Milpas on the Move by Sharon Byrne. This one’s dedicated to El-Smurfo.
Last week, I popped in to see the manager at the Chapala Market on Milpas with Pablo, our new Community Service Liaison from the Police Department. The manager complained the green box on his property was causing a lot of problems. It ate up the sidewalk in the parking lot, and people were scattering clothes all over.
What green box? Who put it there?
The manager said some guy turned up with a big metal clothing donations box and said the city permitted him to put it there. He made it sound like a city mandate. Who was the humble Chapala Market manager to argue with the great-and-powerful city? But now it was causing him a lot of grief. Could the city please remove it?
Pablo and I looked at each other. The Chapala Market parking lot is private property. It’s true that our city does extend tremendous reach over what we can do with our private property. You can’t trim certain trees on your property without checking in with Parks and Recreation and the urban arborist. You can’t add a bathroom to your home without getting all your neighbors to sign off. Just one miscreant dissenter can kill off your hoped-for lavatory, I hear.
But the city doesn’t mandate the placement of big green metal clothing collection boxes on your property.
We checked out the box in the parking lot…
I’d never heard of ‘Gaia Movement.” I wrote down the phone number on the box, and told the Chapala Market manager I’d check into getting it removed.
Back at my desk, I looked up Gaia Movement. Their website was feel-good stuff: collect gently used clothing and sell it to thrift stores. The funds go to support local and international environment projects.
A check with the Better Business Bureau revealed GAIA failed the non-profit test because “according to the organization’s audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007, it spent 1% of its total expenses ($1,140,881) on program service activities.” According to the American Philanthropic Society, a charity watchdog group, Gaia-Movement has an “F” rating.
It took the boxes a while to get out here. They started in the northeast, and spread to Chicago, according to several articles. The clothes and shoes dropped into the boxes are not given away, like most givers would expect. They are sold, depriving local charities of donations of clothing that could help their community. Sometimes the company doesn’t bother with the ‘city permit’ ruse – big metal boxes just mysteriously show up outside unsuspecting businesses.
Gaia Movement recently built a $10m retreat in Mexico. There’s a lot of profit in used clothing, apparently.
Gaia Movement was founded by Tvind, a cultish group in Denmark. The boxes have changed labels a few times: PlanetAid, Campus California, etc, but the scam is worldwide. Tvind’s high-ranking members are under criminal investigation in Europe for embezzlement, tax evasion, and money laundering schemes.
And now their boxes are in Santa Barbara, the home of Earth Day, land of supreme enviro-consciousness.
I called the number on the box, and of course went straight to voice mail, no legitimate non-profit manager handy. I left a message with the box location, and stated they have 24 hours to remove it, or go hunt for it in its new home in the landfill.
(Note to real environmentalists: No, I wasn’t really going to put it in the landfill. That thing is near capacity, I know. But THEY don’t know that. I figured those big metal boxes cost a pretty penny, and they’d rather not lose their investment. If they refused to remove it, I’d have given the clothes to a local charity, and recycled the box for scrap metal. But it didn’t get to that point – read on…)
I got an immediate call back from a guy in Bakersfield. He had no idea how it got there, how they pick sites for placement, or why they lie to businesses by telling them the city permits them to put a box there.
He’s just a driver, and his boss told him to call. Where’s the box, again?
They removed it the next day. This is the second time this has happened on Milpas. Joe from Santa Barbara Kitchens took care of the last mysterious box, using pretty much the same tactic.
I emailed the mayor and city attorney about it. If companies are using the city’s clout to intimidate businesses in a scam, I figured the city ought to know about it.
Net: just because it’s labeled ‘green’ doesn’t automatically mean it’s golden.
Aww… I was hoping the city did mandate the box’s placement. You have to admit, it’s totally believable.
Thanks for the dedication, but I’m more of a critic of actual taxpayer funded or mandated greenwashing. If someone wants to use their own time and money installing low efficiency solar panels, block the left lane with their 45mph Leaf or contaminate their lettuce with ecoli, go for it… This sounds like your run if the mill crook using our modern green religion to sucker the pious.
That the city would mandate such a placement makes no sense — nor does it make any sense why the store manager would not call the mayor or one of the councilmembers and complain or, at least, ask! Ridiculous to be so sheeplike.
Good job, on behalf of the Milpas Community Association, I assume, on getting ithe container removed.
As a business owner, I would suspect the owner of this market has seen regulations that would make your eyes cross. In my own home, they required me to remove a 60 year old laundry sink in the garage for fear that someone might move in there. I, of course, complied immediately, thanking them for helping me see the error of my ways. While humping his new book, I even heard Gavin Newsome railing against local government overreach, mentioning his city requiring installation of a mop sink in a fully carpeted business.
