Reducing Impact and Improving Communities: SCALE UP Cohorts 7 and 8
In 2022, it’s more important than ever to invest in our local self-reliance and make sure Arizona will thrive for years to come. The businesses who have graduated in SCALE UP Cohorts 7 and 8 know this and are clearing the path ahead! Join us in celebrating and congratulating these businesses and their innovative sustainability projects.
Is your business or nonprofit ready to launch a transformational sustainability project? Please reach out to Nick Shivka, Sustainability Program Manager - nick@localfirstaz.com to learn more and get started!
Cohort 7
Wok This Way
About
Kris Mill is the founder of Wok This Way: Food Truck with a Cause, and co-owns the business with her nephew, Jake Lipovitch. Through the Local First Arizona Green Business Program, Wok This Way is Arizona's first certified green food truck in addition to participating in SCALE UP. They are a 100% vegan/vegetarian wok style food truck that ensures flavor through freshness while empowering individuals in the special needs community with employment.
How They Scale Up
Through the SCALE UP experience, Kris wanted to use her business as a way to communicate how to live and work a healthy lifestyle - through locally sourced vegan and vegetarian food options, and providing meaningful work opportunities and living wages to employees. Wok This Way joined the SCALE UP program to help her organize her ideas into a step-by-step plan. They plan to drastically reduce their energy requirements, using renewable energy sources like solar, and replacing petroleum based gas with biodiesel. They also have a goal of recycling 100% of the water that the food truck uses to irrigate landscaping and growing ingredients for the truck.
MISGIF
About
Stylish, sustainable, and exhilarating digital photo booth experiences and events are some of the ways MISGIF is helping businesses expand their brand awareness to the public. With over 1,000 Arizona photo booth events since 2017, MISGIF has a proven track record for executing high-end, one-of-a-kind memorable experiences. MISGIF is also certified through the Local First Arizona Green Business Program.
How They Scale Up
MISGIF owner Jessie Whitfield is driven to make a huge difference in the events industry in Arizona. This entails creating an engaging, online resource for Arizona event industry professionals that educates them on the importance of environmentalism in Arizona, guides them in making sustainable choices for their businesses and events, connects them with local, sustainable vendors and small businesses, and ultimately transforms how the event industry executes and does business in the state of Arizona. Zooming in, Whitfield is also planning to measure the carbon footprint of her own business operations and explore how her photo booths can be powered exclusively with solar energy.
Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market
About
The Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market is dedicated to making quality, nutritious food more accessible and is an essential resource to the local economy. Run by the nonprofit Community Food Connections (CFC), their mission is focused on strengthening small farmers and businesses that foster a sustainable food system and produce healthy products for the local community. For those seeking a farmers market truly committed to seasonally-grown, local foods and products, CFC’s staff and board create an event for residents and visitors to gather and socialize among a diverse crowd of community farmers, small businesses, and shoppers.
How They Scale Up
During SCALE UP, the Downtown Phoenix Farmers Market showed us the definition of resilience, contending with an unexpected change in location and working with their extensive local connections to find a new spot that works for their community. They rolled with this challenge and used it as a chance to re-think how they handle food and packaging waste during each market. Their SCALE UP goal is to move towards being a zero waste market, providing incentives to their vendors and customers to bring reusable containers, have volunteers help divert waste to appropriate receptacles, and cut down on single use plastics. Their local-driven, community-first approach already supports the people of Phoenix and they are continuing to act to reduce their environmental impact to ensure that downtown is sustainable for years to come.
J&H Estates
About
A startup in Phoenix, J&H Estates is building a self-sustaining community for locals and tourists alike to experience healthy and resilient off-grid living. Owners Anita Frayer and Aliyah Hoover are creating an aspirational example of how people can live in harmony with the climate and the natural resources that the Sonoran Desert provides.
How They Scale Up
J&H Estates enrolled in the SCALE UP program to integrate sustainable and resilient design principles into the planning and construction of the community. Housing units and other structures will be built using natural building materials like rammed earth. This avoids increasingly stressed global supply chains of building supplies while promoting energy efficiency and passive cooling. With solar power arrays, rainwater harvesting, and a forest garden at the center of the community, J&H Estates will transform the perceived scarcity of the desert into abundance.
The Design School + Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) - Arizona State University
The Local First Arizona Sustainability Team is very proudly partnering with Dr. Chingwen Cheng of The Design School at ASU to help bring SCALE UP projects to a whole new level. This collaboration, made possible by support from ASU’s Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) initiative, will result in the creation of a decision-making tool that will help SCALE UP participants design projects that result in improved air quality, heat mitigation, improved health outcomes, and environmental justice for local neighborhoods. Dr. Cheng has attended both Cohort 7 and Cohort 8 and will continue to connect with participants of future cohorts.
The tool is being built with input from SCALE UP participants to create a resource that is both evidence-based and widely applicable to locally-owned businesses in Arizona. The resulting tool will give local businesses further opportunity to conserve resources through thoughtful site selection, landscaping, stormwater management, and business planning. All of this while positioning themselves as sustainability leaders in the state.
Cohort 8
Gu Vo District - Native American Advancement Foundation
About
Home to members of the Tohono O’odham tribe and several ancient ancestral villages and sites, the Gu Vo District is the southernmost district on the Western side of the Tohono O’odham Nation, which borders Sonora, Mexico. In 2011, the Native American Advancement Foundation (NAAF) was formed by members of the Tohono O’odham nation living in Gu Vo District to improve access to early childhood education and build curriculum around food sovereignty, culture preservation, animal care, and more.
