The sponsoring City Councilor is someone I know, and I wrote her this note:
Thanks for your good work on the plastics ordinance. As you know, I’ve been a green guy for 50 years, write books and give talks on greening business. One of my talks is called “Making Green Sexy.” Thus, the concerns I have with the plastics bill you’re championing are not about the intent. I would like to see potential problems addressed before it becomes law–so we avoid a debacle like the one we just had over the Main Street improvements (which I loved) and their sad, swift demise).
My big concern is that “recyclable” food containers aren’t recyclable, because paper and cardboard with food waste is not recyclable. We already know we’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes. Any food waste in paper for recycling could cause the whole batch (potentially thousands of pounds) to be landfilled. It would make more sense to 1) require compostable, and 2) provide city composting stations in several neighborhoods as well as multiple ones downtown. It makes no sense to require compostable and do nothing to encourage composting. Many people will eat their food while still downtown and won’t be bothered to bring their compostable containers to their home compost pile or may not have access to composting at home.
Second, on the straw issue [banning plastic drinking straws]. Why not simply make an exemption for people with motor disabilities in their arms or mouth. For most businesses, a box of 100 plastic straws would probably last months.
Please share this note with your committee at today’s meeting.
We see over and over again that good intentions, not thought through, create more problems than they solve. The Main Street issue involved the city making its extremely wide Main Street much friendlier to bicyclists, pedestrians, and patrons of restaurant outdoor dining areas (which, in the pandemic, have increased in number tremendously)—but failing to get buy-in from (or even consult with) affected business owners, who agitated successfully, and the mayor removed all the improvements. This was sad, as a better situation returned to a worse one, wasting significant money in the process.
In my mind, the lesson was to think things through before acting.
I got this response, which shows that the councilors are indeed thinking about these issues:
Hi Shel- thanks for your support and counsel! Straws for those with disabilities are exempt. We are requiring reusable or compostable and are working on composting services and bulk buying.
Which then says to me that they’ve got a marketing challenge. The general public doesn’t know about this exemption. They also had a marketing challenge with the Main Street improvements. Getting affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them is always a good strategy. Putting in improvements only to discover that vested interests will fight them is not. The trick is to win over those vested interests before they dig in their heels.
I’ve cited Patagonia many times as an example of a company that gets a lot of things right. Social responsibility is part of its DNA and has been from the very beginning. I was very intersted to learn about some of the initiatives under Marcario’s leadership, and particularly the open embrace of political activism.
For decades, the rule has been “no politics nor religion in business.” That’s gone. If you say nothing or try to stay neutral, you’re voting. If a company takes money and does business with an organization a person doesn’t support, this might be grounds to do business elsewhere.
He’s absolutely right. If you don’t declare your values, the world assumes you support the status quo. And when the status quo is untenable, that choice is not good for business.
An article called “Build Back Better,” offered eight ways we can mitigate the climate crisis as we reopen. It’s on the Singapore-based Eco-Business site (often a wealth of fresh thinking to my American eyes)
I’d only read a couple of paragraphs when I got the idea to start a community on the theme of building back better—but not just for climate change. I envision a portal with resources and ideas to create better futures in criminal justice/policing, nonviolent defense, immigration, equitable housing, transportation, community food self-sufficiency, education, the work world, democracy… There’s a ton of great stuff out there, but I’m not aware of a one-stop resource that crosses silos, and disciplines, reaches people with a wide range of passions, interests, skills, and demographics, and has the power to create change.
While it certainly builds on the work I’ve been doing for several years at Going Beyond Sustainability, I see it as a community project that would seek ideas both from thought leaders/subject experts and from “ordinary” people (none of us is actually ordinary; all of us are unique).
And use social media, press outreach, and other tools to get it in front of leaders in government, business, academia, nonprofit, etc. After all, every major site started small, even Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. Using the power of the Internet, this could evolve rapidly to a place that journalists and politicians turn to for sources and advice.
I got so juiced that I stopped reading, ran off to GoDaddy, and scooped up build-back-better dot net (not using the domain syntax because there’s no site up yet so I don’t want it clickable). Most of the more obvious variations were already taken, which tells me there could be some traction in the concept. Only after I secured the domain did I go back and finish reading the article. UPDATE, JULY 9: I’m now thinking it might be better to come up with a cool, brandable single-word name (and I have a few possibilities in mind)–rather than a three-word name whose meaning isn’t all that obvious.
