You Won’t Believe the Surprising New Uses for Old Shipping Containers

Excess shipping containers are a big problem — literally. According to Jason Blevins of the Denver Post, there are 34.5 million of them in the world. Shipping companies use each one for a decade or two, then the hulking steel boxes are destined to spend eternity in a landfill.
But more people are starting to rethink what these containers could be used for, including Rhino Cubed, founded by businesswoman Jan Burton and Sam Austin, an architect who specializes in using reclaimed materials. Launched on Earth Day in Louisville, Colorado, Rhino Cubed builds small, artful homes out of discarded shipping containers.
The company offers three models of 160-square foot shipping container homes, including a $60,000 deluxe version that contains art and metalwork and two less expensive styles with added flooring, doors, and walls. Environmentally-friendly aspects of the tiny houses include solar panels that generate energy for a refrigerator and a water tank to catch rainwater.
“We really wanted to create something that would work off-the-grid,” Burton told the Denver Post. “I like to think we can preserve Mother Nature while still living in the middle of it.”
Another Colorado project making use of old shipping containers is the 25th & Larimer building, which opened in Denver last November. The development was created out of 29 repurposed steel shipping containers, and its first tenant was Topo Designs, a company known for its rugged rucksacks and backpacks that are manufactured in the Rocky Mountain state to ensure factory worker safety. Jedd Rose of Topo Designs told Ricardo Baca of the Denver Post, “It fits within our ethos, because it’s simple. Shipping containers are already out there. You can reuse them. They’re modular. It’s such a great idea.”
With shipping container projects recently built everywhere from London to Las Vegas, it sounds like the global backlog of these steel boxes is starting to ease.
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Meet the People Who Want to Make Their Hometown the Most Vet-Friendly in America

Montrose is a pretty little town with 19,000 citizens, nestled in the mountains of southern Colorado, where people come to raft along the Uncompahgre River and enjoy the outdoor beauty.
But Melanie Kline thinks she can make Montrose even better by becoming the most vet-friendly town in America. Kline is the founder of Welcome Home Montrose, a nonprofit that strives to make veterans feel valued and cared for in all aspects of their lives.
One of the nonprofit’s initiatives is the Dream Job program, through which wounded veterans live in Montrose for six months for an internship with a “dream job” and are provided free housing. The first participants included former Marines Joshua Heck, who wants to work in horticulture and Edward J. Lyons III, who wants to be a high school teacher. Buckhorn Gardens and the Montrose School District mentored them in their chosen fields, while citizen of Montrose sponsored their housing. Heck stayed on after his internship, and works in a plant nursery.
So far 560 veterans have registered for services through Montrose’s Warrior Resource Center, which provides them with information about adaptive sports, applying for benefits, suicide prevention, higher education, job training and placement, financial assistance, counseling, social activities, wellness and alternative healing resources and more.
“This place is a lifesaver,” Army National Guard Spec. Tim Kenney, who suffers from PTSD, told Nancy Lofholm of the Denver Post. “It’s just a safe place to go. I drop in pretty often.” The center serves veterans from every war and conflict, from World War II to Afghanistan. Last summer, Welcome Home Montrose sponsored 20 veterans to visit for its Mission No Barriers week, during which volunteers kept vets busy with outdoor activities and community potlucks.
The entire town is involved in this mission, including the 33 businesses who’ve joined a veteran discount program, a military widow who stops by the Warrior Resource Center with baked goods every week, and an anonymous donor who pays for Executive Director Emily Smith’s salary and benefits. So far, the center mostly serves veterans who were already living in Montrose, but one day Kline hopes the town’s welcoming attitude will attract veterans from across the country to move there. Representatives of sixty communities have asked Welcome Home Montrose for information about how they can adapt this program for their own towns. Meanwhile, the residents of Montrose are making veterans feel more welcome than ever.
The people of Montrose “have the appreciation and the heart for what these veterans have done,” Smith says. “They just didn’t know before what to do for them.”
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This Special-Needs Teen Gave Herself and Her Favorite Charity the Birthday Gift of a Lifetime

