Garden Pots and Mulch Bags, OH MY!

On a recent chilly early Monday morning in March, Stef and I were conducting spot checks* for our client, Livermore Recycles. In a single lid-flipping morning, we walk several miles and record data on approximately 200 residential trash/recycling/composting set-outs. I flip the lid on each cart and call out what I see while Stef records the data on her clipboard.

On this morning, a pattern was beginning to emerge. From the compost cart we could tell folks were definitely working on their gardens and yards this time of year AND some of them were confused about where their nursery pots and mulch bags should end up. Unfortunately, film plastics such as mulch bags and those black flimsy pots belong in the trash – we found several set-outs where these items were contaminating the organics cart and the recycling cart.

flower pots wrongly placed in recycling and organics carts

As a result of seeing this in the field on Monday, and verifying with the team that this continued throughout the week, we were able to create a social media post prior to the next weekend to let Livermore residents know:

FB post about trashing mulch bags and pots

We were quite pleased when we saw the comments and likes come in:

positive comments on the post

I’d call that a Gigantic success and a good example of how we can act upon what we see is needed in a short amount of time.

*Gigantic Idea Studio, has been flipping lids in Livermore twice a year (Spring and Fall since 2017. This involves early morning starts to stay ahead of the Livermore Sanitation trucks as we flip lids on approximately 1,000 setouts during a single week. The data is collected, reviewed and reported back to the client, along with recommendations for messaging specific to Livermore residents’ needs.

Stefanie’s Garden: Living Your Values to Inspire Change

backyard garden w fountain
A backyard haven

For over a decade, Gigantic Senior Associate Stefanie Pruegel wrote articles, ads and other content to promote something she always wanted to do: create a “Bay Friendly Garden.” But living in a small urban condo made that impossible. Fast forward to 2016: Stefanie bought a property with front and rear yards in need of some serious TLC, giving her the chance to live her values and use her knowledge to create something awe-inspiring.

Bay Friendly Gardens prioritize drought-tolerant and native plants, use integrated pest management (IPM) instead of pesticides and herbicides and reduce water use. Stef began right away by converting the lawn to a native plant garden, using information on sheet mulching and planting that she learned from our client, StopWaste.org. From there, she added native plants and trees, with over 100 species represented.

“Honestly, it was a lot of work, but rewarding to restore the property to add wildlife habitat. For a while, my satisfaction was all about the transformation and techniques. But now I love to just sit and enjoy the flowers and watch the butterflies, birds, bees and hummingbirds that weren’t there before.”

Stef with her rainwater collection cisterns

Stefanie also thinks it’s important to share what she has done to inspire others. Not only did a neighbor replace his lawn because he was motivated by her work, but the garden is being featured at the annual “Bringing Back the Natives” Garden tour on Sunday May 5, 2019.  Stef says the best way to help people understand possibilities is to “show, don’t tell.”

In addition to the lush plantings, Stefanie installed three 1,000 gallon rainwater collection cisterns, which she hopes will keep the garden going without any additional water throughout the summer season.

Read more about Stefanie’s garden here.