Category: localism/locavore

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, localism/locavore Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday, two long-awaited and seemingly unrelated milestone events occurred in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts (where I live) and Vermont.

  1. Passenger train service was restored to Northampton and Greenfield, MA. The first commercial passenger trains since 1987 to use the Connecticut River tracks between Springfield, MA and Brattleboro,  VT made initial northbound and southbound runs between New York City and St. Albans, VT (a tiny village at the Canadian border). While only one train per day in each direction will make this run, it marks a rare expansion of long-distance passenger rail service in the US. Plans call for adding a stop at Holyoke, MA once that station is rebuilt in 2016, and there’s discussion of running several commuter trains a day at some point in the future—which would allow people to actually substitute train travel for driving.
  2. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, opened in 1972,was taken off the grid and permanently shut down. This GE Mark I plant, which uses a reactor design nearly identical to Fukushima’s, has been operating unsafely since its earliest days—I’ve seen an excerpt from the long, long official government safety issues report of March, 1974, and it isn’t pretty—and illegally under Vermont law for nearly three years (since March, 2012).

The forces that created these two events were very different: government efforts for the train, a combination of citizen activism and market conditions for the shutdown. But several common threads across the wider map of society show that these victories are actually linked. Both were responses to growing perceptions that:

  • We need to think bioregionally
  • We have to create energy and resource sustainability
  • Both of these milestones will create the kind of economic impact we want to see: moving toward conservation, renewable, safe energy sources and transit-oriented development boosts, smaller, local businesses and encourages changes in consumer use patterns
  • Both are better for the environment (do NOT let anyone try to tell you that nukes are environmentally benign—the claim of lower carbon footprint is false if you count the entire fuel cycle, and the environmental consequences of an accident are catastrophic)
  • Citizens, individuals, can make a difference—in our use patterns as well as our advocacy
  • Change is possible, even when it looks hopeless

Of course, there’s more work to be done.

To make the train viable, they really need extend service to Montreal, as was true in the distant past. Reasonably priced service between NYC and Montreal  (also serving population centers en route: Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford, CT; Springfield, MA; Burlington, VT) will keep a lot more of the seats occupied and create economic viability that will be hard to find if the train ends in nowheresville. Even from NYC, when you count time driving to the airport, time at the airport, and time getting from the airport to an inner-city final destination, train travel within a few hundred miles would not be that much slower than flying, and a good deal more pleasant. From Northampton or Greenfield, MA, it’s a no-brainer. Rather than drive 40 or 60 minutes south to the airport and getting there 90 minutes before a flight, ride the comfortable train in the direction you want to go. By the time you would have boarded the plane, you could already be in central Vermont, half-way to Montreal.

And to really boost the economy without Vermont Yankee, we need even more activity on solar, wind, geothermal, deep conservation, etc. We have to make up the loss to the power grid, and replace the jobs the plant had provided. The good news? Investment in these technologies creates a lot more jobs—22 times as many if you count construction jobs, and 148 times as many permanent jobs—than the same expenditure in nuclear, and a lot of that filters down to the more economically marginal who can get good jobs in these sectors.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with ,

This week, a judge ruled that the Business Improvement District in Northampton, Massachusetts was organized without following certain laws. The judge ordered the immediate dissolution of the BID, putting several people out of work and leaving the city bereft of services it had performed.

For the past few years, the BID has cleaned the streets of downtown Northampton, maintained its planters, helped the city with snow removal, funded the holiday light decorations, and organized or assisted with various special events to promote the downtown business and arts  communities.

No one doubts that the organization did great work. But from its inception in 2009, it’s been fraught with controversy. Northampton BID was empowered by the City Council to negotiate contracts to perform these services in March, 2009—and just five weeks later—even before the BID was officially formed in July, 2009—a group of dissenting downtown property owners filed a suit claiming the petition signatures for the formation of the BID were not properly collected or certified. The BID could only form if at the owners of at least 297 properties within the proposed district agreed.

