FIVE-YEAR IMPACT REPORT
Circular Impact
Five years of results, from the day the Innovation Barn opened its doors on September 17, 2021.
Since opening in September 2021, the Innovation Barn and the Landfill Project have grown from a handful of pilots into a working circular economy for Charlotte: businesses launched, materials kept in use, and tens of thousands of residents, students and volunteers engaged.
Featured on the cover of Newsweek (2023) as one of five cities “leading the way to a greener world,” and winner of the 2024 Smart Cities Building & Infrastructure Award in Barcelona for the Glass to Concrete program.
The Innovation Barn opened on September 17, 2021 with one question: could a single building prove that a circular economy works at city scale? Five years on, this report consolidates 14 semi-annual program reports into one view, tracking how the Barn advances entrepreneurship, innovation and economic mobility through the circular economy, and how a sister program, named the Landfill Project, a pre-regulatory landfill site that has been put back to productive use.
What the reports show
The arc, year by year
The Innovation Barn opens on September 17 — a former City vehicle-maintenance building reborn as Charlotte’s circular economy hub, with five founding tenants, a micro MRF, a plastics lab and a demonstration kitchen.
Barn welcomes 20,000 visitors and 3,500 volunteer hours · 1st Clean the Queen (350+ volunteers) · education center master plan funded and completed · glass crusher secured for the Glass to Concrete pilot.
Landfill Project lease; Carolina Urban Lumber and Crown Town Landscapes move in · Change Please training café opens · 58T of drywall diverted · first three education exhibits installed · Newsweek cover feature · tenants grow from 5 to 11.
Adrina Farms container farms go live · reusable cups launched in the Plaza Midwood Social District · City passes the “smart surfaces” ordinance · $125,000 Lowe’s Hometown grant · first recycled-glass concrete sidewalks in Charlotte · Smart Cities award in Barcelona · Truist funds the Crush Truck · Mecklenburg County funds a Barn educator.
Canteen/Cuisines commercial kitchen opens · 4th Clean the Queen (500+ volunteers, 40+ companies) · The Mill NC launches · 135,000 SF of carpet tile salvaged from Duke Energy’s former HQ · new NC high school course code, Aquaponics 1 · tenants peak at 15 · Atrium Health medical-plastics 3D printing proof of concept.
Entrepreneur in Residence program launched to scale the Crush Truck · first Innovation Barn Summer Camp · The Bulb’s largest reported six-month diverson total (222,439 lbs) · POTIONS & PIXELS partners with CPCC on the SkillBuild workforce program · Change Please exits; a new local café concept is set for October 2026.
Three indicators tell the story of the Barn as a destination. The tenant base tripled through mid-2025 before settling at 12 organizations. Weekly visitors and Saturday attendance grew every year from 2023 through 2025.
’23 H2
’23 H1
’24 H2
’24 H1
’25 H2
’25 H1
’26
A tenant mix that matured
100 Gardens, The Bulb, Change Please, Crown Town Composting, Aeroponic Grow Towers.
Micro MRF, plastics lab, coffee bar, demonstration kitchen, event and training space.
Envision Charlotte, 100 Gardens, The Bulb, Crown Town Compost, Crown Town Landscapes, Crown Town Farms, Canteen, Adrina Farms, Ekologicall, POTIONS & PIXELS, Giddy Goat, and/or café.
Micro MRF, plastics lab, café, commercial kitchen, event and training space, two container farms, algae wall, redesigned South Lawn.
Organizations incubated or accelerated along the way also include Springclean, The Mill NC, Waxhaw Worm Farm, PowerUP USA, Charlotte Mushroom Works (formerly Southern Spore Works), MUSH!, Belovd Foods, CLTvate Farms, Carolina Urban Lumber, Chi Catering, RePour and Champagne & Hunee.
Demonstrating circular solutions at scale
The Barn and its tenants showcase working models for keeping materials in use, focused on the four waste streams identified in Charlotte’s 2018 Metabolic study: organics, plastics, textiles, and construction & demolition. Glass became a fifth signature stream.
Documented totals only: figures reported for a defined period. Streams reported as ongoing rates — glass now exceeds a ton per week — are described below but not included.
By material stream
Building businesses and jobs
The Barn’s model is to give problem-solvers space, partners and a public stage. Since opening it has created 86+ jobs and launched five new businesses, several of which now employ people well beyond the Barn.
Signature story: Glass to Concrete
Envision Charlotte secures a glass crusher to pilot turning bottles into sand for concrete.
8 tons crushed. A local concrete manufacturer tests the material and finds it stronger than natural sand at 30% replacement. The Barn’s restroom hallway showcases 250 bottles in the floor.