So…who wants to play? If it’s going to fly, it’s going to need volunteers:
Thinkers and doers: researchers, authors, activists, business and community leaders, students, etc., who could post ideas-in-progress and let the community help those ideas evolve into workable solutions
Web designers who can handle complex threading and submission forms that allow people to submit and subscribe by specific idea, by topic heading, and overall—and who have a deep understanding of Internet security and SEO
Topic leaders who are experts in their subject and can moderate submissions so the spammers, trolls, and nut-jobs have to play someplace else—but who will put up actual ideas that are submitted in their area, even if they personally don’t see them as workable. (That would be an ideal opportunity to help them think their idea through. Post the submission and immediately post a comment that doesn’t put down the idea but grounds them in reality, with questions like “have you thought about what could happen if…?” “Do you think this could also be useful in (a different discipline)?” “What resources would this
Residents of Wadajir, Somalia attend a meeting on community policing. Photo by David Mutui, courtesy Wikipedia Commons
require and how would you go after them?”
Influencers (including journalists, bloggers, marketers, people operating successful online communities, people with a big fan base or lots of social media connections) who can bring the site to the attention of their networks
Revenue generators who would work on commission to raise money for hack-proof site operation, and eventually raise enough to start paying volunteers
Obviously, this is only a preliminary sketch. If you’d like to be part of this, use my contact form (on my sister site, Going Beyond Sustainability) to get in touch.
We still have a long way to go on eco-friendly packaging. I just finished a box of crackers. I washed out the plastic tray and will add it to the plastics recycling bag when it dries, put the box in the paper recycling bin, and threw away the shrink-wrap around the tray in the actual trash.
Excess packaging: cracker box, tray, and inner shrink-wrap. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Most people won’t bother to do all this. Designers: this is a profit opportunity for you: create packaging that people only have to put in one place when it’s over, and that can be repurposed later–and remember that today’s compostable “solution” is only an alternative if people have access to an industrial compost facility. Most people don’t.
And businesses: as you adopt truly eco-friendly packaging, you’ve got a branding and marketing opportunity.
This challenge is based in Singapore. Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons.
Just found this announcement as an ad on a story I clicked on in Eco-Business, an Asian environmental newsletter that often has cool and unusual stories. If you have a project needing funding in urban food production, circular packaging, or decarbonization that could work in an urban tropical area like Singapore, get thee over to The Livability Challenge page. RIGHT NOW.
Finalists in The Liveability Challenge 2020 could secure the following:
• Up to S$1 million in funding by Temasek Foundation•
• 1-year venture building package at The Circularity Studio •
• A mentorship with Closed Loop Partners •
• A spot in TXG Sustainability Business Accelerator Program •
• and more to be unveiled •
I have not vetted and have no more information other than what’s on that page. But if you enter and get selected, I’d love to know that you heard about it from me. In fact, if you have a cool idea like that and have no interest in the contest or aren’t chosen, please share it. If I like your idea, I’ll give you a brief marketing consultation, no charge. And I might ask if I can feature you in an article or blog post. Of course, I won’t disclose your idea to anyone without your written permission.
Yesterday and today, I’ve listened to a bunch of the EarthDayLive2020 conference. It’s exciting to see this intergenerational, intercultural, and very smart group of activists and performers attracting thousands of viewers over Zoom.
One speaker, Erica Chenowith, tossed off a remark that changed everything I think about the 2020 US presidential election. She said—and this is so clear after all the progressives exited the race—that we get involved with this election not to choose our ally but to choose our adversary (she used the term “enemy,” but I think my term gets her meaning more accurately).
This, to me, might be the secret sauce for getting progressives to come out and vote. In this scenario, Biden migrates from lesser evil to far, far better adversary. With a moderate and relatively honest Democrat in the White House, progressives will have a much easier time moving our agenda forward. Biden will be more pliable on economic issues, on the social safety net, and on the environment. He is no Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but he is someone who does listen, and who occasionally changes his mind—as he did on same-sex marriage. In the Bill Clinton era, he supported the horrid DOMA, but he pushed Obama well to the left when marriage equality came to the tipping point.
He is already likely to reinstate the US into the Paris Climate Accord. Once he understands how the Green New Deal will create jobs, put discretionary spending into people’s pockets, and reduce our vulnerability both to foreign oil oligarchs and to runaway multinational corporations—thus reducing the risk of war—I think he would support it or at least not interfere with it.
