- [Narrator] Throughout the country, people are planting seeds of innovation harvesting a bounty of ideas to help care for the only home we have, planet earth, with billions of people on earth.

It is more important than ever to open our eyes and minds to alternative ideas, both new and old about food, energy, resources, health, housing, and more.

The core of sustainability is meeting the needs of today's society without compromising the world for future generations.

In this series, our field reporters will explore eco-friendly ideas and lifestyles that help to make our world a little bit better.

Welcome to 'My world too', short stories of sustainable living and earthly innovations.

Instead of recycle, why not upcycle?

Let's join Nick Schmitz to learn more about people taking things old and making new again.

(dust blower whooshing) (indistinct chattering) - This is really cool.

How you doing?

- Good to see you.

- That's great.

- Let's check it out.

- Nick, where are we?

What is this place?

- So we are in Maker Village, which is a community shop located in Midtown, Kansas city.

It's a place that has a lot of equipment, woodworking, metalworking some digital fabrication equipment.

You can imagine it, kind of like a gym membership except you get access to wood and metalworking equipment.

It gets utilized by entrepreneurs, hobbyists, beginners, who are maybe coming to take a class for the first time.

And people come here to muse reclaim materials, to breathe new life into a new product.

This place gets utilized for lots of different stuff.

- Nick, can you talk to me about the philosophy behind the Maker community of everything has a purpose, everything has a use.

- Makers are creative.

Makers look at, discarded objects and see the value in what they can make with it.

So, for instance, all the materials that we use for our classes, comes from other fabrication shops.

So this is all material that has been, part of a barn structure, someone's home.

Material that came from a fabrication facility that wasn't getting used, otherwise would be landfill material, but is super useful for classes and for building furniture and that sort of thing.

So all of these material after it dries out, we de-nail it, we mill it, it will become, something new.

It'll become a piece of furniture in somebody's home, a cutting board, it'll have a life and live on for hopefully, 10's, 100's of years.

That's just one example of what we do to repurpose materials.

- This idea of recycling things.

of upcycling, taking, maybe you have a lamp that's broken and instead of throwing that lamp away and putting it in a landfill, you can come someplace like Maker Village and you can repair it yourself.

You can learn how to repair it.

- It's a kind of an intersection between people being frugal, and a little bit altruistic, thinking about the world as a, not just where they, their spot in it, but, as a kind of living organism that we're all a part of and something that we wanna make better and pass on to our kids.

So this is our middle fabrication area.

(footsteps thudding) - Nick as I'm looking around the shop.

I'm seeing a lot of pieces, a lot of tables and stools and shelving that all appear to be repurpose things.

Is that, was that a conscious decision, when you were building out this space to try to reuse things as much as possible?

- Yeah.

When we first purchased the building, moved in and started demoing a lot of the old structures and all the stuff and kind of cleaning it out, we tried to reuse as much material as we could.

So, the stud framing for the bathroom became workbench surfaces.

Partly because these items have lasted so long, already, we know that they're gonna be a really durable thing to continue.

And then also just the, it doesn't cost a lot whether you're talking about the environment or the pocketbook, if you reuse something - Well, Nick I appreciate you taking the time to show us around, some really cool stuff happening here in the Village.

- Of course.

(gentle music) - Well Whitney, thank you so much for inviting us into your studio.

- Yeah.

- I think the reason we're here is to talk about this, your dress.

- Yeah, so it's just a panel design that I came up with and I created it from about four pairs of thrifted jeans.

- Oh wow!

So these were jeans that, someone else had already gotten all their use out of, and now you're turning it into something else, something new?

- Exactly.

- That's great.

Well, I'd love to learn more.

- Yeah, let's get in.

- I really love your studio.

There's so much color.

There's so much going on.

What do you do here?

What's going on in this space?

- I am a Kansas City based fashion and textile designer.

So this is the space where I basically create every garment and accessory from start to finish.

- The garments and stuff that you make, the accessories, are you selling these to boutiques like bulk orders?

Is it individual orders?

Is it kind of a combination of both?

- It's a mix.

So I have an online shop and I also do wholesale orders to boutiques.

