Material Mix News: Featured Companies

Heritage Crystal Clean (HCC) 10.12.2012

Heritage-Crystal Clean (HCC) provides its customers with parts cleaners, parts washers, drum waste management, oil collection, oil re-refining, vacuum services, parts cleaning solvent as well as other products and services pertaining to the environmental services market.

HCC’s mission is to partner with businesses to provide safe, compliant, value-added environmental services so that their customers may focus their attention on their core business objectives.

Over 20 years ago, Heritage Environmental Services established a division to concentrate on the service needs of smaller customers. This division, known as Crystal Clean, began providing parts cleaning and used oil collection services to customers in Indianapolis, Indiana, and gradually expanded to several other cities in the Midwest.

During the 1990s, the Crystal Clean division expanded into markets in Texas and Louisiana as the result of a business venture with a major branded motor oil company. By the late 1990s, the Crystal Clean division was offering services to small to mid-sized customer in roughly a dozen metropolitan areas.

Today Heritage-Crystal Clean services its customers via 70 branches located throughout a majority of the United States with a goal of expanding to cover each of the 48 continental states in the near future.

HCC’s primary goals are to provide customers with peace-of-mind that comes with knowing that their environmental challenges are met and to deliver a quality of service that is the best value in the industry.

HCC specializes in the following services:

Solvent and aqueous based parts cleaning units and services
Waste drum management - hazardous and non-hazardous
Used oil and vacuum truck services
Aqua filtration services with HCC patented equipment
Universal waste services
CrystalCat ™Absorbent products and services
Environmental Audits

HCC serves as the preferred environmental services provider of the following associations and state manufacturing groups. If you are member, contact HCC today about receiving significant savings on all HCC products and services.

For more information on how HCC can help your organization find a smart and sustainable environmental services solution, please visit their website at www.crystal-clean.com.

To list chemicals or oils you would like to sell, please visit materialmix.com.

WITS 8.15.2012

WITS (Web Innovations and Technology Services) is a non-profit organization that recycles end of life electronics and resells working components to individuals and families that would otherwise be unable to afford them. Founded by Angela Haas in 2002, WITS has become one of largest non-profit recycling/ re-use organization in Missouri.

WITS is “dedicated to under-served populations and nonprofits,” and guided by the belief that “through education and training we can empower all populations to become more productive in their environments while saving the landfills.”

Haas says that being able to provide children with computers at a price their parents can afford is the most fulfilling aspect of her job.

A committed recycler, Haas is very aware of the need for more efficient waste management.

She believes most businesses don’t realize how many recycling options are available to them, and that many companies spend large amounts of money on sustainability initiatives instead of looking for cheaper, more creative solutions.

Donating to nonprofits and listing items on MaterialMix.com are two great ways to divert materials from the landfill and avoid unnecessary disposal costs.

One of Haas’s greatest challenges is obtaining equipment that still works well enough to be reused by others.

Every year WITS donates 500 computers to families during the holidays, and this year the organization is hoping to receive enough donations to provide each family with an LCD computer, USB keyboard, and mouse.

WITS has 18 different dropoff sites across Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana. The organization also offers business services and has GSA certification to handle government equipment.

To learn more about WITS, including how to donate, visit http://witsinc.org. You can also check out their want-ads which are currently posted in the Material Mix marketplace.

Butterfly Energy Works 8.8.2012

When a friend asked Gary Steps to name the one service that he wished existed, the idea for Butterfly Energy works was born. Founded by Steps in 2006, Butterfly Energy Works seeks to “save the world one building at a time” by delivering sustainable energy solutions for houses and small buildings.

Gary Steps - Founder and Chief Visionary of Butterfly Energy Works, Passive House Consultant, PMP, NGBS Verifier, LEED AP Abiding by the mantra “Sustain, Transform, Renew,” Steps and his team provide analysis and consultation to help home and building owners implement the most cost-effective and sustainable forms of building design.

Steps says that the most rewarding aspect of his work is getting to see people “transform” once they learn to “think big” and capitalize on emerging green technologies.

Although the economic crisis and housing market crash have taken a toll on efforts to implement sustainable building, Steps and his team remain optimistic for the future.

