Prism of Patriotism

by Matt DeNoto

It’s good that people love the country in which they live. In America, nationalism has always been fundamental. And for good reason. This country was founded on strong democratic principles, revolutionary for their time. Even in its infancy, there was something unquestionable about people in America believing that they lived in the greatest country in the world. It was an idea only reinforced by America’s massive influence in WWII. And then the Space Race. We are a Superpower.

America has a long history of seeing itself as the best. So it’s only natural that its citizens make that claim somewhat without thought. But accepting something without examination is dangerous. So let me take a second to ask…

Is America the greatest nation in the world? How do we judge?

Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence that suggests that we, the people of America, are not the best. We are not the smartest (That’s South Korea). We are not the healthiest (Iceland). We do not live the longest (Canada). For all our boasting, we’re not even the happiest (Denmark). Heck, we don’t even crack the top ten in the list of most democratic countries (Sweden’s #1). We pay more for most things (except those that are government-subsidized). We’re not the greenest either.

If you have questions about where I got this information from, that’s good. Do some research to satisfy yourself about the statistics. Don’t accept it without examination.

I often hear that America is the ‘richest’ country. But I’m not rich. Are you rich? I would imagine that citizens of the richest country in the world never have to worry about money. But we’re all in debt. And can we really consider ourselves to be rich when everything we buy and all the money our government spends both come from China?

There are people going to well-reported ‘town hall’ meetings and screaming at their representatives about the terrible danger posed by the government trying to give its people health care reform. They cower in terror from the slightest whiff of socialism (even though the police, fire and public school systems have been socialized for years).

Is this how civilized debate works in the world’s greatest country? What are we really trying to protect?

Claims that America is the best without any evidence to back it up isn’t nationalism, it’s delusion. What if America wasn’t the best? Would that let us be more objective about our problems? Would that give us more freedom to accept that when we try to fix things, there’s always a chance it might not work?

I grew up in New York, watching the Knicks with my dad. The Knicks haven’t won an NBA Championship since 1972. Sometimes, the team is great, sometimes (the last decade or so) the team isn’t so great. But that’s just how it goes. At the end of the day, I root for them not because they’re the best (they’re not), but because the Knicks are my team.

America’s pretty great. But it’s not the best, and that’s okay. Not being the best gives us not only something to strive for, it also means there are other countries that we can learn from. It takes strength to be humble.

Corporate Power

by Matt DeNoto

According to economists, one ingredient crucial to a stable, capitalistic society is a strong set of property laws.  If consumers don’t feel confident that they own what they buy, they won’t bother buying at all.

This was somewhat interestingly demonstrated recently when Amazon started messing with its customers’ Kindle e-book readers without their knowledge or permission.  When a publisher decided to pull a couple of books off the virtual shelves (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, appropriately enough), Amazon deleted the books even from customers who had already bought them, refundin g the money that had been paid.

While this is clearly an example of a corporation overstepping its bounds, it does provide a somewhat stumbling segue into how the Green Revolution must make us re-evaluate the concept of what we ‘own.’  Just because we’re paying for the water that comes out of our kitchen faucet, that doesn’t make it okay to leave the faucet on all night, regardless of whether or not we can afford it.  We are, at best, renting or borrowing much from the Earth, and we will have to reorient our thinking to reflect that.

This goes double for large corporations, who seem to be in the habit of assuming they own pretty much everything except the waste that they dump into your backyard.  That’s your problem.

But even that may be changing.  Wal-Mart, that paragon of consumerism, has been making small but significant strides towards becoming a more responsible company, at least insofar as its carbon footprint is concerned.  It looks like it is getting ready to take a much bigger stride.  Starting soon, products on Wal-Mart’s shelves will begin appearing with ‘sustainability scores,’ which will take into account all parts of a product’s manufacturing, transportation, etc.  This will give customers more information on which to base their shopping decisions.  It’s a great, bold move, and we can only hope other retailers follow Wal-Mart’s lead.

