December 10, 2008
PROPOSALS RANGE FROM IMPRACTICAL TO PRIZE-WORTHY
By BRADLEY OLSON
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but how many ways are there to use the heaping piles of tree waste the city of Houston collected after Hurricane Ike?
A lot, judging by more than 208 ideas submitted from around the globe in a city-sponsored contest.
The proposals ranged from making Houston "more hilly" to using the 5 million cubic yards of green debris for animal bedding, toilet paper, particle board or building new sand dunes along the Ike-ravaged coast.
But none of these ideas were likely to work, according to contest judges who were seeking, not only the most practical suggestions, but proposals that were original and good for the environment.
And the winner is ... scheduled to be announced today.
The city will award three cash prizes — $10,000 for first place, $5,000 for second and $2,500 for third — and 10 honorable mentions.
"There are a lot of good ideas out there," said Cris Eugster, Mayor Bill White's chief officer for sustainable growth, who administered the contest.
So far, the city has given about 700,000 cubic yards of wood waste — out of 5.2 million cubic yards collected — to two companies that will turn it into mulch and compost for resale. What remains far outstrips the local market demand for recycling, which prompted White to launch "Recycle Ike."
The overriding goal of the contest was to generate creative ideas that could keep all the tree waste out of landfills and possibly even help the city find new ways to deal with the 150,000 tons of such debris it collects each year, contest officials said.
Contest judges said they were surprised by the sophisticated quality of the submissions, which came from as far away as Europe and Australia.
"There were a lot of people really interested in the idea of Houston being a green, clean energy city," said Dan Watkins, managing director of DJF Mercury, a Houston-based venture capital fund, who sat on the judging panel.
The other members were Eugster; Joseph J. Romano, CEO of Zilkha Biomass Energy; Mark Rose, president of the Living Earth Technology Company; and Brian Yeoman, the Houston director of the Clinton Climate Initiative.
The judges evaluated each proposal without knowing its sponsor.
The award money was provided through a private donation, city officials said.
Eugster classified the ideas into groups based on similarities, such as those that suggested turning the waste into consumer products. The first included using the tree waste to make building materials like particle board. Another set of proposals included product suggestions, such as turning the debris into toilet paper, regular paper, furniture or logs, he said.
The panel spoke to officials in the pulp and paper industry who said they feared the kind of waste — which includes pine needles, bark and significant amounts of vegetation — may not be durable enough for those uses, Eugster said.
bradley.olson@chron.com
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