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Tuesday Talk: What’s the next sustainability step?
After more than a generation, curbside recycling has become a given. However, there are so many more things we must do to protect our land, air, and water. Minnesota communities are piloting composting, rain garden, and hazardous material pick up projects, along with expanding what’s recyclable. Meanwhile, individuals and organizations are trying to limit their waste stream.
What’s your take? What’s the next step in the path toward a more sustainable Minnesota?
Comments:
July 10, 2012 at 4:13 pm
SUSTAINABILITY?
Forget the trash! Too much time and effort has been spent on that already.
At the top of the SUSTAINABILITY list should be the sustainability of our JOBS JOBS JOBS, but about all that critical topic gets is lip service!
Oh yes, the legislature decided to knuckle under the high-pressure sports lobby again and authorized the spending of $1B on yet another &%$#@& stadium! But that won’t help but a few temporary construction workers and that won’t happen until a YEAR from now!
Hey, the Romans tried to cure their unemployment problem by building and operating the Coliseum but look what that got them..! Shouldn’t we learn something from history?
About all we need to revive and SUSTAIN our economy is to “open the shut-off valve” controlling the flow of new business and good jobs, but the legislature refused again to address that critical issue. The chairman of the pertinent senate “Jobs and Economic Growth Committee” quickly snatched our “Creative Freedom Act” from the inbox and then “sat on it” all session – refusing to even give it a hearing!
The “shut-off valve” I am referring to is the widespread use of the crippling “Employee Agreement” (EA), but it is largely unknown to the public. The typical EA claims blanket ownership of all employee inventions 24/7 for the employer and is required to be signed by employees—as a condition of employment!
OUCH! Now the employer “pre-owns” all of the creativity of his employees and has the awesome power to support or block all of the unwanted creativity generated by his employees
The employer often retains ownership of this unwanted creativity that doesn’t fit his existing product lines, to force employees to work on assigned tasks ONLY, but at what cost to our economy?
You guessed it; having a few inventions blocked this way, employee creativity drops like a stone! The “winner” in our lab didn’t make an entry into his patent notebook for SEVEN YEARS!
Using the crippling EA, employers have usurped most of the creative incentives and protection from their employees, offered by the U.S. Patent Office (the USPTO). Is it any wonder then that we have millions of American workers unemployed – and we are worried about TRASH collections! Come on!
For example: had I invented the fantastic Xerox copier, my employer would have already owned it, but rather than support its development, he would have quickly ABORTED it in favor of his (dreadful by comparison) competitive thermal copier!
To convert this dysfunctional job-producing system into a permanent new business and job producer, our “Creative Freedom Act” proposes that employers be required to simply “Use or Return” all inventions which they claim(with proper amendments).
Use or Return
(SF 78)
“Use or Return” promises to provide the following tremendous benefits:
1. Employers would develop more inventions (for fear of losing title due to inaction)
2. Employees would submit more inventions (knowing that the employer could no longer block them indefinitely)!
3. The above two critical factors promise to “cross stimulate” each other providing a permanent source of new business and good, private sector jobs – all at no-cost whatsoever to the taxpayers.
4. Employees would regain their civil rights to the incentives and protection of the U.S. Patent Office, by gaining ownership of their unwanted inventions (but only after the employer had rejected or abandoned them).
5. More highly desirable manufacturing jobs (and cutting edge technology) would be retained here because new products seldom create sufficient sales volume to make massive offshore production profitable
6. The above massive benefits promise to restart and SUSTAIN our economy without any bureaucratic or taxpayer cost whatsoever.
7. “Use or Return” is expected to PRODUCE tax revenue (by creating tax-paying jobs) rather than the normal jobs bill, which CONSUMES tax revenue!
Robert Nepper
2251 Shawnee Dr
N. St. Paul, MN 55109 (651) 777-5159 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
July 10, 2012 at 3:21 pm
I agree with all of these steps. I’d add one: buy less. There are plenty of ways to buy fewer clothes and other household items. Second time around shops often have amazing bargains, but you have to look and very often it’s just luck finding a treasure. Buy less junk food. Buy fewer motorized vehicles for pleasure—dirt bikes and things.
Recycling is not a given. Not in my neighborhood. There are a lot of multiple housing units right around here, and it’s surprising to me how few of them recycle. I think some sort of financial incentive or penalty would help—and help with the litter.
A little corner grocery store is right behind me, and day after day I see crumpled up cardboard boxes and other recyclable items in the overflowing trash bin. A financial push would probably change their mind.
July 10, 2012 at 12:05 pm
I think the next step is for Minnesota to join the 11 other U.S. states (including such neighbors as Iowa & Michigan) in passing container deposit legislation.
Studies show that beverage container legislation has reduced total roadside litter by between 30% and 64% in the states with so-called “bottle bills.”
As wikipedia notes: “Studies also show that the recycling rate for beverage containers is vastly increased with a bottle bill. The United States’ overall beverage container recycling rate is approximately 33%, while states with container deposit laws have a 70% average rate of beverage container recycling. Michigan’s recycling rate of 97% from 1990–2008 is the highest in the nation, as is the state’s $0.10 deposit.”
