Two tiny steps and a 15-minute kiss launched the 40-year marriage of Daniel Knapp and Mary Lou Van Deventer. The couple lives close to the Richmond border in Contra Costa County and are co-founders of Berkeley-based Urban Ore, a material recovery enterprise in operation since 1980.
Knapp, 84, is a sociologist most noted in the professional reuse, recycling and composting field for establishing his 12 Master Categories of Discarded Resources. Van Deventer, 80, is an environmental journalist with a career prior to Urban Ore, where she now manages special projects. Together, they are leaders and active participants in the Northern California Recycling Association, Zero Waste Action Committee, the annual National Zero Waste Conference, and other regional and national activist and advocacy endeavors. They are parents of two adult daughters.
In an interview, Knapp said, “We met in Sacramento. Mary Lou came to the brown bag lunch where I was the speaker. I was talking about the revolutionary niche recycling business of scavenging in a landfill. More importantly, because I was hitchhiking to get home, she told me about a bus I could take. When I got to the station, she was there. She took two tiny steps in my direction, but when we got on the bus, I sat down alone. She then came to sit next to me, and we spent the whole trip talking. Those two steps, because I was so lonely, I’ll never forget.”…