Unfortunately the extreme eco-micro-management of this city does make this “recycle-reuse” film-flam scheme and its intrusion on private property sound exactly like something cooked up by the city’s Environmental Services division, who have too much time on their hands and too much money to be spent.
Take a look at the last city General Plan documents and see their intrusive handiwork in action. Santa Nanny was the end product of thousands of hours of city staff time and millions of dollars we tax payers were required to fund against our our own self-interests. One more bullying scam from the get go.
The scam targets low-income neighborhoods where store managers are not likely to have their councilmembers’ on speed-dial, and would be hesitant to resist what they perceive as a mandate from government authorities. El-Smurfo is right – the city mandating the box’s placement certainly seems feasible to these businesses.
Fantastic job. Fantastic.
“The clothes and shoes dropped into the boxes are not given away, like most givers would expect. They are sold, depriving local charities of donations of clothing that could help their community.” All the thrift stores here locally do the same thing, the collect donations then resell all the stuff. Where do that money go? Is that money in turn donated? Educate me.
Uhh…just the paragraph above states on 1% of the money goes to program services…It’s a scam, Barry…Just using the latest fad of Gaia Worship to cloak it’s criminality.
Translation: 99% of Gaia International goes for administrative “overhead” to dispense those 1% services.
Thrift stores are not necessarily associated with charities. Some are – they resell used clothes, and use the proceeds on their various non-profit endeavors. Some operate as a used clothing store, as a business. Donations of gently used clothing to the Rescue Mission or Casa Esperanza are given directly to their clientele. Catholic Charities also accepts donated clothes to raise funds for their services, like providing food for low-income families. However, they also give clothing directly to homeless individuals. The net is that Rescue Mission, Casa Esperanza and Catholic Charities use the donated clothing locally, to help people in need here. The big green box donations apparently fund retreats in other countries and other non-charitable purposes, but the donor doesn’t know that up front. They think they’re helping save the environment globally.
Good work, Sharon. So often just asking a few key questions brings down the work of bullying fraudsters — and shows why “green” has become just a troublesome concept that no one should ever take on faith alone. It is just the latest three card Monty scheme to be exploited on the unwary.
I’m pretty sure the Gaia Movement is just the obvious example. The green scam from Pal’s of politicians making solar panels… in China, to the recent projects approved by the City in the name of green living. Dig into any of them with an open mind and you will find the exact same scams on a much much bigger scale.
hahaha, just the name “Gaia Movement” makes me want to run far, far away.
Looks like the Gaia Movement is just another way of saying poop.
The understory is as good as the case in point. When there is a government feel-good program, there will always be those who will exploit it.
Doctors (who would have guessed) exploited Medicare.
Malingerers (who would have guessed) exploited Social Security.
Lawyers (who would have guessed) exploited Workmens Comp.
Unions (who would have guessed) exploited OSHA.
And now street hustlers (who would have guessed) exploit The Church of Green.
The saddest back story is the helplessness the business owner automatically felt when this was thrust upon him with no due process. Yes, this sounds exactly like what the “progressive” powers that be in our city have been doing to us for far too long.
This is an election message that will have legs in 2013, when there is a chance to change the direction of the “progressive” city council majority.
If people wonder what the Tea Party was really about, and not the Democratic demonization of it, look no further. It was about this intrusion into our private property rights by the strong-arm of government with no limits, controls or …… due process notice and fairness.
Don’t blame the market owner for not questioning the prospect of the civic government meddling in business affairs. I would be 0% surprised if the city did start mandating “green” projects. Remember when they wanted to paint the “blue line” around the city to show how high the water line was going to rise?
“And all the people bowed and prayed to the low-carbon gods they made.”
Interesting points about the stuff donated being sold; it behooves the would-be donor to ask. I bring stuff out to Alpha Thrift and think that among other good deeds they do is giving people jobs.
As for the Chapala Market: the _manager_ of the store really does have the obligation to inquire about what goes on there; I would think that’s why he’s hired. I wouldn’t expect a clerk to do so; nor would I expect the owner, if he’s not a hands-on owner. It doesn’t require having the councilmembers on speed-dial.
However, that particular market did have some problems with the police last year, with the butchers busted for selling narcotics, so maybe oversight and checking is not something the market does.
Hey, there is a bait and switch. Let’s gang up on Chapala Market, rather than besmirch The Gaia Movement.