E-waste recycling hub opens at BUILD

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): According to Chicago’s 2023 Digital Equity Plan, the West and South Sides have the lowest rates of home internet connection in the city. And in the 10 least connected neighborhoods, one in four residents don’t have internet — 72% of those residents are Black and 25% are Latinx.  

To address the digital divide on the West Side, on July 16, Fresh Supply launched the first E-waste collection hub in Austin. Locals can drop off used or broken phones, laptops and tablets inside the lobby of BUILD Chicago, 5100 W. Harrison St., and the devices will be taken to PCs for People on the South Side to be refurbished or repaired.  

Fixed electronics will be sent back to BUILD and distributed to West Side residents who don’t own digital devices. Nearly 50 students who are a part of Fresh Supply’s End E-waste initiative, many from West Side schools and organizations, will help lead digital literacy workshops for those who get new devices.  

“As a person who lives on the West Side in the Austin community, I definitely feel that there is an equity gap within our community. I’m definitely not seeing enough technology in schools or with kids who might need tablets, phones or computers,” said Alexis Henderson, who’s on Fresh Supply’s media and communications team and attends Intrinsic High School downtown. 

According to Chicago’s 2023 assessment, 8% of the city, or 92,000 residents, don’t own a laptop, tablet or smart phone. By repairing and redistributing electronic devices, Fresh Supply aims to get laptops to families so children can do homework at home and phones to young people to use in case of emergencies. 

“So many kids, their parents can’t afford to have phones. And that’s a huge danger within today’s society, not having a phone, because that one call can make or break your whole entire situation,” Henderson told Austin Weekly News.  

“Our world is very centered on the internet, so we want people to be able to have access to that so they can live a better life,” said QueAnna Sheppard, who attends Chicago Tech Academy on the Near West Side and is a part of Fresh Supply’s IT and programming team. “The goal of Fresh Supply is to help people self-determine, help them be able to get on their own feet and be able to get access to job interviews and whatever they need that’s online.”  

Sheppard is helping develop the Westside Community Network on Fresh Supply’s FlowAmigo app, an accessible hotline designed for areas with limited internet access. Through SMS text messaging, FlowAmigo allows locals subscribing to the Westside Community Network to share their concerns about E-waste, engage in outreach, and provides information about local E-waste collection hub locations and resources for those who don’t have access to the internet.  

Founding Fresh Supply and FlowAmigo   

Five years ago, brother-sister duo David and Jasmine Jones launched Fresh Supply to work with young people to address environmental issues. Jasmine was teaching physics, chemistry and biology at Al Raby High School in Garfield Park. 

“I was always seeking to develop curriculum that I thought was not only culturally relevant, but justice-centered and community responsive,” Jasmine Jones told Austin Weekly News.  

Fresh Supply’s first summer, some of Jasmine’s students helped inform West Siders about energy incentives they’re eligible for and how to apply for them. They did so through an app that David Jones II helped develop.  

David developed what he calls a “proof of concept” for FlowAmigo with an app he developed while living in New Orleans when Hurricane Ida hit in 2021. Like FlowAmigo, that app circumnavigated the internet — since power, and therefore Wi-Fi, was down for a month — and through SMS text messages, connected locals to appropriate resources, whether they needed aid or wanted to volunteer.  

In the first 10 days after Hurricane Ida, the app helped collect over $100,000 in direct mutual aid for those impacted by the storm and routed requests for tens of thousands of meals and tarps to mutual aid groups across the country.  

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security approached David as co-creator of “one of the largest relief depots in the City of New Orleans,” he said. “It really gave us a new foundation to see that, if community had the right tools to do the good that they sought, they could outperform the government and some of the more sophisticated agencies that we have. … immediately my sights turned to trying to pair it with some of the things that Jasmine was already doing here in the community, teaching her kids in class about environmental racism.”  

“It’s not a government, top-down program,” Jasmine Jones said during the ribbon cutting for Ausitn’s first E-waste hub. “This is not run by the City of Chicago. What makes it effective is if it’s grassroots organizing and the community participates. We can only give out as many devices to close that digital divide … if we have people turning in devices they no longer use.”  

Fresh Supply’s first E-waste hub was put at the Garfield Park Community Council, 4215 W. Washington Blvd. and was paired with the Garfield Park Community Hotline — a number locals could text to receive information and get connected with resources.  

The hotline has since expanded into FlowAmigo, a platform that allows community partners to send out information to subscribers. FlowAmigo allows users to use a visual design engine without any code for community outreach, in the same way Fresh Supply does for its End E-waste initiative.  

“We can essentially give community members a digital kind of community card,” David said. “It’s a no-code solution that allows our young people to not have to learn a bunch of complicated technical language or skills in order to start building right away. They’re using their community intelligence to get inside of a tool that’s more accessible, to build solutions to keep us more connected and in the loop.”  

Johnell Willis, a Chicago Tech Academy student, helped to sketch and build the prototype for the physical hub to collect E-waste.  

“I wanted to do something in the community with my skills because I’m very hands-on. I like to be active in doing and building,” Willis said. “I hope [people] actually put old devices in there and donate to us so we can upgrade,” he said, adding that Fresh Supply hopes to install touch screens on the collection boxes.  

“The goal is to close the digital divide on the West Side of Chicago first,” Jasmine told Austin Weekly News. “But we’re trying to do a really good job of documenting the framework because we want to help close the digital divide on the South Side and beyond Chicago because E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream and it’s only projected to grow.”  

Courtesy: www.austinweeklynews.com