Moab Solutions

On October 20, 2011, we held our second annual Emergency Shelter Solutions meeting.  The first was held on December 17, 2010.  At the first meeting, Kristina Cassidy of the Hope Garden and Sara Melnicoff of Moab Solutions became co-coordinators of Emergency Shelter Solutions, a subcommittee of the Grand County Homeless Coordinating Committee.  Our goal, then and now, is to find immediate solutions for those living in camps along the parkway system and in other areas of the county during cold weather.  At the first meeting we had a great mix of non-profits, churches, concerned citizens, and a few of the homeless in attendance.  We collect funds to be used for shelter expenses only. The response from the community has been excellent.  Many people here in Moab sleep better knowing that a lot of the homeless are inside, warm and safe, during harsh weather.   Over the winter of 2010-2011, we helped 10 people move from the camps to a motel room or other accommodation and helped transient homeless traveling through town who needed a place to stay for a night or two.  We continue to work with a few of the homeless to keep them in housing year-round.  A story about our efforts appeared in the Times-Independent on December 30, 2010. 

http://moabtimes.com/view/full_story/10824615/article-Community-group-works-to-create-solutions-for-homelessness-in-Moab?instance=home_news_1st_left

This year we are asking people to "Take the $5 Challenge.  If everybody donates $5 to the shelter fund, we can keep people out of the camps this winter.  Here is a flyer you can use to collect funds at your office or shop.  Please contact us if you'd like to be on the email list of the Emergency Shelter Solutions group.

We started doing cleanups of areas in and around the canyon on a daily basis in November of 2003.  We remove trash and recycling and work to protect the land from off-road damage.  We remove user created trails when possible and work to keep the approved trail free of vegetation.  It is very rewarding to see the immediate results of our work.  We also do cleanups in the streams, on many other trails, and along the highways and byways of this glorious region. We often see our fellow community members cleaning up too!

We're always looking for more volunteers to do cleanups with.  Do you do a recycle/cleanup in an area near where you live?  Let us know. We'd like to add a page to this website listing the clean up efforts that others are making all across this planet.

The Dudley Project aims to improve the life of dogs, cats, horses, and wildlife in our region through a variety of methods. We currently provide shelters and blankets to dogs and cats that need them. We are working toward matching people who would like to walk dogs with dogs that need walks. We will work with, and help find the right home for, any dog that cannot be placed by the Humane Society. Solutions will happily accept doghouses, blankets, and other items that can be made into shelters for this project.  We'd love your help with the Dudley Project.

Common Thread/Operation Cooperation is a cooperative effort between the Grand County Sheriff’s Office, The Solid Waste District, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Grand County Trail Mix, a Grand County sponsored committee, http://www.grandcountyutah.net/trailmix/, the State of Utah Schools and Institutional Trust Lands Administration,
(SITLA), the off-road group, Rocky Mountain Extreme, www.rockymountainextreme.com, and Moab Solutions to maximize recycling and minimize waste and damage during Jeep week.

The goal of Common Thread, a project started in 2005, is to get a variety of groups working together to help prevent damage to the land during large off-road events. More than a million people a year visit this area – they are attracted to the stunning natural beauty and want to experience it for themselves. The problem is that a lot of damage is occurring, which ends up harming the land along with all the plants and animals that rely on it. Our hope, each year, is to get friendly groups of volunteers to remove recycling and litter from a number of areas, distribute information about the special cryptobiotic crust found in this region, explain the value of the “Leave no Trace” philosophy and provide other helpful information.

In the predawn light each morning during Easter Jeep Safari, we remove all the trash and recycling from the Potato Salad Hill area, a popular party spot (but not one of the official Easter Jeep Safari Sites). The recycling alone from one day’s activities weighed more than 399 pounds! We believe that many users across the board don’t want to see illegal off-road use, littering and other bad behaviors. Together we can work at ending that.

Each year we have new people and organizations joining us in our efforts. We are excited about plans for expansion in 2011. For details about Common Thread recycling efforts during Moab's Jeep Safari, read an article that appeared in Four Wheeler Magazine (it's near the bottom of the page) and this Times Independent newspaper article.

