Connections - September 2009 - 8

Passionate Calling made, 100 percent recycled post-and-rail fencing, rubber products for playgrounds, glass mulch, and cocoa shell mulch. The retail shop allowed Lacey to have more of a local presence where community members could come into her shop to buy the materials directly. Her business has been especially busy, even during the recession as there has been a growing trend to use the eco-chic products that are manufactured exclusively for her shop. Lacey’s sales method, coupled with her Web site and store, enabled her “to compete with the big boys,” she said. Her biggest competitors are Trex®Lumber, which manufactures railings and decks out of reclaimed wood, 300 million pounds of sawdust and 1.5 billion recycled plastic bags; and soft drink companies, including Coca Cola and Pepsi, which reused more than 200 million pounds of recyclables last year and currently create plastic bottles with 10-percent recycled materials, respectively. Although she’s in the sales arena, and they’re manufacturers, she’s still in competition to repurpose the waste material. Lacey is able to battle with them thanks, in part, to trucking companies who believe in her mission; they’ve cut her deals comparable to large organizations. She’s become David amongst the Goliath of big name corporations in the recycling arena. Aside from becoming a recycling nabob, Lacey is a big advocate of green education for children. She goes into schools and offers free presentations. She captivates the youths’ attention by kicking off her shoes, and walking barefoot across recycled glass mulch. Thousands of children cry out, “She’s walking on broken bottles!” said Lacey who then explains to them that the shards have been polished to a rounded edge and are no longer jagged. That’s when they understand waste materials have a greater potential than sitting in a garbage can. To further bridge the gap between education and learning, Lacey shows the children Jose Azel’s photograph of mounds of tires piled high. His picture appeared in National Geographic’s July 1994 issue. It gives the children a visual reminder of the quantity of waste in one single landfill can hold. She explains that these tire piles hold a cesspool of stagnant water that sit inside the tire, making a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes which can infect people worldwide with diseases such as West Nile Virus, Dengue Fever, and St. Louis Encephalitis. She desperately wants to make it an education requirement for all children to slather on bug repellant and visit a landfill. “When you see the amount of 8 | Connections | September 2009

Connections - September 2009

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