Gabi Ury of Boulder, Colorado had it rough from the very beginning.
She was born with VATER Syndrome, a condition that causes a cluster of birth defects in the vertebrae, anus, trachea, esophagus and kidneys. Since birth, Ury has endured 14 surgeries to correct the effects of the syndrome, which left her with missing vertebrae and calf muscles. But her peppy spirit has remained intact despite all the time she’s spent in the hospital, and when she turned 16 on April 17, she wanted to give herself an incredible birthday present by attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the longest-held plank by a female.
Gabi has tried to break records before by constructing the longest hopscotch course and trying to put the most-ever socks on one foot. She fell short both times, but then she figured out she was a plank prodigy during tryouts for the volleyball at the Dawson School in Lafayette. She couldn’t run a mile with the other volleyball hopefuls, so volleyball coach Holly Novak suggested she spend the time performing an equally grueling exercise: planking, in which a person assumes a push-up position and holds it while resting on the forearms. The first time she tried, Gabi held a plank for 12 minutes. “I was astonished the first time she did it,” Novak told Kate Gibson of the Denver Post. “I have to give all the credit to Gabi on this. I have supplied some workouts, but she has really gone after the record.”
Twelve minutes was only the beginning for Gabi. She began practicing holding a plank for 40 minutes or more. “Boredom is a problem and distraction helps a lot,” Gabi told Gibson. She planks while watching ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ reading a book, and enjoying the company of her dog. She was aiming to break the record for a 40 minute, 1 second plank held by Boise’s Eva Bulzomi, and to raise money for Children’s Hospital Colorado while doing so.
Gabi made her attempt on April 19 at the East Boulder Rec center, and as you can see in this video, she held the plank for an incredible one hour and 20 minutes. Now she just needs to wait for the people at Guinness to verify her accomplishment. In the process, she has raised more than $17,000 for Children’s Hospital. Now that’s what we call a sweet sixteen year old.
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Read About the Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But a Community, Too

What activity can decrease a low-income family’s dependence on food assistance, promote health, reduce crime, and bring people of different income and education levels together? Gardening can accomplish all this and more.
Since botanist and garden enthusiast Larry Stebbins responded to the lack of community gardens in Colorado Springs, Colorado by starting the nonprofit Pikes Peak Urban Gardens (PPUG) in 2007, hundreds of volunteers have become involved in creating plots in low-income neighborhoods and educating their new owners on how to tend them. “By teaching others how to [garden], you empower them to be more in control of their food supply,” Stebbins told J. Adrian Stanley of the Colorado Springs Independent.
Case in point: Stebbins said that one low-income family participating in the PPUG expanded the garden volunteers had helped them plant and were able to reduce using food stamps by 70 percent during the summer months when tomatoes, zucchinis, and other produce was abundant.
Another benefit to gardening? The nonprofit has learned over the years that when the plots are physically close together in proximity, not only is a feeling of community created, but also an atmosphere in which gardeners learn from and share with each other. Now it plants “pods” of gardens, such as the nine clustered gardens they established in a low-income neighborhood this year with the help of a $3,000 grant from the Colorado Home and Garden Show.
In addition to helping people plant their own gardens, Pikes Peak Urban Gardens has established two urban farms that grow produce for charities; some of the homeless people that benefit from the produce pitch in to tend those crops, alongside volunteers from all walks of life. Stebbins told Stanley that one year, a doctor and a man who lived in subsidized housing struck up a garden-based friendship. “People come in their dungarees,” he said. “You don’t know if they’re rich, poor or whatever. And it’s a great equalizer, and it’s a great way for people to come together.” After all, we’re all united in our quest for that perfect tomato.
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Their Daughter Died When She Didn’t Buckle Up. Now They’re Working to Save Other Children From the Same Danger

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, more than 33,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2009. Of those fatalities, more than half were not wearing their seatbelt. Last year, Alexa Johnson, a 19-year-old Colorado resident, was one such victim.
Johnson died when she lost control of her pickup truck in rural Weld County, Colorado and was ejected through the driver’s side window. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Colorado highway officials note that many drivers on rural roads fail to wear safety restraints. In fact, 59 percent of the unbuckled fatalities in Colorado last year occurred on rural roadways. Alexa’s father, Tad Johnson, told Monte Whaley of the Denver Post, “The first thing I felt was anger and then I wanted to blame someone. And then I had an ‘aha’ moment and I said, ‘Alexa, what are we going to do about this?'”
Tad and his wife Jona launched a social media campaign to raise awareness about the problem of young adults in rural areas driving without seatbelts. He looked at the photos on Alexa’s Facebook page and said, “We saw that in all those photos, hardly ever was Alexa and her friends using seat belts. It’s something that we just had to deal with.”
The Johnsons took to Facebook with their message about buckling up for safety, and then began to sew inch-wide Velcro ribbons that wrap around seat belts to remind drivers to use them. The ribbons are called Alexa’s Hugs, and since last year, the Johnsons have produced thousands of them, which now come in a variety of designs.
Alexa’s Hugs have already saved at least one life. Alexa’s friend, Kole Kilcrease told Whaley he was driving near the same stretch of highway where Alexa died when he hit ice and lost control, rolling his pickup two-and-a-half times. Both Kilcrease and his passenger survived because they were buckled in. Kilcrease said, “I never really buckled up because it just seemed like an inconvenience. You have a busy day, and you have other things on your mind. I don’t think that anymore.”
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This Bride’s Gown Was Stolen Just Weeks Before Her Wedding. What Happened Next Will Inspire You.

