Member News – October 2021
Teachers learn real-world lessons through summer externship
Habitat for Humanity of the Chesapeake has named Live Green Landscape Associates its In-Kind Donor of the Year.
Live Green began supporting Habitat for Humanity in 2013 by providing landscape designs and installations for new homes “so that the new homeowner would have a nicely landscaped house with shrubs, trees, mulch and sod,” said Michael Martin, President.
Live Green later expanded its efforts and began designing and creating larger green spaces, often on empty lots adjacent to Habitat for Humanity homes.
Then two years ago, Habitat for Humanity asked Live Green to help with a different kind of initiative, namely establishing a training program that would enable city residents to work on landscaping crews. Live Green created several training modules (for mowing, workplace safety, and truck and trailer operations), donated training manuals and developed specifications for the kinds of trucks, trailers and equipment that Habitat for Humanity would need for the training program. Since then, some trainees have met up with Live Green crews on some Habitat for Humanity sites to gain field experience.
“When I started this company, I wanted to be philanthropic. It was important to me to give back to the community,” Martin said. “But I didn’t want to just write a check because that wouldn’t provide my people with any feel-good connection to the cause. We wanted to find projects where we could do the physicality, put in some sweat equity and be proud of it as a team… Habitat for Humanity is set up to do projects and they have experience doing training, so it was a good match.”
BC&E welcomes new member
Based in Millersville, Rapid Recovery provides refrigerant recovery services for the HVAC, refrigeration, demolition and marine industries. Projects range in size from single residential split systems to chilling systems operating on tens of thousands of pounds, to projects with thousands of units. Rapid Recovery provides high-speed, EPA-compliant, refrigerant abatement as a value-added service to its customers. https://raprec.com/