The Green Project

For nearly thirty years, The Green Project has worked to preserve the natural beauty of New Orleans and inspire local citizenry to do the same. The roots of the project began in 1994 when Linda Stone and artist Suzanne Durham officially founded the Mid-City Green Project, a community initiative combining recycling and art. 

“We wanted to do something  that was creative and also good for the environment, putting our two sets of skills and interests together,” remembered Stone, who was at the time working as a writer and researcher for the Office of Environmental Epidemiology at the Louisiana Office of Public Health. 

Stone studied up on how to start a nonprofit, and the duo conducted a search for a suitable place for the project, ultimately choosing the Goldseal Dairy on D’Hemecourt and S. Alexander Streets in Mid-City, a large, almost-empty structure with a lot of outdoor space.

Prior to her role with the Office of Public Health, Stone worked as a research assistant at The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. There, she gained experience working to improve problems associated with urban runoff and its impact on the lake, especially when it comes to paint. She noticed that there were no programs at the time to address the problems caused by paint being poured down drains and getting into the local waterbodies, where it was becoming a major pollutant. 

“Recycling paint, just like recycling most products, saves energy and resources that would be used in making a brand new product from virgin materials when you take into account the extraction, processing and packaging of new materials,” explained the Green Project’s current Environmental Education and Outreach Coordinator Erin Genrich. “Latex paint contains chemicals like solvents that can damage the environment if disposed of improperly. If poured down the storm drain here, the paint goes right out to Lake Pontchartrain without any treatment. Additionally, if paint is dumped, it contributes to groundwater contamination. And if latex paint is responsibly disposed of by hardening, it will end up in a landfill, where it will take up space.”

Through the Mid-City Green Project, Stone decided to start the Paint Exchange, a latex paint recycling program, with help from a one thousand dollar matching grant being offered by Entergy New Orleans for creative projects benefitting the environment. “Then I had to figure out how to execute it,” she said. 

Stone assembled a board of directors made up of neighbors, local businesspeople, representatives from the New Orleans Department of Sanitation, local environmentalists, activists in the community, and students from Ben Franklin High School’s ecological club. The board helped to spread the word by passing around press releases wrapped around little paint brushes. 

“The first Saturday we opened in October of 1994, we [received] a lot of paint, and all the neighborhood children showed up and wanted to do something,” Stone recalled. “Suzanne put them to work painting old flower pots and chairs that she found in the back garden area of the dairy building.”

Soon after, Stone and Durham incorporated an organic gardening component into their programs, making use of all the protected outdoor space. They sold the produce at the then-newly-opened Crescent City Farmers Market.  

“I was able to get us a number of grants from local foundations to fund summer programs for children, and further develop our paint recycling and garden programs,” Stone said. “The city also placed a large container outside the dairy where people could drop off paper, cans, and glass to recycle.”

In 1996, the Green Project started the Building Materials Exchange, which sold donated architectural salvage that could be reused or repurposed to local builders and creatives. “After Katrina, many architectural building parts that would have been lost found their way to The Green Project,” said Stone. The program received the Environmental Protection Agency’s first Sustainability grant. 

In 1998 the organization, no longer quite so neighborhood-centric, was retitled simply The Green Project, and under Stone’s successor Renee Allie, the facility was moved to its current location on Marais Street in the Bywater. The organic garden didn’t survive the move, but the organization does continue to collaborate with other nonprofits working in the sustainable food realm, including Compost Now, for which The Green Project is now a drop off location for compostable materials. 

Over the years, The Building  Materials Exchange Program evolved into what is now the Salvage Store, a kind of thrift store that encourages reuse by selling donated items, including everything from toilets to power tools.

Today, The Green Project’s Environmental Education program, established in 2013, is overseen by Genrich. These educational sessions are free to schools and cover a range of sustainability topics based on teacher requests, with a heavy emphasis on recycling lessons in recent years. 

The program asks kids to think about things like whether companies should be required to pay for disposal costs, as opposed to individuals who bought the material, or the local government. “It is fun to get kids talking, and inevitably disagreeing, with what they think the right answer is.” said Genrich. 

“I, for one, learned a lot about the topic,” related Kathy Pennison, a teacher at Mount Carmel who has been bringing her Interior Design students to The Green Project to practice creative reuse for several years. “For example, I didn’t realize that there were manufacturer disclaimers on the latex paint cans, or that oil paint had to be disposed of differently.” One thing she’s learned through these initiatives, for example, is that allowing paint to dry up in a can—or drying it out with cat litter—makes it safer to dispose of.

Though teaching about recycling might seem straightforward, Genrich said that a great deal of thought goes into how to present the information to each school. “Are they actively recycling?” Genrich asks. “If so, what company do they use? Different companies take different materials. Are they monitoring contamination? Do they understand why contamination is bad? The in-class lessons give a range of information on why and how to recycle, but in a school that doesn’t actively recycle, the information we share with students won’t be practiced together at school, and most of the schools we work with don’t or can’t recycle.” 

That challenge, Genrich said, led to the creation of the M.E.S.S. Lab—set to launch in the fall of 2021. Standing for “Math, English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science,” M.E.S.S. is a new hands-on educational initiative with which students can collect their own paint and create and market their own product. 

[Read this: The Louisiana Stormwater Coalition Uncomplicates Litter Solutions]

“We pre-sort the good from bad paint, but upon opening a can of paint we always double check for quality,” said Genrich. “Then we mix that can and pour the paint through a screen. When our vessel is full, we mix the paints together with an electric mixer that looks a lot like a cake batter mixer. Once the colors are thoroughly combined, we decant them into five gallons, one gallons, and quarts. We name and tag the paints with the date, color dab, name, and price.” After making the paint, students return to the classroom and practice using persuasive writing to advertise their products. “Once those ads are turned in to us, then we put the paint on the floor with the ads to share the  environmental message with the community.” 

The money from all student paint sales supports the program, while enabling the students to participate in sustainable business and learn about circular economy. Plans call for the program to be self-sustaining after the first year, and to eventually underwrite transportation costs for school groups.

“The classroom lessons are learning by listening, and the M.E.S.S. Lab is learning by doing,” said Genrich. “Learning by doing is always going to be more impactful.” 

Though the M.E.S.S. Lab won’t be fully functional until later this year, The Green Project is currently hosting groups to come in and learn about paint recycling, and is also continuing to offer virtual environmental education through its website at thegreenproject.org.