Past Projects - 2008 - 2009

Thanks to rain barrel sales and many hours of donated labor, we purchased a digital projector for doing slide shows and videos in fall 2008! And we can now offer customized educational workshops on sustainabilty themes for high school classes, scout troops, church groups, or other community groups that do programming for teens or young adults. Since the fall we have developed two major projects with help from interns, volunteers and community partners: Recyclique and the Feed My Sheep Community Garden project. See pages specific to those projects for details . . .

We also worked with Marion Brisk's mini-term class at NC School of Science & Math to build a solar space heater -- see the video students made from their experience. Testing the heater's efficiency comes next.


Solar Hot Water Lab: We are networking with a team of community volunteers, solar installers and high school science students for a 2-phase project. Phase I is to install a solar hot water system for Carolina Biodiesel, which will heat vegetable oil (speeding up the reaction that produces biodiesel), and serve as a demonstration module on site for future educational purposes. In the process we'll learn about the physics and hands-on skills of solar hot water systems. Phase II of the project is to build and test a low cost "appropriate technology" solar hot water system with the goal of making the technology more widely available. Chris Allen, is helping to pull a team together to work on this in spring 09. In May we moved around the corner to a new site on S. Goley St., but this project remains an option at the new site!

Eco-edutaining youth since 2007

See Recyclique & Workshops pages for up-to-date info on our activities.

A quickie history: YIKES! (the organization that led to Recyclique and CommunEcos) originated in Spring 2007 through a joint project of Clean Energy Durham (CED) and two classes at the NC School of Science and Math to identify homes with potential to benefit from solar hot water in the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood. Around 30 students attended workshops, surveyed the neighborhood for solar exposures, then leafleted over 243 homes that their survey indicated had good solar potential. Then organizer and YIKES! founder Sandy Smith-Nonini, an anthropologist who had been part of a recent research project on solar hot water for residential use, conducted several slide shows for interested homeowners. Through an arrangement with CED, local solar installers offered participating homeowners a discount in months that followed.

In Spring 2008 YIKES! members took part in the Youth Climate Action Project (Y-CAP) - a series of workshops sponsored by NC Climate Advocacy Network, of Raleigh, including a rain barrel painting workshop and a series of sessions on climate change science and policy, in preparation for youth lobby day at the State Legislature in Raleigh on June 4th, where teens presented arguments for bills under debate that would reduce the carbon footprint of our society. The teens researched the bills they argued for, and their passion made an impression on lawmakers. Misti Pinter, a local filmmaker, documented the Youth CAP in a series of Podcasts that can be seen on the NC-CAN website, and aired on Channel 8, Chapel Hill's public access channel. Y-CAP was organized by Laura Thigpen, an environmental educator in Raleigh, and was funded by a grant from SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment) through UNC's Environmental Resources office.

The Y-CAP project spawned our 1st rain barrel painting event. After our first workshop in March, attended by 35 teens, YIKES! sponsored barrel-painting booths at 2008 and 2009 Earth Day festivals in Durham and at the Eno River Festival on July 4th weekend both years.

In June & July 2008 proceeds from rain barrel sales helped the Forest Foundation purchase new lighting and electrical connections for our EcoLounge space. Roque, Hana and Sarah, three talented YIKES! artists, also painted a fabulous mural of ocean and African ecologies on the walls of the space. A stage was built and a Pullen Baptist youth group painted a white backdrop for the stage for projecting slides and videos. In August 2008 rain barrel proceeds allowed us to buy a digital projector for educational workshops.

YIKES! sponsored a classroom project on the science of oilseeds crops funded by a $1000 grant from Project Learning Tree, in collaboration with Marion Brisk, a professor at the NC School of Science and Math. Dr. Brisk's students are studying prospects for canola, as a new winter crop for that will benefit NC farmers, while providing a sustainable local source of oil for both the restaurant and biofuel industries.

Our campus

NOTE: In March 2011 we moved our workshop to 2811 Hillsborough Rd. where we opened a combination retail and environmental education space in late May. See photo and description on the Recyclique page of this website.

