BRING Recycling is hosting its eighth annual Home and Garden Tour from 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday, Sep. 11, throughout the Eugene-Springfield area.
BRING Recycling began in 1971 as a neighborhood project to collect recycling in Eugene. BRING says its main values are promoting the idea of living well with less. BRING has prevented waste and launched conservation education programs in K-12 schools.
“We evolved from collecting recycling to talking about how to reuse and how to live our lives with less stuff,” says Carolyn Stein, executive director of BRING.
This year’s Home and Garden Tour, called “The Art of Sustainable Living,” will showcase sustainable home design utilizing reused materials, such as the ones found at its Planet Improvement Center in Glenwood. The 10 homes and gardens featured on the tour are examples of low-impact living spaces within our community that feature creative reuse, energy efficiency and green building methods.
The 10 sites are split into four different hubs: South Eugene, North Eugene, River Road and Springfield.
BRING says it works in partnership with EWEB and the city of Eugene to find forward-thinking individuals whose homes BRING thinks best exemplify sustainable living. In past years, homes have been featured while under construction, like this year’s Site 3 in Eugene, and then featured the following year when construction is complete.
Other highlights on the tour include Site 2, located on Ferry Street in Eugene, which is a recently remodeled home that was brought down to the studs to completely reconfigure the house into a green living space. Equipped with solar tubes, skylights and a solar array, the house produces enough energy to completely offset the cost of the electricity bill. Take a trip outside and you’ll see an organic vegetable garden, fruit trees, beehives and native plants. There will be four hourly DIY Green Cleaning Solution Demonstrations with Mountain Rose Herbs hosted at this house starting at 11 am.
Another highlight of the tour is Site 9, a remodeled 1940s bungalow on G Street in Springfield. The inside features a kitchen remake with owner-built concrete counters, while the outside holds a 1,000-square-feet organic vegetable garden that sprawls around an old silver maple tree. The garden is also home to a salvaged play structure, water features and a Little Free Library. Aspiring beekeepers will want to stop by for the Beekeeping Basics mini-workshops at 11 am, 2 pm and 3 pm, or the native pollinator mini-workshops at noon and 1 pm.
After the tour, stop by the free afterparty from 3 to 7 pm at Sprout! Regional Food Hub on A Street in Springfield. The repurposed church will have live music, a nano-brewery and local independent food vendors. There will also be an electric vehicle ride and drive event from 3 to 6 pm that will showcase cars ranging from the Nissan Leaf to Teslas.
Tickets and volunteer opportunities are still available. Tickets are $9 in advance or $12 day of and are available online, at the tour or at one of their outlet locations which you can find on their website. Volunteers work a two-hour shift and are granted free admission to the tour. For more information visit bringrecycling.org. —Ryan Moloney