In other words, a Biden administration would be a much more welcome adversary. It would be more humane, more willing to work with other countries, interested in preserving rather than destroying the environment—and far more predictable. And it would be a complete rejection of the apparent main goal of the current occupant: to make himself even richer and everyone else be damned. In other words, Biden will be someone who will respond as we would like him to, at least some of the time—and who is unlikely to ever engage in the viciously destructive hate-based politics we see every day.
There’s ample precedent. LBJ, the long-time Southern politician, not JFK, the liberal icon, was the one who signed several pieces of civil rights legislation and declared war on poverty. Richard Nixon, a Republican and anticommunist extremist, was probably the president who did the most to protect the environment other than perhaps Obama–not because he believed in the cause, but because public outcry left him no other choice. (Of course, the good work Johnson and Nixon did on these issues in no way gives them a pass around the Vietnam war, domestic repression, etc.)
I’d love to hear from progressives who take electoral politics seriously—is this the way we attract young disillusioned progressives who are ready to sit out the election because we are once again stuck with a centrist candidate who doesn’t really represent us? Please weigh in
50 years ago today, Earth Day was launched as a one-time event. Who would know it would not only become annual but turn into a massive worldwide movement that has changed our world for the better in so many ways?
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
The Environmental Movement is Now Mainstream
Since that first Earth Day, we’ve made a lot of progress. A few examples:
Public awareness of climate issues–and of the lifestyle changes we can make to improve things–is at an all-time high
Millions of people have taken to the streets to demand action on climate
Science has made huge strides in areas ranging from green energy to biomimicry; amazing new green technologies are constantly becoming more efficient, less expensive, and more deployable
Many countries have shifted away from fossil and nuclear toward clean technoogies such as solar, wind, and hydro–and these technologies are much more efficient than they were 50 years ago
Veganism and vegetarianism (two of the easiest ways to reduce our personal climate footprint) are far more accepted, even in places like Germany that used to be quite hostile)
From bringing our own reusable bags (pre-COVID) to discovering foods like tofu, the way we shop and eat has drastically shifted, even for those still eating meat
Nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris Climate Accord (which doesn’t go nearly far enough, and which the current US administration has pledged to leave–but it’s a start)
A 16-year-old Swedish climate activist addressed the UN, arriving in the US aboard a green-energy boat (yes, I’m talking about Greta Thunberg)
Almost every major company has at least a sustainability coordinator, if not a whole department–and these folks have drastically reduced the negative impact of business on the environment
Here in the US, the well-thought-out Green New Deal is getting serious attention
We’re beginning to recognize climate justice: looking at the environment from a lens that includes economic and social justice issues, such as why so many polluting plants are in poor communities and why so many of those communities are “food deserts” with little or no access to healthy foods
My Environmental Journey Started That Day
I was 13, and I was one of the people “captured” by that first Earth Day. Ever since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to, and taken a lot of action on, ways I can live more lightly–and how I can help others, both individuals and institutions, make that shift.
This has taken many forms, from street activism to lobbying to addressing business audiences with messages on how to make green social entrepreneurship sexy and profitable to writing books that show how this can be done.
I’ve also made many lifestyle shifts, from biking 5 miles to high school at age 15 and becoming vegetarian at 16 to converting my house to a heat and hot water system using cow poop and food waste from our farmer neighbors at age 61 and carting unbagged groceries out to the reusable bags I keep in the car at 63 (since we can’t bring them into the stores anymore).
In my activist life, I’ve been lucky to participate in three major environmental victories:
In 1977, I was one of about 2,000 people and 1414 who got arrested at the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. We had no way of knowing that our action would birth a national safe energy movement. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote about why this action was so important. (The link is to Part 1 of my 5-part series. There’s a link to the next installment at the bottom of each earlier one.)
In 1984, I worked with my city counselor to get the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts. Very few communities had any protection for non-smokers at that time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that within a few years, most restaurants in town were non-smoking and that the number of restaurants in town increased significantly.
And in 1999, I founded and became the public face of the movement that saved a mountain right near my house.
It was the success of Save the Mountain that led me into the work of educating the business community on how to be profitable while saving the world.
This is not new. Social impact companies have been around at least since the mid-19th century, but it’s been on the fringe. Believe it or not, UK chocolate giant Cadbury was founded as a social impact company. But I think now we have the chance to change the entire business culture, so profitable business social and environmental responsibility becomes mainstream.