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From May 2009 until March 2011 our workshop space was on the Green Oil and Light (GOAL) Campus (on S. Goley St., just off Angier Ave). We held three volunteer work days in fall 09 to insulate the Recyclique workshop (many thanks to Travis Cohn, Don Nonini, Susan O'Neil & the Durham Tech Brownsfield course grads for their help). And in July 2010 Anthony Watts helped us extend an HVAC duct into the space for AC and heat (so civilized!).

YIKES!'s Recyclique project shared space with GreenWay Transit &
Carolina Biodiesel on the GOAL Campus, which offers green job training and serves as an incubator for new sustainable enterprises.

A pre-May 2009 retrospective:

The EcoLounge (see photo below) was our old “environmental learning lab” and community space, from Aug. 2007 to May 2009.  This was a large day-lit warehouse space, in a building shared with Carolina Biofuels at 1404 Angier Ave. This first "Green Oil Campus" was featured in the Independent Weekly's Earth Day 2009 Green Living Issue: French Fries in your Tank.

Scheduling a Workshop

Our Green Training Faculty: 

Marc Dreyfors, MS, director of Carolina Biodiesel and the Forest Foundation, is an Environmental Educator and a board member of Environmental Educators of North Carolina. He received a Masters degree from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, and has over a decade's experience in fair trade, biofuels and green transit. 

Sandy Smith-Nonini, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor of anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill, who previously taught anthropology at Elon University for 5 years. She teaches courses on environmental activism and sustainable development, and participated in a 2006-07 research project, funded by the UNC business school on solar hot water for NC homeowners.

Anthony Watts, BA, Communications (UNC) -- Green Energy Consultant and experienced carpenter, with experience in plumbing, electrical and solar technology. Anthony was a research associate on the above UNC solar project.  

We draw on a number of local experts as guest speakers.

Mentoring: No charge – must be projects that we have agreed to sponsor.

Standard Workshops: $60 -groups of 15 or less; or $4/student, up to 30 max.

Intensive workshops: $85 -groups of 15 or less, or $5.50/student up to 30 max.

Mobile workshops: We can do presentations at your site of choice within the Triangle area for the above (3-hour) rate, plus a travel charge ($25, Durham; $35 Chapel Hill/Raleigh), contingent on availability of personnel. Likewise, we can bring your students to our site using biofuel-powered vans or buses.

Hydration/Nutrition (on-site events):
* Optional refreshments: cold drinks and healthy snack, $1.80 person for 12 or under; $1.50/person for larger groups. (recommended for longer workshops)
* Optional healthy lunch w/ drinks: $10 per person (local food, as seasonally available, catered by 9^th Street Bakery)

Note: At present CommunEcos and the Forest Foundation are staffed by volunteer labor. But we do have to pay rent, buy equipment, supplies, & fuel and we aspire towards paid staff. Our goal is to pool community skills and knowledge to build a facility and network that serves the public as we transition to a more sustainable society. We need your participation and generosity to offer these programs. All proceeds from educational events and fundraising activities go back into the non-profit – to improve our space and deepen our capacity for education and outreach projects.

Documentary on sustainable biodiesel

In summer 2008 four college students (well, one had graduated) -- Roque, Melissa, Sarah, & Hana -- set about to make a documentary film on the sustainable biodiesel movement which originated in Pittsboro, NC and has made gained a national reputation for teaching others how to make fuel from waste products like used veggie oil and chicken fat! [Eg. Read Biodiesel Power, by Lyle Estill]

We completed seven shoots at Piedmont Biofuels coop and Industrial site, both in Pittsboro, at the home of Lyle Estill (Piedmont founder) at Carolina Biofuels, Durham, and at the house of a homebrewer, for a total of 8-9 hours of footage.

After a year's hiatus on the project, this fall (2010), UNC communications student Katie Lubinsky is editing the footage into a short film as part of an anthropology internship.