See?  Corporate power can be used for good.

community recycling

By Matt DeNoto

If you live in an apartment building in Los Angeles (as I do), you may have this sticker on your dumpster:

I first noticed it a few months ago. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I called the number to see what the deal was. Apparently all the trash that gets put into the dumpster is picked up by Crown Disposal and then, instead of heading straight to the landfill, it is dropped off at Community Recycling in Sun Valley. Over the phone, I asked what, exactly, did they recycle. “Paper, plastics, glass, you know, everything.” My first instinct (being a cynic) was suspicion; was this for real or was it just a hollow PR smokescreen to make residents feel like they didn’t have to take responsibility for doing any recycling because it’s all being done for them?

So I asked for a tour. And they said yes.

From the outside, Community Recycling starts with a large, flat expanse covered with huge piles of garbage. Bulldozers move the different piles around while garbage trucks arrive to drop off their precious cargo. Just beyond lies the facility itself, an interesting-looking jumble of structures connected together like a hamster’s habitrail. One box-like structure, a couple of stories up off the ground, is connected to the next by a downward sliding cylinder. Unfortunately, I was only allowed to take one picture while I was there, and here it is:

This is Mr. Basura, who sits in the Community Recycling main offices when not out teaching children about garbage and recycling. I was told this by Nicole, Community Recycling’s PR person, who would be giving the tour to me and couple of other community members. This was going to be the first tour specifically for community members. Nicole had previously been giving them only to schools. Once we’d all arrived, Nicole brought us up to a presentation room where the tour would begin.

At this point, I am going to stop using the word ‘tour.’ Because, as it turned out, the morning consisted mostly of a slideshow that Nicole narrated for us, followed by a brief walk around the outside of the facility on the sidewalk (basically the same view anyone driving by would get). While it was generous for the company to bring us in and give us some information, tour is a bit generous of a word.

The first slide was of a pie chart, labeled 1999 California Waste Characterization. As Nicole explained, the chart represented a breakdown of all the different types of garbage California threw away in 1999. It represented trash not just from residents, but also businesses and industry. Easily the biggest pie slice was Organic Waste, which includes food and yard waste. (The chart may be based off this study by the California Integrated Waste Management Board. According to this study, organic waste also includes rubber, textiles and carpet.) The next biggest slice was Paper. Then C&D (Construction & Demolition). Much smaller were the slices for Plastic, Metal and Glass.

In order to recycle as much as possible, Nicole said, Community Recycling devised three separate processes to handle almost all the different categories.

The first process handles ‘traditional’ waste, which includes the trash collected from my dumpster, along with other residential and office-based garbage. When the garbage trucks drop off the trash, it is first loaded into a trommel, a big cylindrical tumbler that shreds the waste out of the garbage bags and separates it for the next step. The waste leaves the trommel and is loaded onto a conveyor belt where workers pull out whatever looks recyclable.

At this point I asked Nicole about the privacy concerns associated with having people go through every piece of garbage someone throws away. She indicated that there was no hard and fast policy in place, but there were supervisors watching over the workers at all times and the pace of the work doesn’t really allow the trash to be inspected that closely. She did advise that sensitive information should always be shredded before being thrown away.

The workers separate out the recyclables into their appropriate categories: paper, metal, plastic, and glass. These are then pressed into large bales, where they can be sent out to other plants for the actual recycling process.

So once again, we are faced with a bit of a misnomer. Community Recycling doesn’t actually recycle these materials. It sorts waste and sends it along, either to be recycled or (what’s left over) to the landfill. Perhaps we simply haven’t yet thoroughly enough defined the concept of ‘recycling.’ The Community Recycling facility mostly sorts waste and then sends it off to other places. Does that count as recycling? It’s a noble and necessary process either way, but we may need some new terms to parse down the steps of what ultimately is ‘recycling.’

Tangents aside, the bales are sent off to other recycling plants. For the majority of materials, this means a trip overseas.