Butterfly strives to operate at the forefront of the industry by offering a range of innovative products such as the only condensing gas fireplace in the United States and the most efficient Energy Recovery Ventilation system in the country.

Butterfly is also helping launch a new organization called the Green Dining Alliance, which will provide certification to restaurants that meet the necessary environmental and sustainability standards. Steps thinks that “we need to do a better job with [waste management],” and calls for more people to commit to solving the current problem. MaterialMix.com helps address this problem by connecting buyers and sellers of reusable materials and monetizing the trade of recyclables.

To learn more about Butterfly Energy Works, visit http://butterflyenergyworks.com, or check out their table at the Green Homes Festival during the last Saturday of September.

Catch the Butterfly Energy Works team Saturday, September 29 at the Green Homes Great Health Festival

Perennial 7.31.2012

Perennial workshop at 7413 South Broadway houses a hidden trove of reusable furniture and decorations. Visitors are greeted by an impressive wall made entirely out of ladders. Next to the entry way, old maps have been folded up and decoratively suspended from the ceiling. And the entire space is packed with an abundance of chairs, tables, shelves and other household furniture items, all of which are made entirely out of salvaged materials.

The idea for Perennial was born in 2007, when Founder Jenny Murphy, then an art student at Washington University, realized that she wanted to change consumers’ waste habits.

Today Murphy serves as Executive Director for the budding social enterprise, which seeks to end unnecessary waste by promoting a culture of creative reuse.

By finding items destined for the landfill and transforming them into new, sturdy household furniture and family heirlooms, the team at Perennial hopes to show how far an open mind and a little bit of creativity can go.

Murphy with Adopted Cat, Drill Bit

Murphy’s goal is to produce affordable furniture that is durable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing.

Selling furniture is only one aspect of Perennial’s daily operations, however. Perennial also hosts a range of hands-on workshops and events designed to get members of the public working on projects of their own.

Together, Murphy and Public Program + Retail Coordinator Brie Cella offer a wide variety of classes ranging from topics such as furniture joinery to textile dyeing. And every Sunday, Perennial opens its doors for Community Workshop hours, during which time members of the public can access Perennial’s tools and receive help on their own creative projects.

The team at Perennial hopes that their programs will “Empower people to transform themselves and their communities by providing a place to discover ways to transform discarded goods into objects of worth.”

Perennial conducts an outreach program called ReCreate, in which they lead the former prisoner clients from the Center for Women in Transition through the process of creative reuse. In the future, Murphy plans to expand the program to work with populations ranging from homeless individuals to at-risk-youth as a means of promoting sustainability within diverse populations and fostering change in local communities.

Murphy’s work at Perennial illustrates that furniture reuse is an easy and effective way for everyone to cut costs and reduce waste.

The Perennial shop is open to the public Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays between 11am-4pm. To learn more about Perennial, including information on upcoming programming or buying or donating furniture, visit www.perennialstl.org. A list of Perennial shop hours and workshops can be found below.

Old North Revitalization 7.24.2012

View Down N 14th Street

Take a stroll down N 14th Street in the heart of St. Louis’s historic Old North Community and you’ll see signs of revitalization everywhere. The newly renovated storefronts now house small businesses and boutiques. Just above them, refurbished apartments provide affordable, quality living spaces.

As you look down the tree-lined street and catch a glimpse of the Gateway Arch, it’s easy to feel life flowing back into this family-oriented community with a small town feel.

Best known in St. Louis as the home of the famous Crown Candy Kitchen, the Old North area was founded as the Village of North St. Louis in 1816 and annexed by the City of St. Louis in 1841. Sadly, the area fell into eventual decline and sat largely vacant until 1981, when members of the community decided to form the Old North St Louis Restoration Group (ONSLRG), a non-profit committed to the neighborhood’s growth and revitalization.

Homegrown Festival

Today, those efforts are paying off. Led by Executive Director Sean Thomas, ONSLRG has overseen the renovation of historic buildings and the creation of nearly 200 new homes.

The organization has also renovated several main blocks, which now feature new sidewalks, trees, streetlights, and benches.

In recognition of these and other efforts, ONSLRG was awarded the National Award for Smart Growth Achievement in December 2011.

