Finally, Detroit residents will be receiving curbside recycling. Actually some are right now;this Labor Day weekend Palmer Woods residents had their recycling carts delivered. What began about 4 years ago has grown to about 10,000 Detroiters, and hopefully one day all of Detroit will be recycling.
“Our goal is to get to a point where everyone in the city is recycling,”
Ron Brundidge, director of the Public Works Department.
In the suburbs of Detroit, recycling has been embraced my most communities, we have drop-off locations and curbside collection everywhere. Now finally Detroit will get to experience the joy of reducing waste through recycling. Education in schools and in the home is where it begins, hopefully a new generation of Detroiters will embrace the earth and environment. By practicing green ideals like recycling we can make change.
If you have not already noticed our involvement in the Great Lakes program hosted by the Sierra Club (America’s oldest grassroots organization). We have partnered again for a kick-off spring event on the Detroit Riverfront. This is a three-way collaboration between the Sierra Club, The Detroit RiverFront Conservancy and Maxi Container, Inc. This event is free to the public to watch learn and listen as we build barrels and show how to attach them to a downspout on your home. You can also pickup a barrel for $60 or per-register to receive the discount and build your barrel with us! (visit: http://mirainbarrel.com/signup and click on “Rain Barrels on the Riverfront” to sign up now!) This event is going to be a fun Saturday morning (April, 14th) … bring the whole family!
For more info please call 313-444-3705 or visit http://mirainbarrel.com
We kindly urge you to share this event with your friends and colleagues!
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Detroit City Councilman Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. and U.S. Representative Clarke plan to attend and give remarks at the beginning of the workshop/sale.
On August 31st, Compuware debuted its newest creation (and it’s not software) Lafayette Greens, an urban garden located at the old Lafayette building site, which was demolished in 2009. The community garden will provide all organic produce for Gleaners Community Food Bank (and if there is an over abundance of produce, it will go to the volunteers too!). The garden will be maintained almost entirely by a volunteer workforce. I was fortunate enough to join them for the grand opening celebration.
This initiative is run by Compuware employees Gwen Meyer (onsite manager) and Meg Heeres (project manager). We had the pleasure of meeting them during the development of the garden, consulting on the design types possible with our containers. They eventually had to resort to custom made beds for the majority of the garden, but still utilized our drums in the “Children’s Garden”. In this section our used juice drums were placed in a circular design which is lower to the ground so kids can interact with the plants better. It has a very “zen” feel to it.
The event was spectacular, samples of gourmet cuisine made from fruits and veggies grown in the garden were being passed out. Free drinks (non-alcoholic) and lively music was playing. The news obviously was informed about this event, I think I saw one person from every major local station there! This event was well planned. I enjoyed my afternoon there, though I mostly just hung out in the Children’s Garden where our containers where displayed.
They also are utilizing one of our compost tumblers, though I don’t think a single tumbler will be able to supply the entire gardens needs. The footprint of the garden is the entire corner, it’s pretty big. I urge any and everyone who is in the downtown Detroit area to go in and check it out!
We are so happy to be involved in the beautifying of Detroit with Compuware. At Maxi, we are dedicated to getting involved in our community and the amount of gardens going up in Detroit this year was amazing. We urge others to develop community gardens and work together to turn vacant lots into functional and beautiful gardens. This is the green movement and companies like Compuware and Maxi, and people like Gwen and Meg are what our city needs. Take a moment to check and see if there are any projects planned for your community.
Enjoy this slideshow of pictures from Compuware’s Lafayette Greens Community Garden. You can view these photos on our Flickr as well.
Having a great time at Local Motion’s Earth Day Fair! Lots of cool green vendors and awesome people celebrating earth month. Shout out to the Sierra Club, Greening Detroit, and The Greening of Detroit as well. GREEN EVERYTHING!
Last weekend the Sierra Club Great Lakes Program hosted a Rain Barrel workshop on Detroit’s west-side in the Brightmoor neighborhood. The workshop was organized by the Sierra Club’s own Melissa Damaschke to teach fifty Detroiters, who had signed up for the event, all about water conservation’s benefits, and of course how to make a rain barrel. After all of the participants arrived, Melissa explained the workshop and then separated everyone into groups. An experienced Rain Barrel “Guru” led each group in the making of the Barrels. After all the drilling, caulking, and installing was done, the group discussed their plans to save rain water and for use in their gardens. It was an educational experience and fun afternoon project.