For Democrats—once they are back in the legislative majority—sponsoring & passing such commonsense verifiably “green” legislation would help them to reestablish w. their political base their progressive bone fides.
July 10, 2012 at 10:20 am
As has already been said, I think that the next positive step is to hit consumers with a “use less” message rather than “use what you want but recycle it.” But even if we use less, consumers often have little power when deciding what our products are made of and packaged in, and how they’re made and transported.
So on the supply/industry side of things I think the next step is promoting the “use less” mentality in industry. The green chemistry movement has already started this process, encouraging industries to utilize zero-waste chemical processes, stressing that preventing waste beforehand is cheaper than cleaning or treating after the fact, and that energy, water and product efficiency is a means of saving money for companies. For example, General Mills has significantly cut the amount of water they use at four major plants in Minnesota thanks to implementing sustainable processes.
Demand-side conservation is important, but we should not forget the impact of practicing it on the supply side too.
July 10, 2012 at 9:39 am
I agree with Mark regarding that fact that we’ve allowed big oil and power companies to dictate our public policy. However, certainly our addiction to motorized vehicles is a huge part of this problem and I feel that public policy makers can’t even give the American public strong messages to ride bike to work rather than drive for fear that they will disenfranchise some of their richest campaign contributors. I do think that one important step for communities to take is to make it possible for people and students to safely bike from home to work or school. The other thing I would like to see in our community would be agreements between retailers to charge for plastic bags….
July 10, 2012 at 9:15 am
Each small step is important. I remember in the mid-70’s driving from South Minneapolis to Cromwell and Franklin near MN2020 offices to recycle our cans, because it was the one location in the Twin Cities that collected them.
I’m not sure what we “saved” by that, but we did help recycling efforts move a tiny step forward. Today recycling is mainstream and our household can recycle at the curb more than it puts in the waste stream. However, that more isn’t necessarily better.
Unfortunately, our economy has too long been based on consumption and the notion that growth is necessary to sustain our way of life. Actually, it has changed the way Americans live to unsustainable proportions.
And in our political climate, we’re faced with unsustainable government spending versus an unsustainable concept of liberty as living without limits (no regulations & drill, baby, drill).
Unless we can change these mindsets, the earth will eventually settle the sustainability question for us and the only steps left will be down.
July 10, 2012 at 8:10 am
I believe there are several concrete steps that Minnesota can take to further sustainability in the state.
First, we need to shift the way we think about ‘waste.’ One person’s trash is another’s treasure holds across the board—instead of assuming that there will be waste as a result of our economic structure (ie, excessive packaging, externalities from mineral extraction) we should strive to create zero-waste systems. Zero-waste is far, far better than composting or recycling.
With that shift in frame, ecologically “doing the right thing” should be the same as “doing the easy thing.” The more that we can do, at the state and local level, to support programs, initiatives, and empower communities, the better positioned our state will be to handle shifting economic and environmental realities.
Furthermore, I believe we need to recognize the importance of environmental education programs and work to bring creative programs back to a variety of educational settings. In a time when schools face drastic budget cuts, innovative and hands-on programs such as environmental education tend to be the first ones cut. If we are not teaching our children how to interact with and understand the environment around them, how can we expect them to respect and value it later?
July 10, 2012 at 7:58 am
I am old enough to remember the first Earth Day on the University of Minnesota campus. I came away from that day with a new perspective of what needed to happen in order for humanity to survive for more than a few more years. What happened to that fledgling vision?
Our unwillingness to stand up against big oil and the other mega-corporations is obvious. This is the first step that must occur. Our belief that those with money are the only ones with power must be eliminated. Greed and the constant need for self gratification of “things” must change.
We also must be willing to invest in sustainable AND renewable AND reusable energy, packaging and other needs that our culture and society deems necessary. We must change our own thoughts from a “throw-away” society, to one of goods of a more permanent nature.
Think of where we would be today if our vision in 1970 was kept alive and grown. I firmly believe that oil, natural gas, and coal would be a thing of the past, and our earth would be a cleaner, more livable space with the phrase “global climate change” not one of an immediate “fix now or die” situation that we are finding ourselves in.
Terry Gips says:
July 10, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Thanks for this wonderful question and all the great responses people have given.
My overall sense is that we need to make sustainability mainstream, something that Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens and the Fed-Up can all embrace. We need to shift people’s thinking so they understand that they can save money, time, energy, health and the environment through sustainability and that it can be fun and inspiring.
Consequently,at the Alliance for Sustainability (www.afors.org) we have been developing several programs to help bring about that shift, including our Workshop on Sustainability and the Natural Step Framework, Living Green Expo, Sustainable Business Forum, Local Government Sustainability Workshop, Sustainable Community Conference and a proposed National Sustainability Campaign.
From their, I feel we need to address people’s consumption and both encourage them to both consume less overall and shift their consumption to sustainable purchasing in order to shift the market.
Then I feel we need to shift to sustainability in every institution, from business to schools, nonprofits and government.
And finally, I feel we need to engage more people in local, state and national policies to bring about a shift to sustainability.
I should add that we welcome your involvement in the Alliance for Sustainability.
Sustainably,
Terry Gips, President
Alliance for Sustainability
In the Hillel Center at the U of M
1521 University Ave. SE,
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-331-1099
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
www.afors.org