There was controversy over whether the enabling law wanted the count based on parcels or property owners—an important distinction, since many property owners owned multiple parcels. As the BID collected them, owners were allowed to vote once for each piece of property they owned or controlled in the district. One owner signed 15 times.

But there was also controversy about several other areas:

  1. Had enough diligence been expended to verify that the signatures were legible and that they were from people with ownership or delegated authority? The judge invalidated 63 that he could not read, bringing the critical mass well below 297, and strongly criticized the city government for failing to check the signatures carefully.
  2. Was it ethical to redraw the district’s boundary lines prior to formation, to include more properties owned by supporters (including Smith College, by afar the largest landowner in the downtown area) and exclude several owned by opponents?
  3. Membership fees paid for all the services the BID performed. When the BID was accepted in 2009, membership was voluntary. But a change to state law in 2012 made membership compulsory.
  4. A July, 2014 vote on whether to extend the BID’s charter through 2019 used voter eligibility rules that excluded all the people who were forced to join in 2012, and passed 40-0.

As someone who has written two books and used to write a column on business ethics, I find that these other issues sway me. No matter how much good the BID does, it cannot justify its actions as an organization that tramples on the rights of its opponents.

When you tell people that an organization has a voluntary membership, and then you make it mandatory to join and pay dues, that’s wrong. And it’s even more wrong to then exclude the recalcitrant members from voting on the organization’s future. It brings to mind words like “deceitful” and “slimy.” And yes, when your charter depends on certifying participation, you make sure those participants are properly certified.

The Sky Won’t Fall

It is a hardship when people are put out of work just before the holidays, with no notice. I feel sorry for the BID’s workers, and I hope the business community steps forward to hire those folks, even if the jobs are temporary.  While it would have made more sense to me if the judge had ordered a more gradual phaseout, letting the organization honor its commitments and its payroll for a couple of months to deal with past obligations and commitments already made, I disagree with BID proponents who seem to think the sky will fall.

Yes, it will be a scramble to get a holiday lighting program in place in time for the retail season. But it can be done. Presumably, it will not be difficult to transfer the contract from BID to the Chamber of Commerce or some other organization.

Yes, it’s going to impact the downtown when the BID employees who’ve been picking up trash stop doing it. But the city has a Department of Public Works.

The BID did not exist until five years ago. And the downtown thrived. When another program, the Northampton Honor Court, stopped picking up the downtown trash, it was a hardship and the downtown definitely looked more tired. But others stepped into the breach.

Again, I support the good work that the BID performed. But I do not support a process that’s tantamount to bullying, don’t support a double standard for BID supporters and opponents, and think it’s completely immoral to bring the organization in as a voluntary effort and then change the rules. Yes, I recognize that it was the state, and not the local BID, that changed the rules, but the blame for rigging the election to continue under the new terms is most definitely local, and deeply unfair.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , ,

Maybe my family’s organic garden (and my neighborhood) is a microcosm of the changes in the world ;-). We normally stop getting zucchini by the end of July. Last year, it went halfway through August. And this year, the one surviving plant finally died today, and I harvested the last two very tiny zukes on October 7. The season was approximately five weeks longer than usual,even though hey like hot weather and we pretty much didn’t have any.

Tomatoes, on the other hand, are normally extremely prolific until the first killing frost, usually very late in October. This year, the season peaked in early August, and even at its peak, we had far fewer than usual. I did manage to put a few pints of sauce in the freezer, and a few jars of dried tomatoes in the pantry, but the abundance that normally covers our entire counter never materialized—and the tomatoes had pretty much gone away by September 1, producing only one or two not-so-big tomatoes (many of them bloghted) and a handful of cherry tomatoes every few days since then. Normally, our six plants produce two or three dozen every day this time of year.

