Organization’s Description

Cass Community Social Services has the mission of reducing poverty and creating opportunities for people living in areas of concentrated poverty by providing food, housing, health and mental health, as well as job training and permanent employment. All of the vocational programs at Cass simultaneously deal with sustainability.

Cass’ Green Industries currently include a mud mat program, shredding and recycling and a One Cup Car Wash. Each provides job training and permanent employment as well as having a positive environmental impact.

1) The mud mat program collects illegally dumped tires off City lots and converts them into door mats – thus cleaning up the neighborhoods, eliminating the trash and rodents tires attract, and recycling rubber that would otherwise take up space in the landfills. To date, 16,000 tires have been repurposed.

2) The document destruction program shreds and recycles papaer, cardboard, x-rays and other materials. The Cass equipment is capable of shredding a ton of paper an hour. The process obviously saves trees, water, gasoline and landfill space/incinerator activity.

3) The One Cup Car Wash uses dramatically less water to clean vehicles and no chemicals are utilized to pollute the ground water.

Beyond the employment opportunities, Cass also operates a Green Gym. The facility puts used equipment back in circulation and it includes ten stationary bikes that generate electricity for the warehouse building (which is home to the Green Industries).