- And I'm looking at a lot of these garments and I'm seeing, it looks like recycled fabrics.

Are you taking old things and making them new?

Is that part of your style?

- Yeah, so the big three elements of my work are color, pattern and texture and really reusing fabrics and kind of working with what I have, just kind of helped me push that to the next level.

- And how did that become part of your style?

Is it something that you've been doing since you were young?

Is it something new?

Is it?

- It kind of just started with, it was what I had to work with.

I taught myself how to sew when I was 13 and I taught myself to sew because I was constantly growing out of my clothes, and it's getting on my nerves and remixing my clothes into something new, was just a way for me to teach myself how to sew.

And it just kind of gave me a new creative outlet.

And so I always honor that still, in my current work.

And it's really just a way to be resourceful.

Sometimes you don't have fabric and sometimes you gotta get projects done.

And you're just like, what do I have that I can quickly turn into yardage or kind of make new?

- Whitney, can you walk me through one of these garments?

I see a lot of different elements.

(both chuckling) - Yeah.

So this is actually, really special piece because this was one of the first jackets that I ever remixed.

So this kind of happened during my college years.

And it's a mix of, I remember finding this blue leather jacket at the thrift store.

So I took it apart to use the fabric and kind of got this jacket, took the sleeves off.

This was the sleeves of an old sweatshirt that I took apart, redyed them.

I dyed the jacket and bringing more of that, like textile design element.

And I airbrushed a design on the back.

It's really special just to kind of see where I started and where I'm heading.

- That's great.

So these are all garments.

These are all fabrics that probably, I mean they were in a thrift store, but maybe would have wound up in a landfill, maybe would have been thrown away discarded and you've given them a new life.

- Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, I know a lot of people think like, wow, I'm doing good.

I'm donating to a thrift store, but thrift stores they have to clear out their inventory as well.

At the end of the day, they're still a business.

And so if something doesn't sell through, they might end up throwing it out themselves.

So this is just even the more basic thing of thinking about, I saw a jean jacket.

I wanna make it into something new.

That's kind of like the more basic part of it but even thinking about taking scrap materials and it's gonna take me awhile to get this done.

But (chuckling) the goal is to just be able to create a large piece of patched spandex in it fabrics to then create a dress.

- Whitney, I'm curious about this piece.

- Yeah.

(host clearing throat) Talk to me a little bit about this.

What's, what is this material?

- Yeah, so this is actually interesting.

So a big part too, of sustainability there's options beyond reusing clothing that exists or fabric that already exists.

So the denim in this skirt is actually, it was from a mill and it's dead stock.

And so when fabric is dead stock that means it's not being made anymore.

They're trying to get rid of it.

It stands a chance to end up in a landfill.

So the regular denim I got from a supplier and this fabric, this printed fabric is digital print.

And so as a textile designer, I design pretty much all of the patterns that you see on my clothes.

And so this is a mix of this black and white pattern, I designed completely in the computer but this one is a mix of collage and digital manipulation.

And I scanned in brush strokes that I did.

And the really nice thing is that the textile industry has just grown leaps and bounds because it used to be where if you wanted printed fabric, you would have to buy 30 yards minimum, of that one fabric in that one style, that one print.

And so I don't need 30 yards of just this by itself.

That's a lot, I'm not producing at that capacity.

And it's nice to be able to work with digital printing services that print fabrics.

- Yeah, there's so many innovations that are helping to limit the amount of waste that Makers have.

- Yeah.

- And I find this really interesting cause we, when you think about Makers and you think about the Maker community you're thinking a lot of like woodworking and metalworking, - Yeah.

- But to see those same sort of applications in textiles, is really interesting.

It's something that I hadn't even thought of it.

(gentle music) Excited to see what you do.

- Yeah.

Let's go in.

(door creaking) - So Whitney where are we?

- We are at ScrapsKC, and this is one of the places I come and get supplies.

So general art supplies and they have a lot of textile items here too.

- Okay, great.

So these are all textiles and supplies that were maybe in someone's sewing room and it was all gonna go, - Exactly.

- To waste.

- And so basically people who they don't need their supplies anymore, or they just have a lot of stuff they wanna get rid of that's arts-related, they can bring it to ScrapsKC and ScrapsKC resells it, to people like me, - That's great.