The groom had asked for her hand. The date was set. And the dress had been purchased. Kelly Cays was just an ordinary bride-to-be with a June wedding planned until something happened that shook up her dreams and restored her belief in human kindness.
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On March 14, Cays of Colorado Springs, Colorado, picked up the wedding dress she’d ordered four months earlier from Danielle’s Bridal Boutique. Here is where the story then deviates from normal into unthinkable territory: Someone stole Cays’s 2006 Jeep Liberty from the parking lot of her apartment complex. But it wasn’t just her wheels that disappeared. So did her wedding dress.
Ten days later, the car turned up abandoned, but the dress was gone. And Cays’s auto insurance didn’t cover the theft.
Relatives had paid for Cays’s $1,800 dress, and she and her fiancé Zach Rose couldn’t afford to replace it. What’s more, they didn’t have four months to wait for a replacement, as their wedding date loomed just three months away. After the Colorado Springs Gazette ran a story on the pilfered dress, people throughout the city stepped up to help.
“So many people offered me their dresses and their stories,” Cays told Stephanie Earls of the Gazette. She still loved her original wedding dress, though, so she contacted the store to see if they could do a rush order. The store agreed, and allowed her to put down only a small deposit, while Cays and Rose hoped they could come up with the rest of the money in time.
They shouldn’t have worried. Sarah Steinmeyer, who works at the dress shop, told Earls that a Good Samaritan came in and anonymously paid for the dress. “It had been a very busy day working on prom when this woman came in and wanted to know if anyone had paid for Kelly Cays’ wedding dress yet. We said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘I’d like to do that,’ and whipped out her checkbook. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “We all want to be able to do that someday, just make someone’s day like that.”
Cays describes the act of generosity as a “breath of angelic awesomeness.” It restored Cays’ belief in the goodness of people. “After my car was stolen, I was thinking people are awful. Then throughout this, so many people have helped me and been really sweet and tried to make things easier for me to deal with. There are so many amazing people out there,” said Cays.
Thanks to the people of her community, Cays’s wedding day will be unforgettable. 
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You’ll Never Believe What This Peace-Promoting Sculpture is Made Of

Does a work of art have the ability to reduce violence in America and inspire others to work for peace? That’s the hope of students at Centaurus High School (CHS) in Lafayette, Colorado, who are collaborating on a new piece of artwork.
The 2012 Sandy Hook shooting motivated CHS students to research gun violence for their political action class. They tracked U.S. deaths due to guns after Sandy Hook to the end of 2013, tallying a total of 12,400 reported gun fatalities. Last May, in the middle of the lesson, a 16-year-old student at Centaurus attempted to detonate a pipe bomb at the school. Thankfully no one was hurt, as a teacher discovered the device and administrators evacuated the building.
The shaken-up students wanted to do something to impress upon others what they’ve learned about violence in America, so they came up with the idea of inviting a local artist to create a sculpture from melted guns. “We figured what better way to bring awareness to the issue than build a memorial for those who died where people walk by it every day and think, ‘What is this about?'” 18-year-old student Kenny Sweetnam told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office donated surrendered guns, teaching the students how to disarm them and supervising the sawing of the guns so they no longer functioned. Sculptor Jessica Adams is guiding the students as they use the melted gun metal to create a sculpture out of 12,400 rods, one for each gun victim in 2013, with longer rods for younger victims, symbolizing the length of the lives they were not able to live.
Sheila Dierks, a priest at the Light of Christ Ecumenical Catholic Church who is volunteering with the project said, “By transforming these guns into art, we’re giving less power to the gun and more to the power of change we hope to see.”
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Remembering a Remarkable Woman Who Raised $1 Million for Charity