Moab Solutions started working with the high school recycle club in the winter of 2006 to expand their existing program. Starting in early 2009, Ms. Mary Walker-Irvin's Ecology class has been maintaining the recycling on a weekly basis, with an assist from Moab Solutions.  The recycle club has morphed into the Earth Club and they will be concentrating on a variety of earth friendly activities and education about the benefits of recycling and sustainable living.

The concept of a Low Waste High School has been steadily spreading throughout the school. Each week, hundreds of containers are collected from bins located throughout the campus. Paper from all the classrooms and offices is recycled too. Green Solutions, Moab's commercial recycling hauler, picks up the recycling and takes it to the recycle center. They offer this as a free service to the entire school district because of the district's budget considerations.  The students really appreciate the service.

We are working toward engaging the entire school in this project and its natural offshoots by promoting participation in cleanups on the parkway land bordering the high school and on school grounds, encouraging students to walk, carpool or bike to school, making artistic posters promoting recycling, and educating the students to educate themselves about the effects of wasting in the USA.  A variety of challenges and contests will begin in late 2010.  This project also hopes to foster healthy debate and research about human-caused impacts to the planet and how to reverse the damaging ones while promoting the beneficial ones.

Let’s support their efforts by recycling at our homes and businesses.

As of February, 2011, the High School is taking charge of maintaining recycling within the school.  Moab Solutions is working with the school on projects related to promoting recycling, like poster and essay contests.  We will also work with them as they strive to get their recycling system optimized. 

Click on the photos below to enlarge them.

Carol Hoggard is pictured here at the beginning of the biggest sort she’s ever attempted in her life!  After 55 hours of work by 6 Solutions members, all of these bags of mixed recycling were emptied of recycling and trash.  We sorted the contents, which were then processed by center staff and sold at market. That's how the  Wednesday Morning Recycle Club got its start in September of 2007.  Once we finished that job, we realized that we wanted to meet regularly and help out in any way possible. Since then we’ve been meeting at the center every Wednesday.  Depending on the time of year, we vary the times we start.  Summer is generally 8 a.m.  Winter, as late as 10:30 a.m. We return wind-blown cardboard to the cardboard pile, sort recycling, remove weeds, or undertake any task assigned by the center supervisor. It is so rewarding to see the difference we’ve made to the center grounds, and the boost all the extra help gives the staff. We’ve been averaging 3 to 5 people per week. There’s always room for one more! (Or two more, or three more … )

For more information, please call Carol Hoggard at 435.259.9168 or Sara Melnicoff at 435.259.0910.  As of January, 2012 we are starting at 10:00 a.m. 

Working in partnership with Moab City, Moab Solutions started Friends of the Parkway in August of 2004. The goal of this project is to get all 5+ miles of this beautiful in-town trail system and its spur trails adopted by groups that will agree to remove the recycling and trash from small sections when they are able. We’d like to have overlapping coverage to make things easier for everybody and keep the parkway clean more often. We hope to expand the program to include a free lecture series, using the Parkway for inspiration.

We have several groups and/or individuals working to keep the parkway’s natural beauty shining through. Erin, from  the Moab Quaker Meeting group was inspired to write this poem after doing a parkway cleanup:

We are the Friends
We’re on the scene
To pick up trash
And keep it clean.

Quakers Erin, Austin and Jessie
We keep it clean and not so messy.
We walked the path that was bicycleable
To pick up litter both non- and re-cyclable.

Now the path is clean and pristine.
The water is clear
and the trees are green.

Moab Friends (Quakers) Youth Group
September 2007

We love to see people inspired to write poetry from doing clean ups! It’s one of the great benefits of doing this sort of work. Clickwww.moabcity.org to read about Friends of the Parkway.

