School Cafeteria Waste

For the past four months, I’ve helped an elementary school, here in Walnut Creek, with lunch recycling, composting and trash sorting.  Quite an ordeal I have to say. Children needed to be reminded of what has to be done, signs have to be up constantly, and someone needs to be there to check and make sure that they follow them.

I found the younger grades, 1st, 2nd and 3rd, to be the best, the 4th and 5th, the most unruly. I guess they just like to stand out and break the rules.  I could easily reach these kids and explain the purpose of trash sorting, but there was another aspect that I couldn’t really address. Every day I was dismayed by the amount of avoidable trash that was brought in from home, as well as the number of perfectly edible food that was thrown away untouched.

Home made sandwiches still in Ziploc bags, barely nibbled. Entire fruit: apples, pears, oranges, bananas,  and the number of containers that could be replaced by something reusable. But mostly, I counted the number of ½ pint milk cartons that were thrown away still full, or barely used: about a third of the milk was wasted.

There is a lot that parents can learn from this. One is to talk to children about the trash generated, hunger around the world and the food they throw away, then, to talk about the resources needed to provide for this food. Moreover, parents could package their sons’ and daughters’ lunches in packaging that can be reused. Ziploc bags, for once, should be reused or eliminated entirely. Drinks could be bought in large containers and poured into a reusable bottle. I’ll add more about this in my next posts.

So here is what I’ve done. For four days, I stayed in the cafeteria after lunch, picked everything from the trash and arranged them on the floor. Here are a few pictures of what I found. Makes you wonder.

What used to be all thrown in the trash is now going to compost, recycling or trash thanks to the a nice setup.

My favorite time of the year

Ah, here we go again, ready for the Christmas sales, you’ve got your shopping list, the sales coupons and comfortable shoes to stand in line for hours around the block so that you can get the super cheap item you wanted to get for so long.

You finally get to have the thing you coveted all this time, at a great price, you are blessed with happiness, now enjoy it, play with it and rejoice while it lasts… or until the next fad hits you and you run out the door to stand in line again because you need that thing to,… well yeah,…be happy!

Okay, now go back and read paragraph one above again, replace “Christmas” with Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day, Piggy Day, Divorce Day, I’ve-got-a-Pimple Day, What-the-Hell Day… doesn’t really matter, as long as you get your stuff for cheap and you can feel happy, who cares about what day it is, right?

I don’t feel like giving advice and offer a polite, encouraging and inspiring sermon about what you should do to save the planet, to save your money for something more meaningful, to find happiness through the good deeds you can offer, or through volunteerism and helping the poor. Nah, you already know that part or heard it from someone else. This post is not about giving advice, this post today, is about me and how sickening I believe all of it is. You guessed it by now, it is NOT my favorite time of the year, it is the worst.

While I watch all the things that come out of the stores, hear about the stampede, see the boxes packed under the tree, the garbage cans overflowing after the holidays; I can only think of what is behind all that “stuff.” I see the people, the animals, the forest, the water, the pollution and the sadness. If you want to know what I’m talking about, here are a couple of books you can read:

Stuff: The secret lives of everyday things
Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff

What a world!

Green Employees

Great post by Joel Makower today about the importance of involving employees in greening your company. I always believed that education is key to creating meaningful change.

I also knew of a study in the UK showing that environmentally educated employees were 20 to 50% more likely to save energy, conserve water, or take parts in other green initiatives. This is simple logic: how can employers expect everyone in their organization to act as a socially responsible person, if they don’t tell them the reasons and make them understand the consequences of their lifestyles? Nobody likes to be told what to do without explanations.

I’ve been in the corporate world for years, and I’ve listened to company meetings and conferences about greening the workplace. The level of environmental knowledge, often, does not reach further than recycling a can of soda, saving paper and turning the light switches off.

Social responsibility goes beyond that, beyond climate change and pollution. Being socially responsible signifies being responsible towards humans, animals and nature, locally and across the world, for today and the future. I am wary of any company selling green services or products that doesn’t see the need for anyone who works there to have a good understanding of environmental issues

As for education, I’d give a few warnings. Talking about the state of the planet, human and animal suffering, or the consequences of population growth, (to name only a few) and linking that to employees’ behavior can create quite a shock and sometimes cause despair rather than a positive thrust for change. From personal experience I’ve found that does not work. As part of education, it is important to include the solutions and the positive outcomes of acting “green.”