We are grateful to the People's Channel in Chapel Hill, where Roque and Melissa took classes before we borrowed equipment to film. Our finished film will air on Channel 8, the local public access channel, in addition to being marketed for educational use, previewed at Cairns & Sundance, considered for an Oscar . . .yada yada . . .

Painted Rain Barrels

Scroll down for examples of designs we've done on rain barrels and descriptions:

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Price list:
$65 each - Solid colored 55 gal barrels. (usually brown, green or black - state your preference)
$75 each - In stock barrels with ecological designs (55 gal) See above for examples of designs.
$85 each - Custom painted barrels (for barrels with designs that we don't have in stock; Note: Custom barrels may take up to two weeks, depending on schedules of painters.
Visit our shop Recyclique at 2811 Hillsborough Rd., Durham [open: 3-6 pm Thur and Fri or 10am -5 pm Sat.] to view barrels we have in stock; or email for more info:  yikes.contact@gmail.com
 
For orders of two or more, we give a discount of $5 off per barrel.
Delivery locally (Durham city) for $10 (max of two/trip), or free for Watts-Hillandale or Old West Durham.  $15 for outside city, up to 15 miles.

Barrels are re-used industrial food grade plastic, previously used for water-soluble, non-toxic materials. They are lightly sanded and primed, designs are painted with acrylic or latex paints, and finished with a clear urethane finish coat. Faucets (w/ threads for garden hose) are brass, installed into a no-leak conduit, barrels have an overflow installed at the top to which you can attach a hose and run back into your drain system. They have a half-moon opening on top for gutter flow, covered with a nylon screen (secured by a bungee and cord or re-purposed rubber bike tire inner tube) which can be pulled back for dipping out of the barrel. In addition to the screening, for maximum mosquito protection, we recommend use of one-quarter mosquito dunk (or a cup of vinegar) per barrel per month during summer weather.

Rain barrel sales support CommunEcos's sustainability education and green job creation projects - We involve teens and adults in painting rain barrels at festivals and community events; and we produce environmental workshops.
 Visit us at our new website is http://www.communecos.org

Our goals

NOTE:  Beginning in 2011 CommunEcos will be the umbrella non-profit organization that will house both YIKES! and Recyclique.
Our goal is to engage in creative cross-generational projects that build public awareness and encourage new thinking about low energy lifestyles, and the need to live in harmony with the earth and each other. We also explore sustainable social and economic models based on equity and cooperation as our society transitions away from its current obsession with profit and growth.

We seek to create student/youth-run chapters on college and high schools campuses, and in other community settings, that focus on learning about, teaching and promoting solutions for the energy/climate crisis. We hope to build well-informed leaders -- organizers, educators & community members -- who will shape policy in coming decades as human societies go through a cold turkey withdrawal from our fossil fuel addiction.

We need help from you to shape the movement -- everything from "branding" what we do, to website creation, identifying cool projects, shaping our priorities, and figuring out how to influence policy. [See volunteer opportunities page!]

Other goals:
* promoting social entrepreneurship to provide opportunities to adults and young people in low-income neighborhoods which get hit especially hard by high fuel prices
* fostering cross-over projects that engage college students working together with high school students on sustainability projects,
* creating community service activities through which students can earn credit toward courses,
* involving students in creating interactive, and/or visually-interesting projects that will communicate sustainable goals to the wider community,
* developing projects to assist middle and high school teachers to keep up with and enhance school curricula on the changing energy/climate crisis scene
* developing ways to promote awareness of YIKES! work and of the issues we engage with in the wider community/state/nation
* building community and new forms of identity that will enable the great paradigm shift we are living through
* Oh, and by the way -- this is a nerd-friendly organization -- we love folks who are into science!! Rely on you!! -- But our task in YIKES! will be to make science extremely cool, and accessible to English majors, math-phobics, jocks, fashionistas, etc. So we need lots of folks who are into the arts, journalism, web-based formats, podcasts, film, etc. We also need folks who understand politics, history and social studies so we can figure out the human element in these processes -- whether falling down rabbit holes, or climbing out of them --