- [Whitney] That need supplies all the time.

- That's great.

And so someone like you that's maybe doing smaller orders or made to order items and you don't need a whole lot of other material.

- Exactly.

- You can come here and get a small amount.

So you're not wasting anymore.

- Exactly.

And too, it's like a great place to try to find some different materials to maybe experiment with, like things that you've just been kind of thinking about working with.

And if you can find it here that's great because it's a small amount.

You're not spending a whole lot and you can just really go for it and try some different things.

- So Whitney when you're walking through here and you're looking at these textiles, do you have a project in mind or are you sort of looking for inspiration and maybe finding something, a texture or a pattern that really jumps out a little bit of both?

- I'd say a little bit of both.

It's very rarely that I come to Scraps with a very, a set idea in mind.

Cause you just never know what you're gonna find.

And I really appreciate just how everything is kind of blocked off by color.

Cause it makes it easier for me to just get excited about things, like looking at this knit.

I'm just already like, okay, I think I can make myself a few things out of this.

(gentle music) - I feel like I'm in a mad scientist laboratory, (Stan chuckling) but we're not.

We're in your home.

We're here in Gardner Kansas.

What's going on?

Why does one man own this many microscopes?

- I was a medical illustrator for the University of Kansas Medical Center.

And I was also in charge of the microscope laboratory called the imaging center.

I got into microscopes, and they're just wonderful, beautifully hand crafted, precision instruments.

And I thought it's a shame that they try to, throw them away.

One little part goes bad.

Like a bulb.

They take specialized light bulbs.

It's not just like you can stick any light bulb in there.

LEDs do really good in these machines.

So I thought, well, I have 3D printed, parts to fit and the rest of it was off the shelf and I fixed up my own Zeiss, this little red guy right down here.

So it was supposed to be a hobby, it turned into a career.

- If I'm understanding you correctly, you are retrofitting parts and lights for these microscopes so that, this doesn't end up in a landfill, - That's right.

- It continues to be used.

- [Stan] That's right.

- Is this something that you could have done before digital fabrication or?

- No.

No, I don't think so.

I think the 3D printing technology is the most appropriate solution for this kind of production.

You have a complicated part.

There's lots of variables.

There's lots of nuances from one script to the next and you can have a complex part without a complex price from one scope to the next, it's a completely different set of problems to solve.

That's why 3D printing is so easy.

It lends itself so easily to this process.

(footsteps thudding) - So this is the mad scientist laboratory, I'm counting, I got nine 3D printers down.

- [Both] Yeah.

- So it looks like you're designing over here, sending the 3D printers over here.

Walk me through this process.

- I have a whole bunch of Mac minis over here that run the 3D printers, but each of one of these computers, that's their only job, it's 3D printing.

So I kind of send them over here and then they go to the printers here.

- And then you're printing these guys.

- Yes.

(host clearing throat) - I imagine using the 3D printer, you're generating less waste, - Oh yeah.

- [Host] Because it's an additive process.

- That's right.

- You're not taking away.

You're adding too.

So if you were to say, mill this out of aluminum you'd have to start with a big block of aluminum.

- That's right.

- Then you wind up with all these aluminum shavings.

- [Stan] That's right.

- But aside from that, talk to me a little bit about the other steps, I'm hearing LED lights.

- For a fraction of the power, I'm getting twice the use and it's the same color temperature.

Cause that's, the microscope people are very particular about color temperature of light.

- I imagine that your clients, if you're dealing with laboratories, you're dealing with scientists, they have to be precise.

I imagine that being able to control the temperature of the light.

- That's right.

That's spot on with what they want, cause normally they'd have to use different filters and things like that, to get to the correct color temperature they want.

This is the assembly department.

Where it all kind of comes together.

(door thudding) - And I'm seeing a drawer full of goodies over here.

- Yes.

- These are all the electronic components?

- Yeah they got reflectors, this is one of the LEDs that I typically use.

- [Host] Oh wow.

Yeah, so that is a lot smaller than what you'd normally have and something like that.

- [Stan] And much more efficient too.

- [Host] So it's smaller, but puts out more power.