Our berry bushes were odd this year, too. The one blueberry plant gave one to two pints a day for about ten days, but one of our raspberry plants produced next to nothing, and the other a fairly paltry amount. On the very best day,I got half a pint. Ditto our blackberry bush. Normally,I’m able to put several pints by. This year, I managed to gather together and freeze a single half-pint of mixed blackberries and raspberries in July; we ate the rest as it came in, and it wasn’t much. But the bigger raspberry plant actually produced about eight very tasty fruits in September, a time when we’ve never gotten berries from it before.

Our celery was severely stunted, only about six inches high and mostly leaves, on very thin stalks. In the past, we’ve had celery that looked as good as supermarket varieties. We grew potatoes for the first time, and they came out great.

Nobody cultivates them, but I like to go gather Russian olives this time of year. I went to one of the two groves I know and found a total of one berry from several dozen plants. Fortunately, I know another grove, which was its usual prolific self.

Farmer neighbors who grow winter squash did not get a crop this year. Neither did several of the local apple farmers.

In short, not-normal is the new normal in the garden. Do you think, just maybe, global climate change has something to do with it?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, localism/locavore, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A front-page story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that a court ordered a utility company to buy the organic grass-fed cattle farm it ruined by driving a powerline through it. Nice to see David beat Goliath every once in a while.

Hmmm. Maybe this strategy can be applied (at least in Minnesota) by organic farmers suffering the double indignity of losing their organic status because of contamination by GMO plants from nearby farms, and then getting sued by Monsanto for illegally using the seed they didn’t want in the first place.

But a far better solution, of course, is to develop projects in ways that don’t threaten organic farms. We need more of those, not less.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, localism/locavore, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

I just rewatched this TED talk by Amory Lovins: it lays out a step-by-step plan to slash our energy use through deep conservation (what he calls “negawatts” and “negabarrels” and switch to renewables, with gas as a transitional fuel. It doesn’t happen overnight, and relies heavily on profit incentives to businesses.

Lovins, who I consider the foremost spokesperson for sensible energy, is not some sort of radical do-gooder. He’s a businessman who’s made quite a successful career out of changing the way we think about energy. Just as two examples of what’s possible:

1. He helped the Empire State Building save $4.4 million per year on a $13 million deep energy retrofit–that’s about a 30% annual ROI.

2. His own house, built in the Solar Stone Age (1983) just outside Aspen, Colorado (ski country-COLD) is close to net zero, producing nearly all of the energy it uses (in 2001, he mentioned that the residence portion had a $5 monthly electric bill–even if it’s tripled since then, that’s pretty good for a 4000-square-foot house in the snowbelt). Now here’s the really remarkable thing: In Aspen, Colorado, this house has neither a furnace nor an air conditioner, and it’s warm enough inside to grow bananas. The extra cost of the energy improvements was essentially paid for by the capital savings of not needing those big clunky systems. So in other words, we’ve known how to do this for 30 years.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get this party STARTED.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Customer Service as Marketing, General Commentary, localism/locavore, Networking, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

Thursday was full of extremes, with both positive and negative encounters.

On the positive side, I had two amazing one-to-one meetings: with the former mayor of a nearby town who just took a job with a green energy company, and then a few minutes later, with a life coach friend of mine. With both, we each brainstormed marketing ideas and helpful contacts for the other.

Then, a brief call with my own coach, Oshana Himot, who continues to amaze me with her sheer brilliance. My business is engaged in a major shift toward much deeper work, and she can take much of the credit. And finally, a Chamber mixer where I managed to have several substantive conversations. I was introduced to a gentleman I didn’t know who’s partnering with an organic farmer friend of mine to make tortillas using local corn. As a local food advocate, marketer, and foodie, I’m eager to help him succeed. Then was my friend who runs the local TV station, on his capital campaign and new building they’re going to construct. I offered him a resource about building deeply green, and he, out of the blue, offered to shoot a promo for me. And finally, a woman in my own town who will bring a much-needed progressive and articulate voice to the Selectboard.

But on the same day, I had three encounters with enormous stupidity.

