Best Practice Action Detail

The City of Brooklyn Center is partnering with Free Bikes 4 Kidz MN. Free Bikes 4 Kidz MN is an organization that collects bikes, refurbishes them, and gives them away to kids who need them. Typically, we collect between 7,000 and 10,000 bikes in a year, mostly on the same day throughout the state and they all come back to the warehouse where we refurbish them with thousands of volunteers. We have an approximate scrap rate of 14%. In 2020, we collected 10,000 bikes and we expect to refurbish and distribute about 8600 between Fall 2020 and Fall 2021. The 1400 bikes that don't make it through the process are stripped for parts and the rubber and metal are recycled. The salvageable parts are used on the bikes that we can save. That is about 40,000 pounds of metal and 5,000 pounds of rubber that stays out of landfills.

Free Bikes 4 Kidz MN partner with organizations who identify the kids who could use bikes, and our strongest and most lasting relationships have the added element of programming for the kids who get the bikes. This is through parks and trail systems, school programs, and youth outdoor programming organizations. We believe while the bike is a necessary component to healthy behaviors, the community support and infrastructure is key to lasting opportunities, equity, and sustainability. The City of Brooklyn Center has partnered with Free Bikes 4 Kidz MN, in exchange for the use of the former Target space in the City (a City owned property) they are providing bikes to BC youth. Last year they partnered with the school district to do several bike giveaways. This year they are talking to the school district as well as recreation to find opportunities to do the giveaways. They have set aside 500 bikes for BC youth this year.


Trim Trax program/Second Harvest Heartland - Trim Trax is a program in place to reduce food scraps and trimmings. The Earle Brown Heritage Center partners with Second Harvest Heartland for which they donate large volumes of leftover food products.

The Economic Development division conducts business retention and expansion visits with Supermats, a company that creates mats out of recycled tires. In addition, the City partners with Great River Energy to use their refuse-derived fuel facility for all residential and municipal waste. GRE is also a partner on the Energy City Commission.

The City of Fridley approved a Special Use Permit for Park Construction on July 8, 2019 to allow for a rock-crushing operation in an industrial zone in Fridley. This operation will allow Park Construction to recycle concrete and asphalt locally. The stipulations of the Special Use Permit include best practices to reduce air and noise pollution.

The City of Fridley partners with Green Lights Recycling in Blaine at its recycling dropoff days to provide residents with low-cost alternatives to recycle bulky waste at its dropoff days instead of landfilling material.

The City of Fridley partners with Mr. Michaels Recycles Bicycles of St Paul to 1)donate, 2) repurpose and 3) recycle at its dropoffs in order to maintain the highest use of the bicycle.

The City annually hosts Mighty Tidy Day to provide residents with a monitored site to dispose of items that cannot be donated. To put on this event, the City contracts with several local, value-added businesses including Shred-N-Go, Tech Dump, and Better Futures.
The City regularly contracts with companies that use recycled materials in street re-construction projects. The City has permitted development projects that recycled asphalt, concrete, and other building materials for reuse on their site.
Woody organic material and yard waste collected by the Public Works Department is taken to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Recycling Facility that turns this waste into compost and compost blends for retail and wholesale purchase.

La Crescent Public Works brings all branches, brush and yard waste accumulated to the locally run compost site where the items are then used as mulch, compost, black soil etc. The compost is then used in public works projects as fill across the city.

Dakota Timber Co. partners with the city to reclaim timber. They create local waste material into a valuable product in our local economy when they sell to builders, contractors, and home owners. Dakota Timber Co. strives to be sustainable, affordable, and high quality.

The city’s brush and yard waste drop-off is available for residents, city crews, and the city’s contractors to bring in material. The leaves collected each fall from residents are composted at a city site and then made available for residents and also for landscaping on city property.
The City of Mounds View promotes recycling and composting per each quarter in our newsletter as well as on our website. We have a recycling coordinator that works with our county to provide recycling books/newsletters yearly to all residents along with kitchen size compost bins and reusable grocery bags.

For many cement related projects, such as curb and gutter,the city has contracted with Fischer Sand and Aggregate, Cemstone, and Aggregate Industries, all of which utilize local recycled concrete.

For many cement related projects, such as curb and gutter, sidewalks and trails, the city utilizes Arlington's Cemstone Products Company, which utilizes local recycled concrete.

Cottage Grove Public Works brings all branches, brush and yard waste accumulated to the locally run compost site where the items are then used as mulch, compost, black soil etc.

Northwedge Greenhouse utilizes fish cleaning "waste" from the US Army Corp of Engineers Campground in addition to creating a leaf drop off area to create compost that is available at a nominal cost.