The Denver community is mourning ultra-distance runner Essie Garrett, a formidable force for good as an educator and a charity fundraiser who died April 1 at age 74.
According to the Denver Post, Garrett was born in Texas, and at age 16, she joined the Army, serving for three years before she moved to Denver. Around that time, she began to follow Sri Chinmoy, an Indian spiritual leader who taught his followers that they can achieve enlightenment through the discipline of exercise. She took his teachings to heart and then some.
At the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, a Denver public technical college and alternative high school that has served thousands of low-income and minority students since its founding in 1916, Garrett taught refrigeration mechanics to mostly male classes full of students — some of whom were surprised to learn a woman knew so much about electronics. (She worked as a teacher until her retirement in 2010.) During this time, Garrett began to run distances unfathomable to most.
Garrett ran to raise money for a variety of charities, including Children’s Hospital Colorado, Colorado AIDS Project, Max Funds Animal Adoption, multiple-sclerosis research institutions, and the Denver Rescue Mission that serves the homeless. Starting on Thanksgiving in 1991, she began an annual tradition of running around Colorado’s Capitol building for 48 hours to raise money for the homeless. According to Claire Martin of the Denver Post, she often told friends complaining of hunger, “Don’t you ever say you’re starving. An appetite is not the same thing as starving.”
Essie Garrett ran more than 25,000 miles, raising more than $1 million for charities between 1981 to 2012. Chris Millius, her colleague at Emily Griffith Opportunity School said, “She was always coming up with different ideas for fundraising.”
The sight of Essie, her long dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail that bounced as she ran, will be missed around Denver’s City Park — but her contributions to charities will be long remembered.
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Brewers Fight Proposed Regulation That Would End Grain Recycling Initiatives

If you’re a lover of the brewsky, then Denver is the city for you.
The Mile High city brews more beer than any other American city, and the state of Colorado boasts over 140 microbreweries. So it probably won’t surprise beer lovers here in the “Napa of beer” that many brewers are using their drinks as forces for environmental and economic good, donating their spent grains — barley, hops, wheat and other grains that have been soaked in water during the beer-brewing process — to farmers who can use them to feed their livestock, instead of throwing them away.
Oskar Blues, a Longmont-based brewery, runs the Hops and Heifers program. In a process it calls “Farm to Cup,” the brewery grows hops on its own farm, uses the hops for brewing, feeds its cattle with the spent grains, and then uses the meat from these cows in burgers sold at its restaurant.
But newly proposed FDA rules threaten to disrupt innovative recycling programs such as this, forcing microbreweries to send the spent grains to landfills or else engage in a costly process of drying out the grains and packaging them to prevent anyone from touching them before they reach the farmers. For many small brewers, the cost of this would be too great and they’d be forced to choose the landfill option.
According to John Fryar of the Longmont Times-Call, Paul Gatza, who directs the Boulder-based 20,000-member strong Brewers Association, spoke with FDA officials who say they’ll change the rule before issuing new draft of the regulations this summer. “The wording in the original proposed rules was pretty bad,” Gatza said. He estimates that the new rule would cost breweries $5 more per barrel to process the grains before donating or selling them to farmers, potentially putting many small brewers out of the recycling business. That would have been a shame, as a recent Brewers Association survey found that members reuse 90 percent of their spent grains.
FDA spokeswoman Juli Putnam told Fryar that they’ve gone back to the drawing board, rewriting some of the language in the regulation in a way that will hopefully allow this beer positivity cycle to continue. Now that’s good news worth lifting a beer over.
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The Nation’s Pastime Motivated This Disabled Teenager to Walk Again

A stiff-brimmed baseball cap. A bag of uncracked peanuts. A field of spring-green grass. Baseball’s opening day always brings a sense of renewed possibility to players and fans alike, even when the chances of winning a championship are stacked against them.
Sixteen-year-old high school baseball player Diego Alvarado has faced longer odds than most. Diagnosed with epilepsy as a baby, doctors finally managed to treat his seizures effectively by the time he was three, but his illness caused him to be developmentally delayed. Then when he was in middle school, aggressive leukemia struck. Doctors treated him with chemotherapy that badly damaged his joints. Alvarado ended up in a wheelchair and underwent two hip replacement surgeries.
Diego’s father, Colorado State Trooper Ivan Alvarado, told Neil H. Devlin of the Denver Post that he noticed Ivan was laying around the house, “being lazy like a teenager…but he had no quality of life.” He and the doctors decided to discontinue Diego’s chemotherapy, because as Ivan explained to Devlin, “We were faced with the decision of quality of life vs. quantity of life.”
They made the right decision: When the chemo ended, Diego transitioned from the wheelchair to a walker, and then told his P.E. teacher he was ready to go out for the Bennett High baseball team.
Coach Joe Stemo welcomed Diego on the team — Ivan didn’t even know his son had talked his way onto the Tigers’ roster. With two games under his belt, Diego has made contact with the ball, walked a few times and scored a run. Teammate Jonathan Cretti told Devlin, “It’s crazy how far he has come. He couldn’t even stand up in P.E. Now he’s playing baseball. And he’s always working his hardest. It’s one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.”
For the Alvarados, who immigrated to Colorado from Guatemala, Diego’s progress is just the thing that (ballpark) dreams are made of.
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