But There’s Still Lots to Be Done!
For all its positive presence, business is still a long way from solving problems it largely created. Pollution, resource depletion, and labor issues are just a few of many issues that need to be addressed, especially as world population grows faster than at any time in history. And governments are not always our allies. The present Brazilian and US federal governments, for instance, are actively sabotaging the eco-agenda. Each of us needs to make the difference we can make–and each of us CAN find a way to make that difference (contact me if you want help figuring out what the most impactful way for you and your business).
No Cost Resources and MY Gift to Help You Celebrate Earth Day THIS Year
Let’s start this Earth Day party off with something that will help you save energy, water, and money–my ebook, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. I normally sell this for $9.95, but as my Earth Day gift to you, you can get it at no cost. Just visit PainlessGreenBook.com and enter “earthdayblog” in the code box. This will also sign you up to my informative Clean and Green Club monthly newsletter.
Our national museum, the Smithsonian Institution, has organized an online Earth Optimism Summit with a fantastic lineup including Denis Hayes, who organized that 1970 Earth Day…Christiana Figueres, top negotiator of the Paris Accords…NASA’s former Chief Scientist and current director of the National Air And Space Museum Ellen Stofan…Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org (among many others)
Another national virtual summit, Earthday Live 2020, offers three days of programming and a strong social justice focus.
A group based near me in Western Massachusetts, Climate Action Now, offers several Earth Day events starting this evening with a 6:30 ET panel of legislators and activists. This may be especially interest if you live in Massachusetts, but it’s virtual and open to all.
There’s plenty in those three articles that absolutely makes sense in today’s world–but there’s also quite a bit that’s at least temporarily obsolete.
With tips about how to bring reusable containers into the stores and organizing used clothing sharing events, it made me nostalgic for that very recent time before everything changed. And with a strong focus on combining climate, waste, and social justice, it was a refreshing reminder at how much more aware even we green folks are than most of us were 20 or 30 years ago.
True, it’s a bit more challenging to maintain a green lifestyle these days. But for the planet, it’s been a chance to recharge. The enormous reduction in motor vehicles on the road, planes in the sky, and factories running at full capacity allows our air and water to clean and regenerate themselves. And not to be Malthusian (and certainly not that I think this is a good thing), but the massive wave of deaths does reduce strain on the earth’s resources.
These positive changes have been somewhat offset by a dramatic uptick of certain other resources. Medical equipment, sanitation products, and even toilet paper are in short supply–and even more concerning, so are the medical personnel and hospital beds. And I’m guessing that as a world population, we’re generating a lot more waste and reusing a lot less.
In our own two-person, one-cat house, we’ve shifted some things as well. Our new routines might provide useful examples of how to be protected while staying as green as practical, so I’ll share a few of the details.
Water Use
What with not only washing our hands constantly for a full 20 seconds but taking a new glass or spoon every time and throwing our clothes in the washing machine every time we go to the store, our water use is probably triple what it was. We used to run the dishwasher about two, maybe three times in a typical week; now it’s more like five or six.
But even when we’re washing our hands so many times per day, we don’t turn the water on full force, and we turn it off when we’re not actually rubbing our hands under the faucet. We use just enough water to do a good job.
Fortunately, our heat and hot water are both on a green system powered by residual heat from cow poop and food waste running through our farmer neighbors’ methane digesters, and we live in an area where water is not scarce.
Cleaning Supplies
We’re also using somewhat more disposable paper products–but not all that much. For years, we’ve tended to use rags rather than paper towels to clean surfaces or mop up spills. But we are using paper towels or wipes to do things like keep our hands from touching door handles going into or out of a public place, wiping down shopping carts, etc. And of course, disinfecting the packaging we buy is something we never did before, and that uses a few paper towels.
My wife made us each a reusable mask. Since we’re usually shopping no more than once a week, it’s easy to wash them between uses.
We are not stockpiling, and we think the idea is silly. We’ve always bought toilet paper in 12-roll packs, and when we’re about half through, we get another 12-pack. When our bottle of dish soap gets down to half, we buy one more bottle. These patterns have not changed.
We are using more laundry detergent. Normally, we use a reusable laundry ball in the washing machine. We still do for regular wash, but for those post-shopping loads, we use hot or warm water, which the laundry ball isn’t designed for. We are almost through the box of earth-friendly detergent we bought about four years ago, but when that’s done, we inherited a huge tub of Arm & Hammer natural laundry powder when my stepfather died in 2018. I expect that it will last us the rest of our lives, considering we mostly use the laundry ball.
