gave him a couple of bottles of wine.”


And Lilienfeld says you don’t waste as much wrapping paper when you wrap up tickets.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

China to Stop Imports of Junk Electronics

  • What happens to electronics when people don't want them anymore? The economics and environmental impact of e-waste disposal weighs heavily on minds all over the globe. (Photo by Michael Manger)

China is banning the import of scrap electronics. That eliminates one place where some U.S. companies were selling broken computers and electronic junk under the guise of “recycling.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

China is banning the import of scrap electronics. That eliminates one place where some U-S companies were selling broken computers and electronic junk under the guise of “recycling.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Each year, more than 60-million desktop computers are taken out of service in the U.S. About 85-percent of them end up in landfills. But some people take their old computers, electronics and appliances to be recycled. Unfortunately, that sometimes simply means being shipped to China and other Asian countries where the electronic gear is burned to retrieve the metal such as copper and steel. Burning the electronic gear releases all kinds of toxic chemicals. Now, China’s main English language newspaper, CHINAdaily, reports the government there is banning the imports of scrap electronic goods. The newspaper reports this marks a change in the Chinese government’s policy of always putting economic conerns in front of less tangible needs such as the environment.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

New Federal Rules to Tighten Port Security

Final regulations requiring all ports to be secure against terrorist attacks will be released next month by the federal government. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports that port officials are hoping the new rules come with some new money:

Transcript

Final regulations requiring all ports to be secure against terrorist attacks
will be released next month by the federal government. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports that port officials are hoping the new
rules come with some new money:


With 50 nations using the St. Lawrence Seaway,
sending
hundreds of ships, dropping off and picking up
goods, Great Lakes ports have a lot
to make secure.
The Marine Transportation
Security Act makes sure all ports big and small assess risks and come up
with a plan to make things safe from terrorism.


Duluth-Superior Port Security Official Captain Ray Skelton has been working
with Washington on these new regulations. He doesn’t expect any surprises.


“The final regs, if they came out that we have to have armed guards
at piles of limestone, I’d go back to Washington and start a fight. But if
everything stays reasonable, we’ll just go ahead and comply.”


Tighter security may mean some guards, surveillance cameras, fences and alarms.
Skelton says these things are costing ports money without much financial
help from those making up the new rules. Skelton won’t say how much
Duluth-Superior has spent, but he says so far they’ve had to foot the bill.
Ports will have one year to comply with the Marine Transportation Security
Act.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.