The City passes a “smart surfaces” ordinance allowing recycled materials in construction. 7 tons of Barn glass go into new sidewalks — Charlotte’s first public recycled-glass sidewalk installation. The program wins the 2024 Smart Cities Building & Infrastructure Award in Barcelona, and Truist funds the electric Crush Truck.
The Crush Truck collection from bars and restaurants started scaling at half a ton, then to more than a ton per week. Envision Charlotte explores a program with CDOT to use glass in City sidewalk refurbishment.
An Entrepreneur in Residence program is created to hand the Crush Truck model to a local entrepreneur to scale.
Workforce development and innovation pilots
Trained 29+ people experiencing homelessness as baristas with wraparound services. It placed 62.5% of trainees in jobs against a 50% goal, and the Charlotte café helped raise $1.2 million to expand the program nationally.
4,200 stainless-steel cups put into circulation in Plaza Midwood, preventing tens of thousands of single-use plastic cups.
Advised IKEA, Spectrum Center, NoDa Brewing, Truist, Lincoln Partners, Sunbelt Rentals, Microsoft, Ally, Asana Partners and Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen on circular goals.
Partnered with Solid Waste Services at the Lovin’ Life Music Festival to recover roughly 11,500 cans, 4,700 plastic bottles and 1,430 lbs of glass — a step toward a zero-waste event playbook for Charlotte.
A living micro-algae wall with UNCC Architecture to cut building energy use, now testing spirulina, a potentially edible algae; and a proof of concept with Atrium Health turning saline bottles into 3D-printed objects.
POTIONS & PIXELS hosted 6 Game Industry Gatherings and partnered with CPCC on the SkillBuild certification program.
Engaging and educating Charlotte
The Barn is open to the public and built for learners from age 8 to 80. It has become a place where residents, students, corporate teams and visiting delegations see the circular economy working.
Programs that grew
Grew from 30 visitors per Saturday in 2023 to over 200 in 2026, with workshops, tours and volunteering.
A citywide Earth Week cleanup with Solid Waste Services and Keep Mecklenburg Beautiful: 350+ volunteers in 2022 and 500+ in both 2023 and 2025, joined by 40+ companies in 2025. The 2025 event collected 564 bags of litter and rehomed 17,000+ lbs of design samples, for a four-year total of 31 tons.
Over 29,000 volunteer hours have been logged in total — 29,248 and counting. Some of what that looks like: 3,500 hours in 2022; 4,200 hours in the first half of 2023 alone, and 3,500 unique volunteers across that year, when standing corporate partnerships were formed with Ally, Bank of America and Honeywell. From January 2025 to June 2026 The Bulb logged 9,700+ hours, and Envision Charlotte engaged about 1,500 volunteers from mid-2025 to mid-2026.
Interactive exhibits on plastics, materials and energy (2023), a Conference of Mayors curriculum grant, a Mecklenburg County-funded educator on staff since 2025, and the first Innovation Barn Summer Camp in 2026.
100 Gardens operates 37 aquaponics gardens and growing, and created a new NC high school course, Aquaponics 1. Its programs have awarded 860 elementary “Aquaneers” certificates, and 98% of students report positive emotions after a Barn field trip.
A $125,000 Lowe’s Hometown grant transformed the South Lawn with 400+ native trees, shrubs and perennials, ADA access, shade pergolas and recycled-glass sidewalks. An urban orchard co-funded by Tito’s Handmade Vodka was added alongside.
Putting a pre-regulatory landfill to work
Since March 2023, Envision Charlotte has subleased a pre-regulatory landfill site, named the Landfill Project to two tenants that turn Charlotte’s organic debris into products. Carolina Urban Lumber mills urban trees into lumber, slabs and firewood. Crown Town Landscapes composts and screens yard waste for reuse on lawns and landscapes across the city. Together they employ four to five people on site.
Figures marked with an asterisk are estimates based on the weekly intake rate in that period’s report. The Landfill Project figures for July–December 2025 were not available.
Urban trees with a second life
Collaborated to mill trees removed from the site back into the new buildings.
Repurposed 50 trees from the Freedom Park construction site into the museum’s renovation.
Reused logs from major clearing projects.
Carolina Urban Lumber sells locally milled lumber to the public at its retail store.
The most recent reports point to the next phase of impact.
Scaling glass recycling through the Entrepreneur in Residence program, and pursuing recycled-glass concrete for CDOT sidewalk projects to save the City money and advance SEAP goals.
Expanding reusable-cup programs to additional Social Districts.
Growing youth education through Summer Camp, Deputy of Diversion and 100 Gardens’ new high school course.
Refreshing the Barn’s café with a new local concept starting October 2026.
As reported in each semi-annual program report. H1 = January–June; H2 = July–December. “—” = not reported. Where a report changed how a metric was counted, the unit is noted.
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