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on tour: PDX sustainable materials

kevin — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:23:24 +0000

The first full day of sustainable building material tours got off to a rocky start. I awoke to discover that my bank and auto insurance company hadn’t been playing well together for the past three weeks. As a result, I was on the road, with a rental car, and without auto insurance. I never accept the supplemental insurance offered by the rental car companies, and my insurance company had to think about whether they were going to reinstate my policy, reject me, or allow me to renew. All three are unfortunate choices, but at least the renewal option would allow me to return or drive the rental car without fear that an accident would all be on my tab. I won’t bore you with more detail, but it was finally resolved by late afternoon.

I’ve experienced Portland’s public transportation before, so I know I would be able to make most of my meetings without using the car. But my first meeting was with a small company called Stardust Glass. They’re located outside of downtown and it would have taken more time than I had available to get there. Luckily that meeting was moved to another date and I’ll still get to visit their production facility.

Once I finally got the day of touring started, I found my way to the recycled aluminum product manufacturer Eleek. We’ve written about them in the past (here) and have used their recycled aluminum tiles. This is the first time we’ve had the opportunity to meet the owners and see how their products are made. I had a great visit, tour, and interview with cofounder Sattie Clark. I’ll do a separate post about the tour, and another about the interview. For now I’ll say that their small artisan studio is a a fascinating laboratory focused on beautiful form making. It’s a really interesting place.

My second stop was with a solid surface countertop producer that is new to me – a company called Fuez. Although I was not scheduled to meet with the owner, Greg Martin, but he happened to be there when I arrived and agreed to a tour and interview. Unfortunately, I was not able to see the production facility since it was on the edge of town and I was without a rental car. But I hope to either fit it in later during the trip or when I return to Portland. Which I’ve already decided I have to do. There are far too many manufacturers producing amazing products to fit into four days. For anyone unfamiliar, Fuez manufactures a countertop material similar to Vetrazzo, IceStone, and EnviroGLAS. I’ve interviewed and written about all three here. If you haven’t heard of Fuez, it’s likely because the company is fairly new, had been focused on the west coast, and hasn’t done a great deal of promoting. In terms of size, they are smaller than IceStone and Vetrazzo, but larger than EnviroGLAS. There are several aspects of the product that set them apart from the others in their category, but I’ll save that for a full write up to follow.

Although my day was truncated by logistical issues, I was still able to see a few producers and learn more about one company I knew and one that was new to me. Next I take a day trip up to Hoquiam WA to tour some serious manufacturing facilities. Look for that soon.

on tour: PDX trailer treasures

kevin — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:48:40 +0000

I travel regularly for work. And when I do, it’s easy to be lazy and turn to chain restaurants, or worse, fast food, for meals. Most people who don’t travel frequently believe that when you do, it’s somehow glamorous. No doubt there are moments when it’s exciting or even fun. But by and large, it’s work – lines at the airline bag check, lines at security, lines at the coffee bar, lines at the gate, lines at the baggage claim, lines at the rental car desk, lines at the hotel. Depending on the flight, you can spend more time waiting than actually traveling.

So, when I find an easy food solution while on the road, I’m overjoyed. This week I’m in Portland OR. While taking a short break to share a coffee with a friend, she tells me about a new trend toward trailer-based food venues that have been popping up all over town. I’m familiar with some in various neighborhoods in Los Angeles, but it appears that Portland has embraced the idea with real enthusiasm.

I’m told that one of the best can be found on the corner of 12th and Hawthorne in an historic industrial neighborhood on the east side of the river. It’s the kind of place where every telephone pole has years of posters and bills. On one, there are so many staples, I’m a little nervous about losing a layer of skin if I accidentally brush against it. On the northeast corner, a former vacant parking lot has been transformed into a quasi-mobile food court. It looks like a carnival had been through town but the food operators stayed after the rides moved on to the next location. Randomly placed picnic benches and temporary tent structures tend enhance the festival perception.