The award is a testament to the quality of ONSLRG’s sustainable development model and its commitment to environmental responsibility. ONSLRG has sought to renovate historic properties rather than demolish them.

The organization has also found ways to reuse old floorboards as sliding doors and incorporate historic windows into its office. Such practices are indicative of ONSLRG’s commitment to sustainability and material reuse.

North City Farmers' Market

Thanks to the ONSLRG’s efforts, Old North is once again a region to explore. Curious visitors can browse local businesses, restaurants, and even check out the North City Farmers’ Market. The market is open every Saturday from 9am-noon and is located on the 2700 block of N 14th Street, just across from Crown Candy Kitchen. This Saturday, July 28th, the market will be hosting “Vegetapalooza,” its mid-season festival.

Check out ONSL.org to learn more about the neighborhood, or visit ONSL.org/blog for updates on restoration efforts and upcoming events.

National Building Arts Center 7.10.2012

Walking the expansive campus of the National Building Arts Center feels a bit like exploring a disassembled city.

Intricately carved building facades line the wide aisles as ornamental brickwork sits on display like tapestries at a bazaar.

Stone sculptures lay in sleepy contemplation while glass tubing, robbed of its neon glow, waits patiently on shelves and cast iron storefronts hibernate in storage. Rows of stacked crates extend into the distance packed with balustrades, cornice friezes and spandrels – building blocks of the banks, cathedrals, offices, schools and courthouses that defined an era of everyday life for a generation of Americans.

Steve Trampe and Larry Giles of the National Building Arts Center Flanked by urns from St. Louis’s famed Kiel Opera house and a trio of arched polychromatic terra cotta panels from Chicago’s Depression-era Southtown Theatre, Steve Trampe expresses the single thought that puts into perspective the bounty of American architectural heritage that surrounds him.

“Isn’t it amazing they were going to throw this stuff away?” he said.

A throwaway mentality may be as much a part of the culture as the engineering wonders in this little-known institution, but for these artifacts, that tragedy was prevented thanks to the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation.

Headed by President Larry Giles and chaired by Trampe, the NBAC’s parent organization preserves thousands of these architectural treasures on the 15-acre site of an old steel foundry tucked into an unassuming industrial area just across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis.

Acquired in 2005, the sprawling Sauget, Illinois facility now houses the largest collection of architectural artifacts in the United States including everything from retired industrial equipment and old bridge trusses to structural steel members and parts of hotels, theatres, rail stations and post offices.

“We’ve even got the complete façade of a movie palace,” Giles said. Giles estimates that about four-fifths of the massive haul is from the Gateway City itself but the holdings include items from at least a dozen American metropolitan areas from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. More exotic locales are on display as well. One exhibit shows bathhouse tile arrangements from Iran.

Giles boasts that NBAC has the largest collection of New York City architectural artifacts found anywhere, include – he says with a chuckle – anyplace in the Big Apple itself.

Even the site is historic. Once home to the Sterling Steel Casting foundry, the 13-building campus bespeaks a rich past as part of the booming business in metalwork that earned the area the moniker the “Pittsburgh of the West” during the mid-20th Century. The buildings date to the 1920s and Giles has worked hard to begin the lengthy process of restoring them.

Giles came across the concept for NBAC while rehabbing buildings in the Soulard area of south St. Louis, though he said the idea for an architectural museum dates back to the initial plans for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the federal grounds on which the Gateway Arch sits. Some initial preservation work was done with items from the old buildings that were razed for the monument but the idea later died.

“It never came about and the artifacts were scrapped or given away and the collection disappeared,” he said sadly.

Larry Giles, President of National Building Arts Center Giles, who ran a salvage company for 35 years, eventually began building his own collection and by 1982, the forerunner to his present-day organization was founded.

Today, while still not open directly to the public, tours are sometimes arranged for the institution which also does high school educational programs and has been used as a resource for exhibitions in New York, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

Examples of physical architecture aren’t the only historical gems in the NBAC.

An extensive document collection with everything from photos, drawings and correspondence to rare books, manuscripts and original source material from manufacturers sits in tractor trailers waiting for the eventual move to a permanent library that the center’s leadership hopes to construct in one of the buildings onsite.

