A Circular Economy Hub where innovative recycling and R&D teams can build, train, & scale solutions.

The Waste to Wonder Center is designed to tackle multiple problems with an interdisciplinary approach - always with the goal of contributing to the body of science, restoring planetary health, and enabling improved quality of life for our beneficiaries at the core of our mission. With the Waste to Wonder program, Paragon will demonstrate how waste can be molded, recycled, and up-cycled into a world of value-added building materials. Not only will this facility provide a space to engineer new solutions, but it will also provide the organization an opportunity to build case studies on building sustainably, as well as demonstrate how other facilities can upgrade to hybrid renewable systems of energy and passive designs that can greatly reduce carbon footprint. Most importantly, the center is intended to interface economies, technology, and ecology in a way that immediately and tangibly addresses current problems with life on earth, while empowering beneficiaries with access to education, training, environmental awareness, and the opportunity to become local ambassadors to support more sustainable living.

Thanks to our generous donors we have acquired our first physical facility to set up our hybrid R&D Recycling and Sustainable Manufacturing Center! Thank you to all of you who have contributed to this tremendous project!!

This building will first go through a full transformation from its current conditions into an Ultra Passive Construction . This means the building will be made with energy efficiency at the core of its design. Additionally, the building will be renovated with alternative recycled materials and run on environmentally safe and clean renewable energy.

There are several phases that will take place as we bring the building up to our new Green Standard. The first will be renovating and redesigning this building into an Ultra Passive, energy-efficient building ideally run on 100% renewable energy. We are working with the Green Architectural firm (omgivning.com) and their team of engineers to draft plans that align with the philosophies of sustainability. Every step of this renovation will include salvaging as many parts as possible, and properly repurposing the rest on-site.

We will be optimizing this deconstruction phase with the collaborative support of The Reuse People - a 501(c)3 that deconstructs buildings and salvages material, thus keeping it out of landfills and making it available for reuse. This partnership will provide training for 10-15 individuals who are working towards becoming certified Deconstruction Contractors through The Reuse Institute.

We anticipate partnering with Cal Poly Pomona and University of San Diego to build a case study on how building with eco-consciousness at the core of our plans will not only help us reduce carbon footprint, but also enable us to save in building costs too. These case studies, once completed, will be compiled and presented to city council with our advocates over at American Institute of Architecture (AIA.org) and the law externship we will also put into motion with University of San Diego in order to propose Alternative Building Materials to the Affordable Housing Development Department, as well as Public Works, which would allow homeowners to build with a list of approved alternative and eco-friendly materials.

PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS

Every day the state of the planet strains closer to a point of no return if we continue to act as if 2030 is so far away. With the growing issues of polluted oceans, broken ecosystems, toxic food supplies, and the alarming rise of global warming, we can no longer wait for the government or someone else to fix it. The programs at Paragon focus on creating synergies to address mixed materials and plastic waste pollution affecting the environmental and marine ecosystems. This will be achieved by involving relevant enterprises working within the plastic manufacturing industries and the plastic recycling sector, including the municipal authorities, national government, development partners, private sector, academic institutions, partner NGO and civil organizations, as well as the National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP/GPAP). The journey towards zero plastic waste requires a multi-faceted approach, and one of the first steps is improving the current waste management’s systems for dealing with plastic products and mixed materials.

CLOSING STATEMENT

As the need for urgent action intensifies, Paragon Institute of Innovation will join forces with leaders in the field to share pragmatic solutions and personal insights, digging deep into the three key themes of measuring progress, achieving net-zero, and improving transparency. Creating green jobs of the future by accelerating innovations that will catalyze climate transition is just one of our top priorities. Through our efforts to fervently bring together social entrepreneurs, partner NGOs, and other stakeholders in a pre-competitive platform to generate industry-led innovation, we will drive collaborative action and deliver a significant system change toward a circular economy for plastic and other materials, enabling all of us to collectively meet impactful goals by 2030.

The Waste to Wonder Center will coordinate research on reducing the impact of plastic, enhance sustainable people-environment interactions, develop ways to minimize impacts of hazardous substances and pollutants, and deliver cutting edge technical capabilities, particularly in the fields of waste and materials processing. Taking a dilapidated building and converting it into a space that will not only elevate the aesthetics of the current neighborhood, but ignite the community to explore ways in which they can truly activate their inner eco-warrior is just one of many benefits that this facility shall provide; To cultivate local community with products and services that enable eco-friendly and more affordable options for both business and homeowners; to increase the skills of local workforce in the green sector; to stimulate creativity and quality of life; And ultimately, to empower people to become good stewards of the planet, inspiring them to protect and preserve the sacred biodiversity of this Earth. By exploring new technologies and sustainable processes of production, we can learn to work with Nature instead of against it.

With the Waste to Wonder Center, we intend to drastically clean up and restore the natural ecosystems within Southern California, infuse Riverside with educational and employment related opportunities, and empower the innovations developed by Paragon for even greater and broader applications.