Will corporations have a budget to include education within the company? Hmm, not likely in today’s economy; but if they, the CEO’s, understand the potential benefits of having everyone in the company working on environmental issues, just like Quad, then the additional step will be worth it.

Ecological Crunch

Here is a nice follow up to my last two posts. The BBC world news just published an article today about how we are heading towards and ecological “credit crunch.”

Just like I wrote in the article Environmental Lies, this is not about the financial credit crunch we are currently experiencing, but about the ecological recession that we are facing, and will continue to face, if we don’t change our ways.

According to the Living Planet Report, produced by the WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, the more than $2 trillion recently lost on stocks and shares is dwarfed by the up to $4.5 trillion worth of resources destroyed forever each year.

Human nature and history tell me that we change only when we are out on the ledge, looking down at the cliff – until then, we hope that something will happen so we don’t have to alter our lifestyles even a single bit.

As much as I hope to change while trying to inform others about what we are doing to the planet and hope for change, I admit that when a few financial advisers I met last year told me that we are approaching an economical cliff, I listened, … but didn’t adjust my lifestyle accordingly.

Hey, I’m human too… but to tell you the truth, … I didn’t have much to lose anyway.

What are you going to do?

We’ve Passed Earth’s Limit

Since September 23rd, 2008, we started living with our accounts in the red. And no, despite all that is happening with the economy, it is not the financial accounts I’m talking about, it’s the Earth’s account.

According to Global Footprint Network, we have passed the threshold where we use more resources than what nature can provide in a sustainable way. We are eating organic capital accumulated in more than three billion years of evolution: not even a super intervention such as the U.S. government to plug the holes of U.S. banks would be enough to re-balance our relationship with the planet. September 23rd was the Earth Overshoot Day: a time of ecological bankruptcy.

That is the day when the annual income at our disposal ends, and human beings continue to survive asking for a loan to the future, namely by removing wealth from their children and grandchildren. The Global Footprint Network, an association that measures our carbon footprint, calculated the date.

Lifestyle plays an important role in this.  The best evidence is to compare the ecological debt of countries where standards of living are similar. If the model of the United States was extended to all countries we would need 5.4 planets, with the UK we’d need 3.1 planets, Germany 2.5, and Italy at 2.2. GFN has several pages with detailed information for each country.

Strange coincidence…

Environmental Lies

I was watching Suze Orman, all fired up, talking about what is happening to the economy these last few days.  I liken the warnings Suze has been giving to individuals for the last decade, to the warnings that environmentalists have been giving regarding how we live so irresponsibly. The only difference is that instead of money, it’s the resources of the planet we are using and borrowing.

She said that the economy, built on lies and deceit, lack of regulations, combined with greed at the very top, all worked out to mean trouble for the American Economy. She then added that “Main Street America is not so different from Wall Street. Families buying homes they couldn’t afford, leasing expensive cars, putting purchases on credit and basically living off of money they don’t actually have but that is borrowed.”

Here is what she advised we should do to protect ourselves:  First of all, we need to stop living financial lies – Suze shared that if you are living an honest financial life, you will be fine no matter the state of the economy. Ways to live honestly include: don’t buy something unless you actually have the money, keep cars for 10 years, and downsize home size and possessions. Oprah shared that it looks like the country may return to a cash economy and Suze agreed that it is possible, and smart to base purchases on the money in the bank and not the desire for the object.

Geez, all of this sounds so familiar to me. We are living environmental lies just the way we are financially. Financial sustainability is no different than environmental sustainability. If we pay attention to how much we spend, don’t ask for credits but make sure we keep generating enough to replenish our bank accounts, think about unforeseen hardships and what we will leave to our children, then we won’t find ourselves on the edge of a cliff when things go bad. Downsizing, keeping the things we buy for a longer period of time; all familiar words to people who try to reduce their consumption or think about how much waste they generate.

Environmental sustainability is just the same. We need to change our ways now and stop borrowing from the planet before it collapses the way our economy is collapsing today. We can’t continue to act irresponsibly and use the resources of the planet while polluting it. That, also, is living a lie.

Suze Orman couldn’t empathize with the couple on the show because they “were living a lie and absolutely set themselves up for this situation.” Her solution, the first step to recovery, wast to tell them that “they need to start being honest.”