1. We’d been contacted by a charity some time back to see if we had any goods to donate. We did indeed, and in the intervening two weeks, we’ve filled three large boxes with books and a huge trash bag of clothes. Originally, we were going to put all this in front of the garage for pickup, so we wouldn’t have to wait around. They’re not allowed to actually open the door. But since that was set up, it’s snowed several times and our garage is completely blocked off. So I called to explain that the crew would have to ring our bell, since we couldn’t put things out by the garage and we didn’t want to ruin it all by putting it right in the snow. And then I asked for a two-hour window for the pickup, so we could be sure to be here. No can do, she told me; they’ll be there any time between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. I told her that I wasn’t going to be stuck in my house all Saturday waiting for them. Finally, after about ten minutes of back and forth, she gave me a phone number to call Saturday morning where they’d be able to narrow it down at least a little. Not exactly customer service heroism—especially considering WE’re doing THEM a favor by donating goods.

2. Between my two morning meetings, I had to walk in a busy, narrow street in the central business district of a nearby village, because one gas station owner hadn’t shoveled his side walk. I poked my head in the office and mentioned the problem. The owner growled, “It hasn’t been 24 hours.” Yet every other property owner had managed to clear the sidewalk, Guess where I’m never buying gas again as long as I live (and yes, I have been a customer there, in the past).

3. My wife and I were the only customers in a restaurant except for one person picking up a takeout order, for about 40 minutes. Just as we were about to leave, a woman showed up prepared to make a large takeout order. It was 10 minutes to 8 and they sent her away, saying they were closed. It probably would have delayed their 8 pm closing by 10 or 15 minutes and more than doubled their take for the hour. (The owner was not present). And it would have kept that customer coming back.

In all three cases, all I could do was scratch my head in amazement. I will not beat you over the head with the obvious customer service lessons from these three encounters with stupidity. Unlike the three perpetrators, you’re smart enough to figure it out.

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By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

I choose not to participate in the always-crowded and frequently violent orgy of consumerism called Black Friday. I do my best to shop locally most of the time, I don’t like crowed craziness, and I know Black Friday is not really a help to local small businesses that can’t afford to deep-discount.

There’s an alternative celebration on the day after US Thanksgiving that resonates more with me: Buy Nothing Day: 24 hours without any purchasing activity. I can’t always do it; sometimes the gas tank is empty or I’m flying home from Thanksgiving in another part of the country. But this year, I see no reason to spend any money today.

Wikipedia has a nice page on the history of Buy Nothing Day and some creative incarnations of anti-consumerism.

Meanwhile, society at large is going in the opposite direction. I was really hoping that the big-box store openings would be a flop. Unfortunately, there were big crowds leaving their families to chase down bargains. This, I see as a blow against workers’ rights. I very much doubt that all the employees working yesterday were volunteering to work on a holiday. In fact, there are demonstrations at Walmarts all over the country today, protesting this encroachment on workers’ family time. In my area of Western Massachusetts, it’ll be 3 p.m. at the Walmart in Hadley.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Eco-friendly, Frugality/Frugal Fun, localism/locavore, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

When I get a good apple or pear, I eat it “right down to the bone.”

Apple core

This is an actual core from a wonderful Macoun apple that I picked myself. It was fresh, juicy, crunchy, and that wonderful combination of sweet and tart. An apple right from the tree is one of the great pleasures in life. When we go apple picking, I get home and immediately start drying them and making apple sauce, because even one day later, it won’t taste quite as good. And three weeks later, it’ll taste only a little bit better than a store-bought apple shipped from the other side of the country.

As a locavore, a green business profitability expert, and someone who attempts to live a very green, yet very comfortable life, I feel each of us has a responsibility to minimize waste. Eating every last bit of a tasty apple is one of the ways that minimizing waste can actually be fun. And of course, the few grams remaining go into the compost, to be recycled by Mother Nature into something else.

And those are the two principles of waste reduction: use things more efficiently so you generate less waste, and figure out what that waste can be turned into to create something else. Better than pollution, I’d say.

Please comment below about how you are—or how you could be—generating less waste or setting that waste up as raw material for something else.

 

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