Matthew Naimi stands in the doorway of his 300,000-square-foot, unheated warehouse surveying the scene before him. He leans back on his boot heels, hands shoved deep inside his Carhartt bib overalls.

The parking lot is brimming with customers despite the polar vortex quickly sliding its way into Detroit, with roads starting to ice and temperatures falling fast. Customers drive up in cars. Customers walk up pushing buggies. A few come off the bus. Customers, all, bringing their recycling toon Holden Street just south of Detroit's New Center area.

"This is caveman-style recycling," said Naimi, founder and director of operations at the nonprofit. "You have to sort it, put it in your car, bring it here."

By the time he closes the doors that afternoon, 1,867 visitors will have dropped off bottles, cans, glass, plastic, cardboard, paper and magazines. Recycle Here takes anything that can be recycled, not just items that are accepted in regular curbside pickup, such as electronics and Styrofoam.

But Recycle Here itself could be heading toward the trash heap of history.

When the city of Detroit decided to privatize waste hauling services last fall, the announcement elicited cheers by many residents because it included curbside recycling, something that isn't currently offered.

But the announcement also left the future of Recycle Here in limbo.

The nonprofit is funded through an $18,000-a-month contract with the city, and Naimi said he has not been told whether it will be extended onceandtake over trash hauling and recycling in May.

"What we have created is a recycling program in a municipality that had no infrastructure," said Niami. "We identified what works. We know the people. We have the data. It's a best practice. But if the city stops funding us, Recycle Here closes its doors."

The city itself is uncertain about Recycle Here's future. Its services have not been written into the contracts with Rizzo or Advanced Disposal.

"As the city of Detroit expands curbside recycling opportunities to all of our residents, the Department of Public Works will review the current drop-off contract with Recycle Here and make a determination at the appropriate time if it is in the citizens of the city's best interest to continue this contract," said Bill Nowling, the spokesman for Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr.

Matt Naimi came to recycling in one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction ways.

His family owned the warehouse on Holden Street, which was originally the firstwarehouse. But in 1997, Naimi had the chance to take it over if he could pay off the back taxes. He did ... and then wondered what to do with to do with the sprawling, unheated infrastructure.

He started by building out a few music studios in the building because friends were always complaining about the lack of needed practice space. But you'll run out of musicians before you run out of space in a 300,000-square-foot bunker.

So when a trash hauling company asked to rent the building, Naimi agreed. He said he went to the city and got a solid waste transfer permit, and then signed a five-year lease. That company, however, was quickly bought out and closed by a larger trash hauler. But it paid out Naimi on the lease.

"So I bought a couple of trucks and started hauling trash," Naimi said. "I don't do white papers. I just look at opportunities and make the most of them."

He specialized in picking up recycling from construction sites — "the only way you could compete with the bigger players was to find a niche," he said — and word got around that he was the man in town to talk to about greening and recycling issues.

Still, it caught Naimi by surprise when a woman found him as he was getting out of his car in the dark of night.

"She chased me down the street, yelling that she wanted to start recycling in the Cass Corridor," he remembered.

Naimi agreed to install a dumpster outside thein midtown Detroit, knowing it would be easy to service on his regular rounds.

At the time it seemed like a subtle shift, but this one dumpster would soon become his future.

In late 2005, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and he knew he wanted to get out of the trash hauling hustle and focus just on what was becoming Recycle Here.

"When I got sick, part of it was stress levels and pushing myself and chasing dollars," Naimi said. "I don't want to chase dollars. I like bringing people together, designing systems. Greed almost killed me, and I'm not all that greedy."

He sold off the trucks and began talking to the city about his proposal for a drop-off location to handle residents' recycling and an education outreach program focused on recycling and how to access city services.

Recycle Here's doors officially opened on Holden Street on Jan. 6, 2007. Fifty people showed up.

In the intervening seven years, Recycle Here has incorporated into a nonprofit,, and grown from being open two days a week to three at the Holden Street location (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday). It hosts 1,200 to 1,400 people every Saturday.

It also operates mobile operations in Eastern Market, Indian Village and Clark Park/Creekside. Thealso contracts with Recycle Here to provide bimonthly pickup service of items it cannot collect in its all-volunteer program.

Even more important to Naimi is the educational outreach efforts that Rachel Klegon, executive director of Green Living Science, operates in theand with other schools and small businesses. Recycle Here raises $4,000 to $6,000 in a good month selling off recycling in the commodities markets, and every dollar goes back into the group's work to teach kids how to recycle and how to access city services.

"Our little 'agents of change' go home and encourage their parents, teach their parents," said Naimi. "I'm not trying to save every Styrofoam cup; I'm trying to give everybody the opportunity to do the right thing. If you want to be green, we give you that opportunity. We teach you how."

To fund this work, Naimi has a secondary business selling biodegradable cups and take-out containers to local businesses and national festivals. You'll findinand

The idea grew after local festival organizers talked to Naimi about recycling their beer cups. That proved almost impossible, short of policing every trash can. What was possible, however, was selling them environmentally responsible cups.

It turned out to be a good gamble. Green Safe has grown from cups to more than 450 products and seen revenue grow at least 35 percent per year since it was founded in 2007. Last year, it did just more than $2.5 million in sales.

"We grow like a weed," said Steve Harworth, president of Green Safe. "We do a ton of local, small companies. We don't really do the chains. It's a small network down here, and we all know each other."

Avalon was one of Green Safe's first customers and currently orders between $800 and $1,000 in product each week.

"I said a lot of people would be interested in this stuff," said Avalon co-owner Ann Perrault. "Now he has a business that's at least three times as big as ours. I joke I should have taken out stock."

But Naimi doesn't just sell biodegradable products, he also offers small businesses recycling pickup on the back end.

That service,, currently has approximately 60 customers, includingand. But Naimi has no interest in getting back into the trash hauling business, so he purposely keeps the scale small.

He served Avalon until Perrault's needs exceeded what Recycle Green could manage.

"At the end of the day, the way we do it is two men and a truck," he said. "It's not the most efficient thing. When we reach capacity, where it's overwhelming for us, then we have a partner that we shift our clients over to. What we are and always will be is basically a transition."

And the market for trash pickup is about to get bigger because small businesses will soon have to find their own trash services.

"The solid waste contracts, once executed, will only provide for service to our residential customers," said Nowling. "The city anticipates continuing to provide service to commercial customers through the end of the current fiscal year."

Still Naimi isn't thinking about going after that market. He'd rather focus on the recycling needs of local small business clients and helping to educate and train their staffs, teaching them how to separate and think ecologically.

"We live in a city where we need to do a lot of cleanup, so running a business with about 70 employees and trying to teach people what it is to recycle ... that's hard," Perrault said.

"Matt has created education and movies that I can just say, 'OK, you guys, you've got to watch this.' That's easier for me, and he's changing the culture of dealing with garbage and waste in an ecological way."

And Naimi sees a way for curbside recycling and a drop-off program to co-exist because Recycle Here can focus on education and taking items that Rizzo and Allied won’t pick up, such as electronics, Styrofoam and many plastics.

“We think that we are an asset to the city of Detroit,” Naimi said. “We created this program to address the needs of Detroit citizens. If you’re trying to build a city back, you need to do what made cities in the first place. That’s talking to your neighbors, getting involved, building the social contract. That’s what we do… How else would we get 1,800 people through our doors in the snow?”