I would have been convinced of my imagined carnival back story had there actually been a funnel cake vendor. Instead, there’s a pizza trailer named Pyro Pizza, a new BBQ stand called Bubba Bernie’s, a Mexican booth called El Brasero, you get the picture. It seems a bit transient, but several operators have been there for more than two years. Each food vendor cooks and sells from their own converted recreational trailer. It’s like a trailer park of food. It all looked delicious and smelled good, but the reason I’m here is a trailer called Potato Champion.

While I’m waiting to order my fries, I notice Joy Division playing on the speakers. When it’s time to give my name to the kid taking orders, I jokingly tell him Ian. He doesn’t get it. He probably wasn’t yet born when the band’s former singer Ian Curtis committed suicide. Or maybe he simply wasn’t paying attention to the music. He did seem to be mindlessly going through his activities. But all of that added to, instead of detracting from, the experience.

This corner carnival concept is clearly geared to the after hours crowd seeking simple food on their way home from neighborhood bars. None of the menus are complicated, and all are either the main dish or the side item, but not both. Most vendors open at noon, don’t close until 3am, and sell every day except Monday. I’m there on a Sunday evening, so the crowd is light, mixed ages, and mixed groups. I thought at first I may appear like a fish out of water since I was an out of town tourist snapping pictures. After all, the collection of trailers, benches, tents, and port-a-potties are not terribly picture worthy. I was also much older than other customers, but I finally notice that the one thing which sets me apart is my total lack of ink. Everywhere I look there are tattoos. In fact, everywhere I look in Portland there are tattoos. There must be a robust industry of tattoo parlors throughout the city.

It’s difficult to determine if the trailers being used are new or repurposed. I would like to believe they’ve all had wonderful previous lives or were owned by cute old couples spending their final years traveling the country. It’s impossible to tell, but again, I find myself constructing a back story for each. And maybe that’s the real treasure to be found in venues such as this – the neighborhood, site, objects, and crowd are all so rich with potential that your imagination can run wild with possibilities and interesting narratives.

I plan to find a few more to see if there are any trends to identify. I’ll keep you posted.

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on tour: PDX

kevin — Mon, 17 May 2010 05:12:56 +0000

View on tour: PDX 2010 in a larger map

A week ago I posted a question on a LinkedIn discussion board asking for sustainable building material manufacturer recommendations in the Portland OR area. I was pleasantly surprised not only by how many responses I received, but also by how many interesting companies there appear to be in Portland. I arrived today and will be in the region for the next four days. For anyone who has read this blog in the past, you may be aware our stories of sustainability and on tour articles. Hopefully, the companies on my list will become the subject of some interesting posts over the next few weeks.

Here’s a partial list of tours and interviews:

I’m still finalizing and revising the list, but I’m very excited with what I have so far. I’ll post a few daily photos of interesting finds. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions and introduced me to new people seeking to make a difference in the built environment. Stay posted,

on tour: BottleHood

kevin — Sun, 02 May 2010 23:46:11 +0000

“I wasn’t really interested in doing a business that only had relevance in San Diego,” said BottleHood co-owner Steve Cherry during a recent visit to his production facility in El Cajon, CA. And when I say “facility” I really mean a small storage and processing building at the end of a tight winding hilly tangerine-lined drive, a few work stations covered by tents, and a hillside of sorted boxes with empty used bottles awaiting their transformation from trash to useful product. If the facility sounds small, that’s because it is. That’s not only the key to its charm, but it’s also its secret weapon.

“This is a business that is very very scalable, meaning one location can get very big for very little money. And it’s also easily replicable, meaning you can easily start another one in another neighborhood,” Steve adds. “Southern California is hardly a sustainability leader [but] if we can make a success of BottleHood in San Diego, then there are probably twenty other cities in the U.S. where we can be even more successful.”

Steve’s new business venture, BottleHood, collects discarded bottles from various sources and cuts them into juice glasses, tumblers, vases, candle holders, and more. In August 2009 Steve was fed up with what he was doing and tells me half-heartedly that he had considered opening a taco stand in Costa Rica. With co-owner Leslie Tiano they decided to create an enterprise that could support the local economy, create local jobs, stop jobs from moving offshore, and keep valuable glass out of the landfill.

