Plant Chicago
Q: Can you tell us a little about Plant Chicago? What is your mission? Why do you think an organization like Plant Chicago is important for the BOTY neighborhood specifically?
A: [Rock] Chicago's mission is to cultivate local circular economies, so circular economy refers to not just money, but as well as education and nutrients. Keeping things more localized. So, the easiest way that I always tell people about it is instead of going to somewhere to shop where your community is never going to see that money again, you're actually like tapping into the community and funding those people so they can support their families and their businesses. But you can't have that happen without education. So a huge part of circular economy is not only learning about it yourself, but then explaining and educating others about circular economy. [Kathleen] I think we're important because we are consciously making decisions for the community in so many different ways. Plant Chicago originally had different missions at the very beginning, like ten years ago, and as we adapted to the community's needs as it grows, concentrating more on education and connection to the community in different ways. The farmer's market started in 2015 by my predecessors, Liz and then Steph. So even the farmer's market has adapted with our relocation in 2019 to accommodate more to our direct community once we relocated. So it's just, our adaptability has helped us out a lot and making sure that we are fulfilling our mission.
Q: What do you see as the most urgent environmental issue for this community? (Chicago or Back of the Yards?) How is your work addressing this issue?
A: [Rock] I would say it's the food waste and the amount that is actually wasted and what's happening to it. There's a lot of miseducation and misinformation specifically about recycling in general, about what can be recycled, what happens if your recycling is contaminated; like if you put in something that's not completely dry or if you didn't remove the label that no one told you that needed to be removed in order for it to be recycled. There's a lot that I'm still learning about recycling because we're also taught when we're young “oh, put it in the recycling bin and it'll get figured out. This water bottle is going to get turned into a new pair of shorts.” Like, that's not the reality of things. So I feel like there's a big educational gap between what's actually happening with our waste and what we are told is happening. And then as far as that, we have a lot of education around what we're doing. We have a 90% diversion goal from the landfill and we make those numbers public when we figure them out. We also have our waste diversion little separator. So it shows you the weights of compost, recycling, and landfill that is weighed at the end of each day. But then also on top of that, we do accept food scraps from people who bring them to us. So it's meant for the community of Back of the Yards specifically. But other people can partake in this. Like I bring my food scraps to work once a week because we do it. [Kathleen] We kind of try to address any sustainability issues that we can handle. Recently, we installed some EV stations in the back for the community to use during specific hours. The community doesn't have a lot of access to electric cars, but we do have the space. If someone is in the area, there is an app where they can find us and just set up their cars and charge. We are talking about installing solar panels on our roof so that we are a little bit more sustainable. And different strategies, like we briefly discussed this morning about how much gas we use, especially during the winter, and how can we adapt our buildings to be less wasteful. But it's all in progress. They're all ideas. And then we kind of just have to tackle one problem at a time. And as a nonprofit, we have a limitation to what we can do.
Q: Plant Chicago seems to have a positive impact on the surrounding communities. Can you speak to any accomplishments or current initiatives that you’re most proud of?
A: [Rock] Seeing people use the food box as intended, I think, is really, really cool. And then I would also say I'm proud of the amount of educational initiatives we have. We are offering seven different labs in addition to doing our own in-house programming. So there's all of that. But then we have other staff members doing workshops, for not only the community, but just like teaching people about aquaponics and teaching people about circular economy. And then working with other partners who may be in our circular economy leaders network of small businesses to then also allow them to lead workshops to teach about their topics and what they do. So I would say those are my favorite things, just working, we keep saying community, but working with different parts of the community to really push forward the initiative of our local circular economy. [Kathleen] Yeah, I'm definitely proud of--it's still like a work in progress--but making sure that our farmers market has continued this year despite the pandemic. Seeing how Plant Chicago did a farmers market last year in the midst of a pandemic, and they were one of the first farmers markets that existed on the south side after March. That was like a really great accomplishment last year, and I think continuing it and getting more foot traffic on our site, because we are new to this specific neighborhood. I mean, we've been in Back of the Yards, but we moved from The Plant to Plant Chicago, so that transition definitely affected our connection to our direct neighbors. And I think that the fact that some community members followed us through, a lot of our vendors followed us to our relocation was like a really great accomplishment.
Q: Can you tell me more about the transition from being combined with The Plant to branching off as a separate organization?
A: [Rock] To my knowledge. It was just mainly because we were like the front facing portion of The Plant, like doing the education and the tours and stuff like that. And giving us a little more freedom to really do the work that needs to be done versus like what they're doing at Bubbly Dynamics as a for profit organization. It does make a lot more sense from my perspective, because I'm not talking really about the relationship between The Plant and Plant Chicago, but from my perspective, we have a lot of freedom to do what we want to do as a very small nonprofit, and I think that is a benefit of being a small nonprofit, the flexibility and freedom to really do the work that needs to be done. And when it comes to order of operations, there's really only one or two people that we have to check in with to get anything done. And I feel like that's really, really important and necessary for the work that we want and are needing to do.
Q: How can students who are not familiar with Back of the Yards interact with the neighborhood in a way that is mutually beneficial? What local businesses would you highlight for this audience?
A: [Kathleen] Join our farmer's market so you can meet a lot of these vendors in person. A lot of vendors don't have just one farmer's market. They have multiple farmer's markets throughout the week. So just maybe if you have a specific vendor that you love and you can't get enough of their product, you can follow them and continue to support them and their growth as a business. And you can meet them all at once at the market. But we also have an indoor market that was started I think last year? Where a lot of our vendors that--obviously in the winter we don't have a farmer's market--so we bring a lot of products that we can have at our house for sale. And that's additional support if you can't make it to the farmer's market. Maybe pass by on a day that we have our house open. Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays, and just look at the products that we have and do a lot of research. Obviously, we are all very familiar with our vendors. I guess, to call out some names, Back of the Yards Coffee started with like 5-7 years ago and now has their own physical coffee shop and is expanding to a second store. Fresh produce, a contemporary farmer. A lot of people just do different things, so I can say like 1000 of them.
Q: What are your hopes for Plant Chicago in the next five to ten years?
A: [Rock] I want us to be able to expand what we're able to physically do and offer to the community. So with our food box program, like either doing more of them, or then eventually creating our own. So we can do that type of work. Right now we don't have the capacity, staff wise, to make that happen. But who knows, in the future we could. And then I also want our education program back to what it used to be prior to COVID. So apparently we were seeing like thousands of students a year. And with COVID, we've moved online and teachers are more so focused on teaching to what they need to get through as far as content, opposed to like looking for more outside experiences like field trips and stuff. So I would like to get back to that with health permitting and pandemic permitting. [Kathleen] I hope to see a farmers market growing and getting the foot traffic that it used to receive. But also seeing how our circular economy leaders network has grown in the past year, because it's only like a two year thing, it hasn't existed for that long. And a lot of businesses have changed around, where we have a whole new team this year, since 2019, when it started. So as that develops, some businesses become more established, they have better ability to support us and have our back in regards to growing as an organization. So seeing how that overall circular effect, that will allow us to see how are we going to grow in the next couple of years as a farmers market, as an organization? And how can we become more sustainable as a building?