- Yes.

- We've been talking to a lot of Makers and and we see this trend of exactly what you're doing.

This idea of reusing, fixing, don't throw away.

We've sort of become somewhat of a disposable society, where everything you buy, has a shelf life and after three years you throw it out and you get a new one.

But I think there's sort of a philosophy within the Maker community.

That's not necessary.

- Right.

- [Host] Is that what drew you to this?

- [Stan] Yeah.

- [Host] This is the sort of - - I wanted to see less of these in the landfill.

They need to be on a bench, where they're helping someone find a cure to the disease or something like that.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In the Hills of the Missouri Ozarks a man and his family are on a mission to preserve and share a vast variety of heirloom seeds from all over the world.

- [Jere] Yeah right now, ever since COVID struck all of a sudden every seed company not only here in America, but almost every seed company around the planet started to face unprecedent amounts of orders.

- Hi, Jere, we're really excited to be here at Baker Creek seeds.

Why don't you tell me a little bit about the operation - We're standing actually right in our baseyard tropical greenhouse, the most tropical of the greenhouses on the property anyway.

And as you can see, there's bananas and all sorts of things growing in here, which I love the tropics (cock crowing) and I love growing, heirloom vegetables.

And my office is right actually located on the end of this building, where we work on the catalog and so forth.

And outside of this building, you, we have gardens and different greenhouses (cock crowing) probably about 12 different greenhouses now total.

So, varying in climate.

We have some that are tropical and many of them that are more Mediterranean where we grow things like figs and not to mention all the different vegetables and seed crops we have in there.

Then we have three warehouses on the place here, where we package and ship seeds and we're getting ready to move to a bigger warehouse, Just down the road from here.

(cock crowing) (gentle music) - Over here in the heart of Baker Creek, this is Bakersville, our village.

Normally we would have it hopping with customers and people.

We would have a restaurant open serving vegan food every weekday.

Our seed store would be open.

But in these different times, we've had to convert all these buildings into hand seed packing areas.

So they're seed packing and entering orders.

- [Mahryn] Ah that's amazing.

There are so many orders coming in.

- [Jere's Wife] There are a lot, we didn't anticipate this growth at all.

We're trying to keep up.

- The business was started in 1998.

It was a hobby.

It started in my bedroom.

And I always knew as a small child growing up, I wanted to work for a seed company.

So as I got older, I started thinking, well there's no seed companies in the area.

So I might as well try to start my own.

And it was started out of my interest, I guess, in seeds and my parents and grandmothers' interest in seeds.

- [Mahryn] I understand you live with your family on the property.

- [Jere] Yeah.

Family is a big part of the business here.

It's basically everything.

This is a family business, even though it's growing, it's still at our home place here in Missouri.

- [Mahryn] What are heirloom seeds?

- Heirloom seeds is kind of a loose term and it means different things to different people but it's basically a traditional variety.

Some places call them heritage varieties or antique varieties.

It's basically variety that's been passed down from family to family, just like an heirloom furniture or jewelry or whatever you might've been in your family.

There were traditional family varieties is what it means.

As far as how old they are, it varies depending on the definition but generally considered 50 or 100 years old or older.

- So here we are in one of our 12 greenhouses.

We have Mindy harvesting our sweetheart cherry tomatoes.

We are growing these out for seed.

So you'll see this is the only tomato growing in this greenhouse, to prevent cross pollination.

We harvest about 200 pounds of seeds of tomatoes from these plants every week.

- [Mahryn] Wow.

- They're very prolific.

They stay on the vine longer than some varieties which makes them a very high in sugar content and very sweet and flavorful to eat.

It's a brand new variety this year.

- [Mahryn] Why is it important to preserve different varieties of heirloom seeds?

- Well, I feel preserving the varieties, not only preserves the cultural stories and the heritage and the colors and flavors and the traditions of the past, but it also preserves our ability to not only save seeds but also the, all these genetics, genetics from all over the place, whether it's Mexico or here in the Ozarks.

Varieties that might be more adaptable to different climates or different changes in the climates and also ability for more people to grow varieties in different places.

- [Mahryn] What is a seed library?