Packaging
As green consumers, we don’t bring a huge amount of packaged food into the house to begin with, and we save reusable glass and plastic containers when we do. We actually choose our brands of yogurt and hummus in part by whether we can put the containers and lids through the dishwasher and reuse them–and we use them until they break, usually at least 20 times. (We also factor in taste, quality, and price, of course.) Since forever, we use those jars to store bulk beans and grains, spices, and flours. Now, if we buy boxed cereal, for example, we wipe down the box and then either take the inner liner out and put it in a box we just finished, or put the cereal in jars.
When we buy bread or loose produce, we remove it from the plastic bag it came from and put it in one we’ve had pre-crisis; we have an entire hamper full of them. Cans get washed down with disinfectant, but other than cat food (which we buy in cases so the cans are protected), a small amount of canned beans, and coconut milk, we used almost no canned products anyway.
Since we’re not driving much, we have the luxury of leaving non-perishables in the car for a few days to decontaminate on their own–and while we still disinfect when we bring them in, we’re not quite as hyper-vigilant
Most of our produce is harvested at or near our home by the CSA farm we belong to, farmers at the local farmers markets and farm stands, or in our own garden. We’re washing everything more carefully. We’re washing citrus with soap. We’re peeling items like salad carrots instead of just grating the peels in with the rest of the carrot–but leaving peels on for cooked foods when appropriate, since heat kills the virus.
For years, we’ve kept reusable totebags in the car and brought them with us into stores. Now, we leave them in the car, load everything back into the shopping cart, unbagged, after it’s scanned, and then load them into our own bags at the car. So we’re still not getting bags, for the most part. This does mean we avoid shopping on bad-weather days.
Transportation and Shopping Choices
We live out in the country, seven miles from town. We’ve always ganged our errands into as few trips as practical, but now we’ve become almost religious about it. Going through the decontamination process every time we go shopping is annoying enough that we’re trying to shop no more than weekly, and preferably every two weeks. When we go, we think about everything we might need for 14 days, where we can get it with the fewest stops (rather than the lowest prices), and what route minimizes the miles to visit those stores.
One of the greenest things to do at this time is to actively support local independent businesses. We’ve shifted a much bigger percentage of our shopping dollars to the businesses we want to make sure survive, the ones that make our community a desirable place to live. We’re also ordering more online from these local businesses, and either picking up curbside or getting things shipped.
And sadly, we can’t car pool anymore. When we meet our friend who lives a mile from us to hike together (10 feet apart), she and we arrive in separate cars.
I haven’t needed any clothing except a package of socks I ordered online and picked up curbside. I would probably not go to a used clothing store right now, because it could be a germ factory. But I did arrange no-contact pickups for some books someone was giving away on our local Buy Nothing community, and for some items I had to offer. I let the books sit in the car and I will wipe them down before I shelve them.
Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit grumpy (and a lot horrified) as the world shuts down to slow the spread of the killer virus COVID-19. But I also find myself being grateful for some of the changes.
Grumps (things I miss a lot)
Hugs (I still get them with my beloved spouse, thankfully)
Gathering with friends in person
Travel
Potlucks
Restaurants
US military photo of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
Gratitudes (places where I see improvement)
Gatherings of widely dispersed friends and family over Zoom (tonight, we’re hosting a Passover Seder with participants in seven US states)
Still finding ways to make new friends–like the Sustainability Director for a major US city who became my friend after we were in the same breakout room in a Zoom webinar (and who then had me present to her daughter’s online learning group of high school kids)
An explosion of “compassionate creativity,” from the Italians singing on their balconies to the outpouring of live and recorded concerts, Broadway shows, and more, to the business owners who still pay their idled staff
The people who are using this situation to examine where our society could be improved both now and even long after the crisis ends: developing new approaches in addressing the carbon/climate crisis, education, transportation, health care, bringing people out of poverty, and more
Watching people rediscover nature (all the hiking and biking trails near me are getting heavy use) and realize that there’s more to life than looking at screens all the time
While-you-wait résumés over Zoom and free résumé critiques by email—and if you’re unemployed because of the virus, your first cover letter is a gift when you get your résumé written (this is an offer from me personally)
What are your highlights in this time? Please post in the comments.