Gerten's Greenhouse and Ecosite is in Eagan, providing a business that provides landscaping materials resulting from recycled composted materials

Complete: St. Paul District Energy picks up and chips the wood from the Edina brush dump at Braemar and hauls it to St. Paul District Energy plant at a cost to Edina far less than hauling the brush to a brush dump in Hastings, as was previously done. The chips are used to fuel St. Pauls District Energy plant. The brush in the city brush dump comes from municipal waste as well as including residential buckthorn, which residents are allowed to bring during the last two weekends of October. Residents must show an ID and can only come during approved hours.

Otter Tail County has a materials exchange program that is using Fergus Falls businesses to exchange unwanted/wanted goods.

Creekside is Hutchinson's compost facility that was expanded in 2001 to improve service. Creekside has a curbside service that is weekly on the same day as regular garbage pick-up, these bins are for anything compostable such as food scraps, yard waste, and brush. These materials are composted and made into soil that is then sold across the state. Creekside also accepts bigger logs and branches that are used for the production of mulch, which is also sold from the facility. Hutchinson also provides grass clipping and leaf removal on certain dates throughout the year which are also disposed of at the Creekside facility. The city is also mindful to suggest the option of disposing of whatever construction waste can be contributed to Creekside during ongoing projects throughout the city.

The City of Lexington promotes recycling and composting per action 22.4 each quarter in our newsletter as well as on our website. We have a recycling coordinator that works with our county to provide recycling books/newsletters yearly to all residents and we have recycling bins at city hall where many items can be dropped off. They include batteries, light bulbs, toner cartridges and used clothing for Granny's Closet Our public works department brings compost materials they have collected to our local compost sites as needed, we additionally during our spring & fall clean up days each year allow residents to bring their compost material and we dispose of it for them.

For cleanup events, the city partners with Re-cycle, a group of bike coops in the metro area to recycle and recover all bikes and parts from bikes. To date Re-cycle has collected over 301 bikes at the event with a total weight of over 7,450 lbs.

Despite the fact that Mendota Heights is primarily a residential community, it is home to some impressive companies that contribute to sustainability in our region:
- Restaurant Technologies is a business that manages and recycles used restaurant cooking oil into biodiesel and renewable diesel.
- Cemstone is a concrete and aggregate company that collects and utilizes used concrete. It has been recognized several times for environmental excellence by the National Ready Mix Concrete Association.
- Permasteelisa is global façade engineering group whose North American HQ is in Mendota Heights. This company engineers build envelope and façades, which are a central component of energy efficient buildings.

The city’s brush and yard waste drop-off is available for residents, city crews, and the city’s contractors to bring in material. The city has an agreement in place with Minnesota Topsoil to remove the collected material from the city’s site. The leaves and yard waste are trucked to Minnesota Topsoil’s site to be composted. The trees and brush are ground at the drop-off site. A portion of the resulting mulch is left on site and is made available to Minnetonka residents for use on their properties for free, and the material is also used by city staff for landscaping. The remainder of the mulch is hauled away to be further processed and sold in the retail market.

We recycle metal at Hove Metals, just down the street from Red Wing Public Works. St. Paul heating district takes ground-up wood from the Incinerator.

Several businesses in Richfield reuse or recycle local material including: Organic Lawns by Lunseth which sources their compost locally from MN, WI, and IA, reusing turkey litter and corn gluten that would otherwise be thrown out; and Lakewinds Food Co-op, which has both front and back of store composting systems and donates unsold food daily to the VEAP food shelf. Additionally, Richfield has provided free wood chips to residents from trees removed or trimmed from city boulevards, and occasionally from private contractors as well. This program has existed every summer for over 20 years. The City also used 100% recycled asphalt in the Met sewer project and uses it in all patching work. It is contractor practice to use some amount of recycled asphalt in projects.

The leaves collected each fall from residents are composted at a city site and then made available for residents and also for landscaping on city property. In addition, wood collected is chipped at the same site and made available.
Every fall, city equipment is used to vacuum all leaves along every curb in the city. This benefits businesses as well as residents. It keeps the front access to a business clean and helps with fall maintenance.

The City of St. Anthony regularly contracts with companies that use recycled materials as the building base for new road ways. The City has been doing this since 1996 as part of their annual street reconstruction project.

The City of St. Anthony Public Works Department routinely uses a local contractor to recycle its pavement and concrete materials for re-use. In addition to re-using the material, this reduces haul distances, fuel costs, and disposal fees for the City.

The City delivers their forest products to local companies for recycling either as chips or other usable materials such as "Wood from the Hood" that was used for the 2011 GreenSteps awards.

South Saint Paul is fortunate to have multiple businesses, including Danner Inc., S & S Tree and Horticultural Specialist, and Twin Cities Pallet, that find other uses for “waste” material. S & S Tree utilizes materials they removed to create mulch or other wood products. Danner Inc. crushes and reutilizes concrete from previous job sites. Twin Cities Pallet is able to recycle, re-purpose, and repair old pallets as well as create custom pallets from recycled materials.