Well, a seed library is something that's kind of a new concept here in the United States, but it's basically the librarian.

They give you a packet of seeds and ask you to bring seeds back.

So they're able to keep replenishing the library.

It's basically a way to work with your local community to make sure everybody has access to at least some seeds.

- Here at Baker Creek, we will test out the purity of varieties and make sure that we have the consistency that we're looking for, to sell in the end.

Right now I am thinning the seedlings.

These are Dianthus flowers.

A lot of these are different colored flowers and I'm thinning them down because we only need one plant per cell.

I'm thinning out the littlest of the seedlings to leave the largest dominant seedling.

- How we getting seeds here at Baker Creek is various different ways.

A lot of it is actually stuff people send us in the mail.

People from all over the planet will send us seeds in the mail and say, here's a bean from my great-grandmother or here's a variety that (cock crowing) former vice president used to grow or whatever, there's different stories from around the planet that come with the seeds.

Right now, we have a grower in Ghana, West Africa and he not only grow seeds for us but he's always hunting for new old seeds.

Like he just found a tomato that's several 100 years old in Ghana.

Each year we send seeds out to about 162 countries and probably receive seeds here at Baker Creek probably from maybe 50 different countries.

- I'd love to know more about your sustainability efforts (cock crowing) - Here at Baker Creek we try to be sustainable in everything we do.

First off is preserving the seeds and passing on these treasures that we try to pass on to other gardeners, but it's also, all about composting, all about of course, using the sun for heating as much as possible like in a greenhouse.

- After we're done with the crop, we will take pretty much all the organic matter and run it into our compost piles.

We use manure, we've got chicken litter, turkey manure any organic matter we can get ahold of.

(gentle music) - This is our shipping warehouse, (metal clanking) where we have our pick and pack system.

We are shipping out all of the seed orders.

We have all inventory in here that is ready to go online.

You can hear a picking system behind us, which is sorting the seed packets into all the different orders printing receipts and shipping labels.

Currently we have three different shifts working 24 hours and shipping out about 7,000-8,000 seed orders per day - Here at Baker Creek, (cock crowing) It all, ever since we started it wasn't primarily for profit.

Our main goal was preserving these seeds, telling their stories and of course keeping the seed catalog alive in America and keeping interest in seeds alive.

And in that we don't only (cock crowing) send out seeds for profit, we also basically work almost like a nonprofit in many ways.

Most of our, the majority of our extra profit, whatever we have that we don't have to reinvest in the business every year, we put back into both local organizations and also international, (cock crowing) national and international organizations, both in the form of seeds and also financially trying to get whether it's a small farm project going or eight projects to countries that are hard hit with maybe a hurricane or disaster areas.

And of course the seeds, (cock crowing) we distribute to 1000's and 10,000's of garden projects, prisons, seed libraries which we're really excited about the seed local, seed libraries starting up all across not only the US but really around the planet right now.

And trying to get people to, into seeds even those that can't afford seeds and also working on different systems here, showing people, different things they can grow.

Like right here, we're standing with all the bananas and stuff, here in Missouri and showing how easy things are to grow here in Missouri at our location.

And then also working in (cock crowing) with gardeners and farmers in Ghana, West Africa, to Jamaica, to various different places, to both educate us, and here in America, learn what their culture and their seed saving and their recipes and ideas and also trade our ideas and knowledge with them.

So it's always a cross-cultural experience for us.

Everybody has different beliefs and political systems and so forth that they believe in, but whether, whatever these beliefs are when they gather together, everybody at the end of the day wants good food and they want healthy kids and they want the basic things in life.

And that's what, that's the good thing about heirloom seeds.

We can unite everybody, everybody's united with an idea that they loved our delicious tomato.

I mean, that's, everybody wants a better tasting carrot.

So that's the fun part of what we do.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Share your sustainability story or learn more about sustainability and earth friendly innovations at myworldtoo.com - We've had bees about 20 years.

We started because my son, when he was 11, he saw a video at school and decided that he wanted to get bees.

- So the rest of challenges with it.

We think the benefits far (indistinct) those challenges.

- We believe in diversity.

And so you'll see lots of different wild flowers and weeds that feed the bees, feed the sheep.

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