In August of 2008 we started working with the homeless and marginally housed folks who live along the in-town parkway system. We received a grant in December of 2008 from a private foundation who heard about our work and wanted to support us. That helped us enormously, as we were able to maintain and expand this project. We have since received three more grants from the same foundation that gave the original one and often receive donations from community members to keep this project going. The community has been very generous over the years, donating quality used clothing, making beautiful hats, cooking meals, dropping off groceries, and just stopping to say "hi" while we're doing our weekly sorting of the recycling retrieved from the Parkway.   (We pay the partners for collecting littered recycling and trash from the parkway. We meet weekly to sort the recycling they collect, which Solutions transports to the recycle center).  This project has calmed a bad situation, put a few people to work, and is getting hundreds of containers a week to the recycle center. Plus, we are developing relationships with the parkway community and beyond.  We are currently working on getting small weeding jobs for the partners (The Quiet Lawn Care Company) and are trying hard to create a shelter here in town so that the homeless can stay warm and dry during times of bad weather.

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We offer a variety of alternatives for “Adopt a Highway” groups who are not currently recycling items retrieved during clean ups. We will go to a group's stretch of highway before the group goes and remove the recycling only, leaving the litter for your group to pick up. Or, if you want to collect the recycling yourself, but don't have the time to deal with it after that, we will sort it and take it to the center for you. We are also happy to demonstrate a variety of techniques for collecting recycling during these cleanups for those interested in doing that. We have learned quite a bit from our multiple years of clean ups and are more than happy to share what we have learned!

We have worked with several groups, including KZMU, Grand County Hospice, Lions Club, and Canyon Cruisers.

It’s amazing to see how much four or five people can accomplish when working together to remove recycling and trash from the land. It makes an incredible difference to the local environment. We have so much fun removing and redirecting the recycling and trash found along the roads, in the streams and on trails all around this area. It is enormously rewarding to see the immediate results of our efforts.

During clean ups, we are treated to close up views of plant and insect life, can focus on the bird’s song and enjoy fresh air, great views and gentle winds. We do group clean ups whenever two or more of us get the urge. Some of us do small daily clean ups while we are out and about.  Caution...this can be highly addictive!

Three of the founding members of Moab Solutions, Carol, David, and Sara, added up the places they pick up recycling for free and found out it's over 21 sites, some with multiple bins. They service a variety of non-profits, city and county sites, and some private businesses. Some sites are picked up 3 times a week, others are on-call. We do this with joy because we hope one day to see recycling made as easy as wasting. We encourage you to help your friends and neighbors recycle.

The “Just say No! to plastic” Tote Bag Exchange was started a few years ago in partnership with Moonflower Market, our local health food store. We have a drop site in the entrance hallway to the store where people can leave a bag or take a bag. We stock it with tote bags donated by WabiSabi, (see our recommended website page for information about them), along with the bags the public donates. The idea is to "Just say no to plastic" and encourage people to use reusable bags instead of deadly one-use bags. We invite you to bring your extra bags to the bucket next time you shop at Moonflower.  We know you have a few stashed in your closet!

The Glass Project predates the formation of Moab Solutions by half a year. We are in the process of removing tens of thousands of bits of broken glass from along the trails and rock ledges on both sides of Mill Creek in the Powerdam area. Over the years we have worked with middle school students, Outward Bound groups, University groups, and Moab Solutions volunteers.  It all started with the idea of "just picking up a few pieces a day" during my morning walk.

Since November of 2003, we have removed thousands of bits of glass - but we still have thousands more to go.  Some of the rocky ledges are almost free of glass and that motivates us to keep on keeping on.

Two five gallon buckets and a pair of gloves can change the world. Or at least a small part of it! We're working toward getting more folks involved in carrying these items in the trunk of their car and pulling over to do mini clean ups, (5 minutes can yield full buckets and a more beautiful landscape), whenever the mood strikes. One bucket can be used for trash, the other for recycling. You can decorate your bucket too.  We can make you something that will work on your bike, too.

Volunteer Vacation provides visitors with casual volunteer opportunities while they are here enjoying Moab. We offer a variety of options
to visitors wishing to help improve the local environment through cleanups or other earth friendly projects. We can design a special project around your schedule and desires. If you’d like more information, please call Sara or David at 435.259.0910 or send us an email at moab_solutions@hotmail.com.


Click on the photos below to enlarge them.