I asked Nicole about contamination. Doesn’t having all the trash mixed together result in a lower-grade product? Nicole’s answer, which I can’t really argue with, is that if the recycling plants are buying it, it must be good enough. So apparently separating and cleaning the different classes isn’t really that big of a deal for people throwing things away.

The only real piece of advice Nicole had for residents was to hold onto ‘hazardous’ materials. These include batteries and CFLs, which should be recycled at a dedicated center that handles those types of items.

I then asked Nicole how much ‘traditional’ waste gets recycled and how much gets sent along to the landfill. She said about 20% is recycled. It doesn’t sound like much, but it must be remembered that most of the products we use and throw away were never designed to be recycled, as I’ve mentioned in a previous article. Even items that can be recycled, like a plastic bottle, cannot be recycled into new plastic bottles. They are ‘downcycled’ into less valuable plastic items, like park benches or speed bumps. For products that are made from several different classes of items, like a toy with metal gears inside a plastic shell, the work necessary to break the item down is not cost-effective. It gets sent to the landfill.

The second process is exclusively for the ‘organic wastes,’ mostly food. Community Recycling takes the wastes to its composting facility, the biggest in the nation. One hundred and fifty acres of compost. Here the waste is laid down in huge, seven-hundred-yard long mounds. As the composting process takes place, the centers of the mounds reach well over one hundred degrees. The facility has a machine that rolls over the mounds, churning the compost to ensure that every bit is processed.

One of the great things about this process is that most of the waste doesn’t come from you and me. Community Recycling gathers the food waste from those who throw it away the most: restaurants, cafeterias and grocery stores. When produce goes bad, grocery stores load it up into the cardboard boxes in which they receive it and hand it over to Community Recycling. An interesting part of the process is that the food is dumped onto the composting mounds as it is received, boxes and all. These boxes may be laced with plastic or wax, but they’re left on the mounds during the composting process. The big churning machines break up the foreign material into strips, which makes it easy to filter out at the end of the process, resulting in clean, pure compost. It generally takes about three months to get from food to compost. This is sold to local farmers, or used at one of the four thousand acres of Community Recycling-owned farms.

The final process is strictly for C&D. Constructing or demolishing a building results in a completely different kind of waste than living in a home with a family or working in an office, but the opportunity for recycling is still great. The main types of waste from this process are wood, metal and drywall.

The metal is sold off to be melted down and recycled.

The wood is processed into woodchips, which are then transported to one of Community Recycling’s two biomass power facilities in Central California. Together, the two facilities generate over thirty-five megawatts of power.

The drywall is broken down into its component parts, namely paper and gypsum. The paper is recycled and the gypsum is broken down into a dirt-like powder. This powder can then be used for fertilizer or for erosion control because of its excellent water absorption and retention properties.

As one who is familiar with the economic arguments AGAINST recycling (namely that recycled material is more expensive than pure, virgin material), I asked Nicole whether or not the plant pays for itself. Nicole said the plant was owned by a private company and did indeed pay its own way.

At this point, the presentation ended and Nicole led us out of the building to the sidewalk, where we looked at the facility a bit. She showed us a large pile of compost and offered for us to touch it. We declined.

It was a bit anti-climatic, but still an informative morning. As I mentioned earlier, this was the first ‘tour’ specifically for community members. Community Recycling is slowly reaching out to the public, as their currently half-unfinished website demonstrates.

Community Recycling is important not just for the work it does, but also because it demonstrates that recycling can be a successful business in and of itself. As the Revolution progresses, Community Recycling could become a model for others entering the Green Industry.

But for now, it’s just nice knowing my own garbage is going to good use.

opinion: Addicted To (Snake) Oil

by Matt DeNoto

 

Just four weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this site extolling the virtues of ‘Cradle-To-Cradle’ design, in which products are planned from conception to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I mentioned the book Cradle To Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. At the bottom of the piece, The Golden Spiral’s editor placed a link to video of a talk given by William McDonough, in which he details a city being built in China founded on C2C. The city would provide food and energy for all of its inhabitants, without producing any waste to sully the surrounding lands. The video left me with a sense of wonder.

