While a bona fide recycling center still remains a somewhat elusive goal for the Green Alliance and other members of groups such as Leadership Natchez, Keep Natchez/Adams County Beautiful, several local businessmen, and a few innovated community leaders, the opportunity for “soft” recycling remains ever present.

Yes, yes, I know you have heard it before, taking your newspapers to the animal shelter is a form of recycling.

To that end, soft recycling is also happening when you donate usable items to the various charity thrift shops in the area, start a compost pile, take your white paper to Mississippi River Pulp and donate usable food goods to the Stewpot. All of these actions are forms of soft recycling.

But how can fixing up a house be yet another form of recycling?

Trevor Brown, the deputy director of the Historic Natchez Foundation, will address this very question at the next general membership meeting of the Green Alliance, which will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Foundation Building, 108 S. Commerce St.

Trevor is acutely qualified to address this issue.

Mr. Brown received his undergraduate work at Southern Mississippi, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history and minored in American Studies.

At Savannah College of Art and Design, he earned a master’s degree in Historic Preservation. His “real life” experiences vary from working on projects from John Paul Jones’s crypt to the original terminal of the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., and from being a carpenter in Hattiesburg, building new custom homes to working as a preservation specialist for more than 120 rehabilitations of historic buildings and properties damaged on the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina.

We are truly fortunate to have such a qualified local source address this unusual approach/outlook to recycling.

Won’t you join us Thursday at The Historic Natchez Foundation Building located at 108 S. Commerce St. at 5:30 p.m.?

Light refreshments will be served.

 

Steve McNerney is a member of the Green Alliance.