While the impetus for NBAC may be historical, it’s about more than just preserving the nation’s architectural heritage. “That’s part of it but beyond that it’s also about drawing inspiration from the quality and artisanship of the past,” Trampe said, noting an educational rationale exists for the unique facility. “A building façade has a whole story behind it from an engineering standpoint, a supply and demand/economic standpoint, why they needed, who used it.

There are just so many things that form a part of that story.” Meanwhile, Giles said hundreds of buildings in the area continue to fall victim to the wrecking ball every year taking both architecturally important artifacts and valuable recyclables with them.

“There’s really a potential there for someone to do all that salvage work to reclaim all that material that’s lost and becomes landfill from demolition sites,” he said. “To me, that is the biggest conservation problem in the area of developers, builders and contractors. There’s all this wasted material.”

It’s a problem that Allison Carmen, head of Material Mix, a St. Louis-headquartered company that provides an exchange for recyclable industrial and construction waste, is working to solve. Carmen said wasted material is also wasted dollars. “By selling construction debris for reuse, a company can improve its triple bottom line of people, planet and profit,” said Carmen, who founded the innovative web-based venture in 2011.

She said that Material Mix also offers an ability to find a market for architecturally significant items that might otherwise simply be disposed of as debris.

“It’s wonderful to see organizations like the St. Louis Building Arts Foundation promoting preservation over landfilling,” Carmen said. “We should all take pride in the opportunity to help save our nation’s architectural inheritance for future generations to enjoy.”

Touring Rock-Tenn MRF 1.14.2011

St. Louis has a lot of great tours – you could see how beer is made at the Anheuser Busch facility, take a zig-zagging mid-century chic pod-ride to the top of the St. Louis arch, or – my personal favorite – tour the Rock-Tenn Materials Recycling Facility (MRF).

Jack Czajkowski explains how shredded

office paper is sorted and baled

It was Friday the thirteenth with frostbite temperatures; but of course that didn’t stop us from trekking ten miles through sleet and snow (OK, we drove) to north Saint Louis to learn a bit more about what happens at the end of the line for single-stream recycling.

It’s a busy time of the season for this facility in particular, Angie Ingenthron of Waste Management explains. Angie is a local champion of waste diversion, and serves as a liaison for local universities for the upcoming Recyclmania competition. Waste Management has partnered with this particular MRF, which currently processes single stream recycling from many local universities.

Jack Czajkowski has served as Brokerage Manager at this St. Louis based plant since the Smurfit-Stone days, and is an expert on processing and recycling. He took us through the process; from drop-off, to baling. First, the load must be qualified to ensure that contamination does not exceed 5% (this reminded me of my boyfriend, who NEVER rinses out containers). A quick rinse makes a huge difference! Next, the single-stream goods are dumped in a conveyor and ratcheted up to an elevated platform where 4 or 5 guys hand-sort the material, removing lower-grade cardboard and sending it down a chute.

The material then continues on the conveyor up to the second stage, where a powerful generator shakes any broken glass to the bottom, and blows higher grade paper and plastic to the top with a billowy air stream. Higher grade paper such as Leger (print and copy paper) is worth more than say, Cardboard fiber or low-grade Newsprint; so each must be separated out before baling.

Recycling enthusiasts; Jack Czajkowski,

Jim Grzesik, Nick Akerberg,

Allison Carmen, Benny Lewis

A guy on a fork lift cruises by; honks, and stops. “Jack, if I knew we were having company, I would have cleaned up the place!” he says with a chuckle. Jack explains they do sweep regularly, but of course there are a few bits of paper on the floor here and there – to be expected at a place with so much activity. Pallet-sized cubes of sorted paper are baled tightly with wire and stacked in tetris-like fashion. Some paper flakes off once and a while - kind of like a good Baklava.

Next, we scale to the top platform and take a look at the custom built balers, which are manufactured in the UK and Holland. These things are large and in-charge, and can bale all kinds of paper AND plastic. By this time, I could barely feel my toes, so I was relieved to head back to the office and debrief. All in all, I wouldn’t spend my Friday afternoon any other way.

For more information or Rock-Tenn’s sustainability initiatives, click here.

To learn more about being features in our recycling spotlight, please send inquiry to info@materialmix.com.