The Iowa City Public Works Department was recently awarded for a project that recycled over 120,000 pounds of bricks from the Pedestrian Mall. On Oct. 18, the department received the Iowa Recycling Association’s Project of the Year Award, according to a release from the city.
Over the last 10 years, bricks have been removed from the Pedestrian Mall so the city could resurface the area. These bricks sat in a pile in the southside of town with the intent to eventually find something to do with them, the release states.
As the brick stockpile grew, more and more people called the city to ask if they could use some of the bricks for their own projects, Jennifer Jordan, the city’s resource management superintendent, said.
This is where the idea for the brick recycling project started, Jordan said. However, the city knew it did not have the capacity to distribute the bricks out to the community by itself, she said, so the city began looking for local organizations that could help.
Eventually, the city asked the Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity ReStore to help gather the bricks onto pallets to be sold at the organization’s store, located at 2401 Scott Blvd.
According to the release, around 60 volunteers from the organization spent more than 160 hours over the summers of 2023 and 2024 to palletize the bricks to be sold at the ReStore. Over 100 pallets were created, which was equivalent to nearly 64 tons, the release states. This generated an estimated $10,600 for the Restore, according to the release.
Thorin Peugh, the director of the ReStore, said there are around eight pallets of brick left, which he expects will sell quickly once spring rolls around. The bricks are sold individually for 50 cents apiece or by pallet, he said.
Peugh said the collaboration has been received well by the community for a variety of reasons.
“People get a nostalgic handful of bricks, or they get an entire patio that they can say came off of the Pedestrian Mall, so that is appealing to some folks,” Peugh said. “It's super well-received. They're excellent material, so they're not going to spoil if you take out one pallet and don't use it until spring.”
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There are also some Pedestrian Mall bricks being held onto by the city because of the poor condition they are in, Brock Holub, the city’s superintendent of streets and traffic engineering, said. There are currently not any concrete plans in place to use these bricks, but they could potentially be used to fill up soft spots in city streets, he said.
Jordan said it was an honor to win an award for the project because Iowa City has been a member of the Iowa Recycling Association for over two decades and has submitted many projects for this award over the years.
This is not the first time the city has won this specific award, though, Jordan said. In the early 2000s, the city won the Project of the Year Award for its Rummage in the Ramp program, which was essentially a giant city-run garage sale in public parking ramps over several days.
This program was discontinued because of the pandemic and never started back up again, Jordan said, but the city does hold its Donation Drive-Thru event in July. This is similar to the Rummage in the Ramp, except it takes up just one day and consists of people dropping off donations in their cars, she said.
The brick recycling project not only kept materials out of the city’s landfill, but it may also encourage residents to adopt a mindset that thinks of recycling first when tearing down a structure, Jordan said.
“From an environmental perspective, it's not just about what's going into the landfill; it's the embodied energy that's in those bricks, too, and in that house or in that parking structure,” Jordan said. “Are there other uses for it? Since the environmental damage of creating that has already been done, let's get the absolute most use out of it that we can.”