But it also left me with a sense of unease. After all, the book was published in 2002, and it ends with the authors optimistically discussing their plans with Ford to redesign their factories. The video was from a talk McDonough gave in 2005.

So…where are the results? Why are we not hearing about C2C on the news? What about the Ford plant? What about the city in China? Is there really so much of a bias against environmentalism that the world would ignore these amazing accomplishments?

No. There is not. The actual answer is more complicated than that, and while it may not have much to do with the environment, it has everything to do with nature. Human nature.

An intriguing and revealing profile in the November 2008 issue of Fast Company reminds us that the people at the forefront of the environmental movement are just as subject to the whims and weaknesses of life as anyone else. While William McDonough has done an excellent job spreading the word about the problems our world faces, his record with solutions is less than exemplary.

That city in China? It now sits abandoned and rotting. Not only did it cost far more than estimated, the design was fatally flawed. The city planned to use corn husks as biofuel to run the village. But the Chinese farmers who would actually be living there already had a use for the corn husks, as feed for their goats. When presented with this conflict by his crew as the village was being constructed, McDonough was evasive. He seemed only to visit when there was a camera crew following him around, planning to portray him as a visionary who could save the world.

And the reason you don’t hear cradle-to-cradle more often? Because McDonough’s company has the term trademarked, and they charge hefty fees for its use. According to the Fast Company article McDonough has been heard to say, ‘I want to be the Bill Gates of sustainability.’ The article makes the case that by this statement McDonough is not ju st referring to the way Gates is ubiquitous with computing, but also the way it has made him an icon. And rich.

To be sure, McDonough has brought attention to the Green Revolution and that is a good thing. He’s a charismatic speaker who leaves his audiences shining with hope. But he appears unwilling to open his tightly-controlled world up either to the rigorous scientific testing that refines and improves ideas like C2C (and keeps disasters like the city in China from happening), nor to the masses who would spread C2C around the world, but as a philosophy first and a marketing term second.

The article concludes with McDonough seeming to gain a sense of self-awareness. An acceptance that the way he has been trying to get things done for the last couple of decades is not working and may in fact be harming the overall movement. But whether that will be enough to convince him to change his ways will be up to him. Whether it will be too late for the rest of us to care will be up to us. Now that the Revolution seems to be gaining momentum, there will be new icons to take McDonough’s place.

The Revolution came about when people began to question the world as it was. The world that made toys with toxic chemicals, the world that burned or buried its trash, the world that puts profit ahead of basic human life. The Fast Company article serves as a stark reminder that we must continue to question everything. Especially those who would sell themselves as saviors.

opinion: green backs

By Matt DeNoto

What if doing the best thing for the environment also meant never having to pay income taxes again?

One of the major factors slowing down the Green Revolution is cost. New technologies, new infrastructure and new designs all cost money, even though they’re not (yet) commercially competitive. So where would the money come from?

Visionary book Natural Capitalism, by Amory & Hunter Lovins (co-founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute) and Paul Hawken, paints a picture of a world where doing the right thing is not only the most responsible choice, but it’s also the most economical. And it all rides on one simple fact that lawmakers everywhere should come to accept.

Taxes are a burden.

Like jury duty and voting, paying taxes has been pitched to us as a civic duty. But at the end of the day, no one looks at taxes that way. All we see is the money draining from our wallets. First through the deductions from our paychecks, and then again through sales tax when we go to buy anything. Come April, everyone in America does their best to pay as little in taxes as possible.

As it stands today, taxes appear to be punishment for doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing – working hard and contributing to society. What if we took the negative connotations associated with taxes and used them to encourage more conscientious behavior?

