Rick Robertson is a longtime student of the School of Every Little Bit Helps.
Rick Robertson is a longtime student of the School of Every Little Bit Helps.
From carpooling the car-less to assisting divorced dads to outing fraudulent panhandlers and now ridding the metropolis of discarded tires, the lifelong Detroiter and his Organization for People take on causes that have one thing in common: They don't rank high on anyone's to-do list.
Today, the volunteer-based group is focusing on helping residents of Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park unload old tires from their basements, garages and backyards -- a nod to Earth Day 2005 and admittedly a tip-of-the-iceberg effort.
Organization for People's Earth Day Awareness Committee -- by the way, Friday is officially Earth Day -- has, in past years, demonstrated natural gas-powered vehicles, picked up litter on playgrounds and snapped photographs of trucks dumping their booty illegally. This year's effort, with the assistance of the Ann Arbor-based Discount Tire, is intended to, at the very least, draw attention to an environmental scourge.
Robertson, 45, could go on about the disgraceful mountains of discarded tires at street corners and empty lots, the locations of which he can reel off. And he and his crew have slowly chipped away at the problem over the past three months, picking up 2,000 tires, although he guesses there are somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 in the area.
The organization's volunteers have posted about 8,000 flyers throughout the city, offering today's free service. Four pickup trucks will be out and about from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. gathering old tires, with a goal of collecting 1,500 by day's end. A phone call with an address and phone number is all it takes and a driver will come by.
Robertson, whose mantra is "movin' forward, movin' forward," began volunteering when he was 12, passing out flyers. He discovered a talent for recruiting like-minded people, and eventually a club was formed. Then it became the People Organization. Five years ago, the name underwent a transformation. Today, there are some 200 people Robertson can tap when he takes on a new cause.
Opportunities to help just keep coming, including providing shuttles to take women in domestic violence shelters to court, transporting people who don't have cars (for a fee), and offering divorced dads information on the process of paying child support and filing forms for visitation.
But trash is up there as one of Robertson's biggest pet peeves, and it truly pains him that the city's residents don't seem to share his loathing.
"Nothing is more poignant than realizing that suburban students have to come down here and clean up, when we have so many people right here who need to learn the lesson of selflessness," said Robertson.
The tire problem has been perpetrated by small haulers and dealers of used tires, Robertson said. It costs $3 or so to dispose of a single tire, and with so many abandoned homes and empty lots in Detroit, it's easier to just leave them.
"All this stuff is doing is getting shifted from one side of town to another," Robertson said. "It's a vile problem."
The environmentally correct disposal method for tires is shredding and reusing tires for highway surfaces or rubber carpets for playgrounds.
The state's Department of Environmental Quality prohibits landfills from taking whole tires, and requires that scrap tires be delivered only to a registered collection site.
Discount Tire is providing two 40-by-40-cubic-foot containers for the tires, which will go to Rubber Technologies Inc. in Detroit, the only company with a state permit to dispose of the tires, Robertson said.
Today's disposal effort isn't the last word on the subject, but Robertson is already deep into the next project: Organization for People is planning to hand out disposable cameras to mothers and other caretakers who have complained that their children are accosted by bullies every day on their way to school or a recreation center. Robertson believes that a photographic database of perpetrators will help police and others.
To schedule a tire pickup today, call Robertson at 313-640-6400 anytime. Leave an address and phone number and a crew member will call before coming by.
Pickup-truck drivers who'd like to help today should call the same number.
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