Just eleven U.S. states have container deposit laws, what are usually referred to as bottle bills. In most cases, the state charges beverage distributors a fee on certain types of containers. That fee is passed on to retailers and is ultimately paid by consumers. That fee can be recovered when consumers return used containers to recycling centers. In those states with bottle bills, recycling rates for glass, aluminum, and plastic are more than twice the national average. In fact, the eleven states with such programs recycle as much total volume as the other thirty-nine sates combined. In 1986, California passed the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act – that’s legislature-speak for bottle bill. Just ten years after the bill was enacted, beer and soda bottle recycling rates rose to 80%.

There is, however, one side effect of such legislation that’s often overlooked and rarely discussed. Any law that increases the value of some containers can, and often does, reduce the value of others. For example, in California, glass soft drink, energy drink, beer, and water containers qualify for the program. They have redemptive value (CRV). Wine and liquor bottles do not qualify for the program; their recycling rates are significantly lower, and they have limited value. The program incentivizes the collection and return of some containers and creates disincentive for others. The next time you’re in a bar, restaurant, or nightclub, glance at the shelves of bottles behind the bar and you’ll see an incredible collection of beautifully designed objects. Expand your view just a little and you’ll find a treasure trove of small soda bottles and micro brewed beer with stunning silk screened labels.

Most wine and liquor bottles end up in landfills. Only a small percentage is recycled. In Steve’s storage building he shows me a rack of drinking glasses made from triple weight wine bottles manufactured in France and used by a domestic winery. When purchasing fine wine, the bottle shape, glass color, and glass thickness all have positive value. They’ve been selected or designed to perform specific functions that add to the value of their contents. When these bottles are recycled, however, the shape is then considered waste. The bottles must be crushed for the glass be recovered, reused, and formed into another shape. And with those high quality wine bottles that Steve showed me, the glass itself has no greater value in the recycling process than any of the low quality glass it’s mixed with. It’s tragic that the glass, color, and shape value are so dramatically diminished in the current system.

This is where BottleHood comes in. They’ve created a business model that saves beautifully crafted bottles, those made with high quality glass, those with unique shapes, or those with well designed labels. In some cases, they actually increase the value of the used bottles being saved. For example, they sell tumblers cut from Charles Shaw wine bottles sold at Trader Joe’s – better known as Two Buck Chuck. Believe it or not, when those bottles are cut into the tumbler shape, they sell for more than the original $1.99. A bottle of Two Buck Chuck is actually worth more as a salvaged object.

For more than an hour Steve walks me through every one of his shelves telling me stories about every bottle and why it’s worth saving. And that’s when it hits me: the most interesting aspect of what BottleHood is doing is saving and enhancing the stories behind objects that have been artfully crafted by real people. The stories Steve tells me are not about big corporate enterprises, instead they are about people. By saving the bottles, he brings to light human interest stories that don’t have the same opportunity for exposure.

Although operating for less than a year, success has come quickly and the model seems to be proving itself. Steve and Leslie have plans to explore other cities around the country where they know an ample supply of used bottles can be sourced. I encourage you to check out the company and their products. And if you live in the San Diego area, visit BottleHood at the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market every Sunday between 9am and 2pm.

As Father’s Day approaches, Steve is frantically collecting as many bottles with names that have any reference to fathers – Dad’s Root Beer, Dad’s Cream Soda, Big Daddy IPA, Double Daddy IPA, you get the picture. If you can think of any, let him know. He’s hoping they’ll have the same thematic appeal that Arrogant Bastard Ale did for Valentine’s Day. He tells me, “every woman has an arrogant bastard in their lives, right?”