The first step is doing away with all income taxes. The second step is reapplying those taxes to practices and materials that do harm to the community and the world. Under this scenario, when a contractor was shopping for windows for a new building, the most affordable windows would no longer be the ones made from the flimsiest material. Shoddily made windows don’t insulate well, and they would be taxed more heavily for it. Windows that do insulate well would be subject to less tax, thus helping make them more competitive. Recycled paper would be taxed at a lower rate than paper made from virgin pulp. Gasoline would be taxed at a higher rate than sustainable biofuels. Sustainable fish, sustainable wood, sustainable sources of heat, products made without toxic chemicals, all of these would become commercially viable options.

The really wonderful thing about this system is that it reinforces where responsibility truly lies, with the consumer. If a homeowner wants a certain brand of siding on his/her home that isn’t as environmentally friendly as a different brand, the homeowner knows s/he is paying the price for that choice.

Another benefit of the system is its flexibility. As consumers become more and more aware of their purchasing power, unsustainable products and practices will become uneconomical and go bankrupt. Now the government can redistribute the taxes in order to encourage even MORE sustainability.

It appears that the process may already be starting, albeit slowly and without much fanfare. Part of the recent stimulus plan passed by Congress is income tax cuts, which as President Obama has pointed out we can expect to see factored into our paychecks next month. The money for the tax cuts will come from the carbon ‘cap and trade’ plan that Obama is currently trying to get through Congress. The plan will most likely mean, as Republicans are quick to point out, that energy prices will rise. But it also means that we as consumers have more money in our pockets. It will be up to us whether we use that extra money to pay the higher energy prices, or put the money toward finding ways to cut our energy use altogether. It means that the choice most industries have made to pollute indiscriminately is one we will no longer have to carry on our backs.

So what do we do when the system is as sustainable as it can get, and there’s nothing left to tax?  I think that’s a problem our great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be happy to have.

opinion: Selling the Revolution

by Matt DeNoto

If you’re reading this, I assume you’re sympathetic to the cause. Or you’re my mom. (Hi Mom!) You already understand that human actions are having effects on the planet’s climate. You know that we have been living in a wasteful, inconsiderate, destructive population for years now. You have seen that too often, money has taken precedence over responsibility. In other words, I’m mostly preaching to the converted here.

But how do we reach out to those who do not understand? How do we explain things in such a way that they become excited about getting involved in all the changes that will soon be taking place?

The first step of course is to consider their point of view. I’m going to overgeneralize here, so take it all with a grain of salt, but I think in many cases people hear about ‘saving the environment’ and they get the impression that we want to take away their cars, stop them from eating their favorite foods, and make them join hands around a campfire while singing ‘Kumbaya.’ And it scares them. They think we want to take away the things that make them happy, the things that make their lives easy. They have the mistaken impression that we won’t be happy until everybody is living in a hut with a dirt floor, wiping our butts with leaves.

The very simple idea that we should try and get across is that the Green Revolution is all about making their lives better.

For example, buying food and products generated locally not only cuts down on pollution (because if it’s made locally, it didn’t have to be shipped there by a giant, exhaust-spewing truck), it also keeps money in the community, as opposed to having it shipped off to some corporate headquarters. Plus the fewer trucks on the road, the less traffic you have to contend with.

An even more cut-and-dry example is this: If you live in an area that gets a lot of sun and were to install solar panels on your roof, not only would you get free electricity for your own home, you’d actually feed any extra power your panels generate back into the system, for which the power company PAYS YOU.

Another thing to remind them of is that they are already part of it. Over the last twenty years, refrigerators have done the same job using less than half the electricity. And the less energy their refrigerators use, the lower their energy bills are. The revolution has already been improving their lives without them even noticing.

I know thinking about it this way may upset some of those who think that more drastic, immediate change is necessary. People who think we have to stop producing harmful chemicals NOW and stop living off of fossil fuels NOW. I’m sympathetic to those points of view, but trying to shove ideas down the throats of people who can’t even bring themselves to use CFLs will simply engender more defensive suspicion and bitterness. By introducing small, demonstrable benefits to the masses it will be easier to help them start thinking more about the consequences of their actions and choices.

The more of us that care, the faster the revolution can go.

opinion: why trash matters