91探花

Bryan Darst and two other workers are busy framing a new shower in a home bathroom in The Plains, Ohio. The three men are full-time employees of , a social enterprise of that provides affordable home repairs to help veterans and elderly and disabled adults stay in their homes.

There is more than meets the eye at this renovation site鈥攚hat鈥檚 happening here is a win-win-win cycle of virtue. Darst has been in addiction recovery for years and now serves as a peer mentor for those early in their recovery journey. The house he鈥檚 working on serves as a Level II recovery residence for those coming out of addiction. And eventual profits from the CR&R will go to Habitat鈥檚 mission to provide affordable housing for those in need.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 kind of the purpose as we grow, is to help grow people, not just grow this enterprise,鈥� Darst says.

Like all social enterprises, CR&R is a for-profit business that focuses primarily on a social motive, in contrast to the profit motive of most traditional businesses. An oft-quoted mantra of the social enterprise world is 鈥減eople, planet, profit鈥濃�� meaning that the social and environmental goals are just as important as financial goals. Launched in 2022, CR&R has already broken even and is on track to beat its own projected timeline to reach profitability, thereby financially supporting Habitat as well.

This scenario likely couldn鈥檛 have played out without the support of , a supporting organization to the . Sugar Bush鈥檚 mission is to support sustainable economic development projects that restore the environment or strengthen local food systems. It began when the foundation funded Habitat鈥檚 , which opened in 2015.

鈥淭he ReStore is a social enterprise, so we were familiar with a social enterprise,鈥� says Ken Oehlers, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Southeast Ohio. These Habitat retail stores sell leftover, donated construction material that might otherwise end up in the landfill. Oehlers approached Sugar Bush again in 2017, which led to a study through 91探花鈥檚 Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service. (Sugar Bush-funded projects must involve both 91探花 and the community.) That study was the beginning of the process that led to CR&R.

All told, Sugar Bush has helped incubate or grow 16 social enterprises in Southeast Ohio since 2009, including a curbside recycling program in Chillicothe, an impact measurement service that calculates the value of social impacts, and a farm-to-OHIO working group that connects regional farmers to the buying power of 91探花.

鈥淲e firmly believe that it takes community to build community,鈥� Oehlers says. 鈥淲e look for those types of partners. Sugar Bush is that type of partner where it鈥檚 not about giving you a check and [saying] 鈥楽ee you next year.鈥� It鈥檚 about walking the journey, celebrating together not only the successes, but also the challenges.鈥�

From Trash to Treasure

Sugar Bush takes an asset-based approach to problem-solving. 鈥淗ow do you look at waste as an asset?鈥� asks Hylie Voss, president of The Sugar Bush Foundation. 鈥淲hat can you get out of the waste stream that is of value? By removing it from the waste stream and reselling it, repurposing it, upcycling it, you create a job.鈥�

A million-dollar answer to that question comes in the form of , a social enterprise of local nonprofit . True Pigments recently bought the largest acid mine drainage seep in the state of Ohio; there, it鈥檚 building a large-scale production facility to clean the Sunday Creek watershed by extracting iron oxide from the drainage and then processing it into pigments for use in products like paint and bricks.

鈥淲e will be able to produce about 2.1 million pounds per year of iron oxide pigment,鈥� says Michelle Shively MacIver, director of project development for True Pigments. 鈥淎 conservative estimate is about $1.5 million in sales each year.鈥�

The projected profits will support Rural Action鈥檚 watershed programming, provide local jobs and help 鈥済reen鈥� the iron oxide industry through carbon emission reduction, as most of the raw material used in the United States today is imported.

Once again, this highly impactful project may not have happened without support from Sugar Bush. Back when the budding program was a partnership between Rural Action and 91探花鈥攖he project is made possible through proprietary research by OHIO faculty members Guy Riefler (civil and environmental engineering) and John Sabraw (painting and drawing)鈥攕caling it was the big challenge. Sugar Bush stepped in to provide funding for a pilot project on Sunday Creek beginning in 2016.

鈥淲ithout the pilot scale, I don鈥檛 think we鈥檇 be where we are today,鈥� says Shively MacIver. 鈥淭hat was a pivotal moment. We went from Guy being pretty sure the technology worked鈥攊n Rubbermaid tubs in his lab鈥攖o being able to build something on-site to show it was working. That was a major milestone for us. 鈥� There鈥檚 no way we could have ever jumped from lab-scale to full-scale. There had to be that pilot.鈥�

Sugar Bush funding also provided credibility in the eyes of other funders. Since the pilot project, True Pigments has raised some $3.5 million in and the federal Office of Surface Mining, which is how the full-scale facility will be built. It is expected to begin selling pigment by 2025.

Quadruple Bottom Line

Southeast Ohio loves its festivals. Thousands of people have milled about the grounds of the or the over the years, enjoying the performances and vendors. What many don鈥檛 realize, though, is that these are zero-waste events, so called for their goal of diverting more than 90 percent of waste from the landfill through recycling and composting.

, a social enterprise that also grew from Rural Action, works with outdoor festivals to plan and execute zero-waste events. ZWEP provides materials (bins, signage), human resources (staff, volunteers) and post-event cleanup. It鈥檚 another win-win-win scenario, where what is often considered a problem鈥攚aste鈥攊s turned into a profitable business model that employs people while diverting waste from the landfill and helping festivals attain zero-waste status.

ZWEP employs two people full-time, plus seasonal employees, and works with dozens of festivals throughout the Midwest. It is a social enterprise borne out of the Appalachia Ohio Zero Waste Initiative, which has been funded by Sugar Bush since 2010.

Paul Patton, Rural Action鈥檚 chief innovation officer, likes to add a fourth P to the 鈥減eople, planet, profit鈥� mantra: purpose. The nature of the group鈥檚 work with social enterprises, he says, 鈥渉as an opportunity to provide us meaningful experiences in our employment鈥攑urpose鈥攊n our lives.鈥�

Mary Reed is a member of The Sugar Board Foundation board.