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BottleHood Featured by the San Diego Union Tribune from steve cherry on Vimeo.

on tour: MotoArt

kevin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:41:45 +0000

When I was a kid my father occasionally took my brothers and me to watch military aircraft take off and land. He knew of a road that cut through what was an FAA tech center near Atlantic City NJ known as NAFEC – the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center. At the time, it had the largest hanger space in the world, was the third alternate landing site for the space shuttle, and was the location of the first airshow in 1910. We would pull the family station-wagon to the shoulder of the road right at the end of the main runway and watch the planes for hours. The jets seemed so close we could touch them. My fifth year architectural thesis project was a flight school at the community college directly adjacent to that former FAA tech center – it had been converted to the Atlantic City International Airport by then. Part of my design strategy included using salvaged aircraft parts as raw building material. The reviewers who attended my final presentation thought the notion was preposterous.

The Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson AZ is the world’s largest military aircraft graveyard. It’s often referred to as The Boneyard, however, boneyard is a generic term used to describe facilities that store aircraft retired from service. In nearby Pima AZ is the Pinal Airpark, home of the Evergreen Aircraft Maintenance Facility, one of the largest storage locations for decommissioned commercial aircraft. Although these two are among the largest of their kind, similar facilities exist throughout the world. The dry southwestern United States is ideal for aircraft storage. The arid climate reduces the potential for oxidation. Prior to the attacks on 9/11, anyone looking to salvage parts or components from the aircraft stored at these facilities had reasonable access. Since then, the U.S. government has changed the regulations and old parts are significantly more difficult to source.

For visionaries and artists like Dave Hall and Donovan Fell, owners of the Torrance CA-based MotoArt, new restrictions limiting access to what they see as raw material for their business means they’ve had to search for parts farther afield. But it hasn’t stopped their business from growing. Both are what I would consider glass-half-full people. They see opportunity everywhere. For more than a decade Dave and Donovan have been converting salvaged aviation components into amazing furniture that’s functional and beautiful art. Had they been sitting in on my final thesis review, the outcome may have been quite different.

The idea of such repurposing has been discussed many times before on this blog, but MotoArt may be one of the most interesting. I’ve known about their work for years, though I can’t remember how I discovered them. Several weeks ago Aleida and I made arrangements to stop by their office and production facility to get first hand look at what I had only seen in pictures. From the front the building looks like all the other office park structures surrounding the Torrance Municipal Airport – Zamperini Field. And even the first office space you enter hardly hints at the treasure beyond. But once you enter the production facility it’s like a wonderland of very strange proportions. Everything you see was originally made for very large equipment. As parts and pieces removed from their original context they make the average human seem totally out of scale. Everywhere you look, including the ceiling, there are airplane parts waiting to be or in the process of being transformed. Wings, tails, stabilizers, spinners, wheels, wing flaps, engine rotors, rudders, cowlings, radial engines, and so many more I couldn’t easily identify were being disassembled, manipulated, polished, and buffed on their way to becoming office desks, conference chairs, bars, conference tables, light fixtures, and beds.

Co-owner Donovan Fell may be the only person who does seem properly proportioned for the size of the parts he’s working on. That’s not to say he’s huge, though he is a big guy, but he has a big personality that seems to fill up the space. He graciously took more time than I expected to show us what’s he’s working on, tell us about recent trips to Asia, talks with us about some interesting recent clients, and gives us background stories about their 2004 Discovery Channel reality TV series Wing Nuts.

Co-owner David Hall gave us a tour of the whole facility, including an area out behind the warehouse to show us some of his most recent parts purchases. Between their production space and the airport is what many would see as a big pile of junk, but it’s actually a staging area with more raw material yet to be processed. Dave said it’s a constant battle with the landlord regarding how much they are allowed to store. While wading through, he excitedly points out several big flat components that looked like wings. They weren’t wings but flaps, just one small section of a huge wing (see photo above). They’re a recent rare score that may be the last of their kind. He reiterates what I mentioned above about how difficult it’s become to salvage good vintage aircraft parts.

Although I don’t think they necessarily see their work within a sustainability context, it certainly supports efforts toward closed loop systems, waste reduction, and resource conservation. MotoArt is doing full scale and real what I was only imagining with my thesis project, and it’s difficult for me not to admire and respect what they’re doing But I have to admit, it’s not for everyone. Have you ever seen their work? If so, tell us what you think. If not, please check them out.

Thank you Dave and Donovan for your time.

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