How They Scale Up
Members of Gu Vo District are working to revive their ancestral farmlands using a combination of existing infrastructure and new innovations in rainwater harvesting. They are conducting community surveys to measure their baseline water use to determine how much can be supplemented by rainwater harvesting and irrigation from the nearby dam.
Justice Java
About
Owner Dustin Campo’s full service coffee shop on wheels can be found serving up the “best damn cold brew coffee coffee in downtown Phoenix” while giving formerly incarcerated people a chance to earn a livelihood. Justice Java: Cold Brew with a Cause sources locally roasted coffee, and cold brews it with old world spices to fuel their customers and their mission of helping to end the destructive practice of mass criminalization.
How They Scale Up
Operating out of a specialized food truck, Dustin is planning to make Justice Java’s business operations as energy and water efficient as possible, while eliminating waste and reducing transportation emissions. The Justice Java truck is being scoped for a solar panel array that will eliminate the need for an on-site generator and avoid soaring fuel costs. Dustin is also tackling the problem of coffee cup waste through a bottling and redemption system all while continuing to work with lawmakers and advocacy groups to bring about meaningful justice reform in Arizona.
Social Spin
About
Social Spin was created with one goal: to provide convenient, cost-effective, and caring laundry services and clean clothes to every member of the Phoenix and Mesa communities they operate in. On top of convenient wash & fold laundry services, Social Spin provides free laundry services to neighbors in need, on-the-job training for people with barriers to employment, and heat relief to unsheltered people in Phoenix as temperatures near the triple digits.
How They Scale Up
Founder and owner Christy Moore, MSW has devised a 3 stage approach to Social Spin’s sustainability plan as they build a new, purpose-driven laundromat with dozens of affordable housing units attached. Moore will be developing an Environmental Policy to guide the development process, starting an energy audit to benchmark Social Spin’s operations. To ensure that 100% of detergent bottles and caps are diverted away from the landfill, they are partnering with a grassroots recycling initiative that remanufactures single-use plastics into durable goods. In the future, Social Spin is planning to deploy cardio machines in the laundromat that provide supplemental energy while providing a way for clients to get a workout and receive incentives like free laundry.
Company Eco
About
Company Eco is creating the world’s most trusted platform for sustainable and ethically sourced products. Each product on their online marketplace is graded on 8 different sustainability measures that span the product’s lifecycle including its carbon footprint, recyclability of materials, whether raw materials were responsibly sourced, and more. Company Eco owner Jessy Long hopes this criteria will place pressure on businesses to adopt sustainability initiatives to remain competitive.
How They Scale Up
Planet and people come before profit in Company Eco’s business model. Owner Jessy Long is developing a long-term strategy for the company that will enable Company Eco to engage in large-scale restoration of Arizona’s degraded ecosystems as their supporter base grows. Project plans also include the construction of a new facility that will set a benchmark for what a truly sustainable business operation is. To achieve these goals, Jessy certified Company Eco through the Local First Arizona Green Business Program in addition to participating in SCALE UP.
Project Roots
About
Project Roots AZ was founded in Phoenix in 2019 with the goal of educating the community about growing their own food through various educational programs. They support the homeless and those with food insecurities by feeding them from their local community gardens and mobile kitchen service, supplying hygiene items, clothing and shelter. Project Roots AZ offers seasonal produce bag delivery services in certain parts of the Phoenix area and can be found at the Farmers Markets throughout the valley. Project Roots nourishes and educates communities in need by promoting a healthier, natural, and more sustainable way of urban living.
How They Scale Up
Project Roots joined SCALE UP to gain connections and become more resilient so they could continue to grow natural foods to give to those in need, provide growing space for families, and educate youth through free programs. One of their goals is to distribute fresh locally grown produce more efficiently by engaging in collaborations with the City of Phoenix to install solar panels, providing power and urban heat mitigation. Mainly, Project Roots wants to strengthen their overall operations, identifying potential issues in order to better serve their community and also share what they know with others who may be interested in serving their communities in a similar regard.
Frozen Delight
About
Founded in 1990, Frozen Delight is one of Tucson’s first frozen yogurt shops and has received awards for their scratch-made frozen yogurt. Owners Cleo and Alfonso Terrazas source local and healthy ingredients for the wide variety of desserts they offer out of their storefront and mobile trailer, and close the loop by composting their fruit scraps with a local community garden. In addition to their SCALE UP project, Frozen Delight has also signed up for the Local First Arizona Green Business Certification program to continue their sustainability journey.
How They Scale Up
Frozen Delight is on a mission to cut emissions and improve air quality in Tucson. Their plan includes converting their mobile dessert trailer to solar power to eliminate the use of a gas generator and associated costs. They also plan to improve accessibility to bike commuters by installing a bike rack. Cleo and Alfonso hope these and future projects will inspire others in the community to take action by making their sustainability solutions visible and accessible.
Check out examples of other participants and their projects!
Do you work for, own, or know a business or nonprofit in Arizona that is thinking about sustainability? Interested in joining us for our next cohort of SCALE UP? Reach out to nick@localfirstaz.com or check out www.localfirstaz.com/scale-up to learn more.