I had my video camera on me and have created a video showcasing the workshop, hope you enjoy!
For More Info on the Sierra Club Great Lakes Program please visit these links:
Last week, Rebekah Frank, who works for Cranbrook Academy of Art, contacted Maxi Container, she found us on the web searching Google for “Containers Detroit.” Well she found the right place! Rebekah was interested in 5-gallon pails to put under the artist’s respective tables to give them a safe place to store their personal belongings. We were happy to help here at Maxi, since we love helping the community and we love art! In previous months, we have covered different ways people have used containers for art, see previous articles about Wine Barrel Art and Haiti Metal Art (made out of used oil drums), but this was a chance for us to get directly involved. We set-up some conditions, basically “renting” (free of charge) 110 of our PAILSNEW700 for the weekend. One of our own employees at Maxi studied at Cranbrook for a little while and I (creative director) just finished up art school in Chicago. This was an event that I did not want to miss.
Ready for a good evening, my wife Jessie and I went downtown, when we arrived at the Dagleish Cadillac, there was valet parking outside. It was preview night (Friday night) and it had already sold out at $50 a ticket. Luckily, we were on the list (thanks Rebekah)! They had us pick fake name-tag patches like the ones on work shirts, just for fun. With my Kent name-tag attached to my shirt, we started making the rounds and meeting artists. It was great to actually get one-on-one time with the artists. You can learn so much about an artists work when they are actually there, unlike the usual little card next to the painting with some vague artists statement about the meaning of the piece and the material used to construct it. This time it was one on one, unique and engaging!
The Dagleish Cadillac was a great venue choice because with this many artists and interested buyers, the tables where setup in a grid but with enough space to jump between rows easily. They had a coat check and a credit card station to make the experience comfortable and easy. There was live music, some type of string and horn quartet playing swing style. Overall, One X One was set up very nicely and provided a sophisticated and enjoyable experience.
The collection of artists at One X One was diverse and talented. All of the art was of a high caliber. It was a very professional show with an array of beautiful works for sale. On a side note, a lot of the artists had some creative business cards and almost every artist had a website (below there is a list of some of the artist’s websites from the business cards which I received). We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and would like to formally say thank you to Rebekah and Cranbrook Academy for contacting us and hope we can work together again some time in the future. Here is a gallery of some photos from the event including our pails in use! Enjoy!
Here at Maxi we would like to take this moment to tell everyone just how important we think art is. Please support local artists in your community. Get involved and help keep the arts alive!
Maxi Container, Inc. was recently asked by City Year Detroit if we could spare twenty drums to help them start recycling at Osborn High School. Osborn is part of the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) and Maxi being a local Detroit business jumped at the opportunity to help a local school. Osborn is now functioning as part of DPS’s small school initiative, housing four smaller schools inside of one building, rather than close the school down like many have in Detroit. By integrating these recycling containers into the classrooms, hopefully it will at least get the soda bottles and excess paper properly disposed of for ten classrooms. Joshua Rubin (Creative Director) talked to Deborah Chesser, a Corps Member of City Year Detroit, together we arranged a date and time for the drums to be delivered. Donating these drums was very important to Maxi, so important that our very own Richard Rubin wanted to join us for the drop off, along with our driver Ryan Morris, we all arrived to be greeted by Deborah and her colleague Kiana Miller, both very friendly City Year members. It felt great to know that we finally were there and this exchange was finally happening. We enlisted the help of a few of the students to unload the truck. Two drums will be in ten classrooms, one for paper and one for plastic. The students will decorate the drums and cut holes in the covers to indicate which drum is for paper or plastic. We look forward to getting some pictures of this when they are finished. For now here are some photos of the delivery. Maxi would formally like to say that we are proud to support local recycling efforts like this one. Please find local recycling efforts/projects in your area and get involved!
20 Fiber Drums with Covers & Liners…enough for 10 classrooms to start recycling.
Amonte Gardner (front) and Sharod Britt (back) were very helpful taking the drums into the high school.
Emmit Conner helped us unload the truck. Thank you Emmit!
Rick Rubin (owner) was on site, helping facilitate the exchange.
Maxi is very excited to assist Osborn High School’s recycling efforts!
If you would like to find out more information about City Year or how you can get involved please visit the their website. For specific information on City Year Detroit please clickhere.
If you have any questions about Maxi’s local recycling efforts, comments, questions, or suggestions please feel free to contact Joshua by calling 313-891-3880 or by sending him and email.