So people, if you can’t make the analogy, let me put it simply for you. We have been living dishonestly for too long now, lying to ourselves and to the world. If we don’t learn to live with more respect towards our planet, the animals and the people of our world, sooner or later our loans will catch up with us.

If we put our minds together, the best is yet to come.

So be honest,… do something!

Do Something!

It seems to me that “thinking” becomes increasingly difficult, delicate, even painful… We’ve never had more access to information as we do today, and we have never been lonelier.

So here is my thought “du jour”: We hear and read so much about pollution and environmental degradation that now everyone is claiming to be green when he/she tosses a can of soda in the recycling bin. Not a day goes by without receiving some tip on how to save the planet. We learn to turn the water off while we brush our teeth, to turn the lights off when we leave a room, to recycle, to drive less, to insulate our houses…

If you hear and read all of these warnings, you can’t help but have a slight feeling of guilt permeating your mundane life; disciplined, you slowly change your ways, even if against your will, to comply with the “ethical instructions.” Fantastic, but in the meantime economy experts have their eyes fixed on the growth and production of wealth. Our desire for non-food consumption has never been so high, and in the name of progress it cannot falter and needs to continue growing.

So here we are, on one side the media telling us that we will find happiness through material consumption; on the other side, the green guys, me included, telling us we need to change our ways. I’m not an extremist who believes that we need to give up all our well-earned comfort; I love the beautiful objects that make my life so easy to live. But I admit that at times, I also feel like a marionette whose strings are being pulled on each side and I have to constantly keep my choices in check. Like many, I’m sure, I am often tempted by what could give me a quick sense of happiness, as opposed to having to do some work in order to reach that blissful moment. But do we need to give up everything?

Being “green” or responsible doesn’t mean that you have to live in a cave, or on top of an old growth tree in Berkeley. You don’t have to turn your hair into dreadlocks, wear Birkenstocks or Tevas, or sing Cumbaya with your friends. (Patchouli is optional.)

Even Mahatma Gandhi did not advocate a blind denial of the material side of life. He said:, “As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no long has any attraction for you.” There is no single right and true way to live a more ecological and compassionate life.

So reading all that “Eco” information and watching your friends or neighbors change their ways to live more responsibly doesn’t have to influence you to the point where you will give up something you are not ready to let go of. What I believe you need to do first, is to find something more important to replace it with. By that I don’t mean replacing it with another, bigger object, but an activity that you will enjoy doing and that is more meaningful for you or the people around you.

Give it a try, and stop reading about all the Eco things that you “should” be doing. It’s time to choose something and do it. As you do, think about the waste you avoided, think about the animals who didn’t suffer and the people that you helped, think about the little things that you changed and now are better. Enjoy that fulfilling sense of doing something good and avoiding something bad. Life is made of little moments that you can enjoy. Change is created by the little steps we take, and a better world is possible when individuals decide to do something.

Here is a book suggestion for you, and please,…do something!

Global warming, not our fault!?!

Thursday, noon time, I am walking around the tables of the Rotary club, shaking hands, mingling, sipping on my ice tea. I greet, I smile, I blend into the small crowd with ease. “Are you the speaker?” they ask. “Yes, Roberto, pleased to meet you.”

A few minutes later I meet Tom, the construction guy, very charming, kind and welcoming. We chat for a few minutes until he asks me the subject of my speech. “Green living, social responsibility and environmental issues,” I say. “Ah!” he says, then rolls his eyes and shakes his head in disapproval.

“What’s wrong, don’t you like the subject?” He turns around, walks towards me and whispers: “You know, I think that this whole global warming deal is a big mistake. I don’t believe in it, it’s just a natural earth change. They found that out in the ice cores extracted from the North Pole. All these people changing their light bulbs and all that crap…, give me a break!”

At first I just couldn’t believe this was real. I had heard of people refusing to accept the facts about global warming, but here? I checked around again, wondering if I was I in the right place. Isn’t this Marin County, north of San Francisco, one of the most liberal, environmental and freakishly “new-agey” places in the nation? Isn’t this the place where hybrids are not only the symbol for environmentalism,  but also pop out like wild mushrooms among the protected redwood trees? I thought for a moment that I was having an Encounter of the Third Kind with an alien who came down to Earth to test me?

I listen carefully, clinging to my ice cold drink hoping it will keep me cool. I nod in agreement about the ice cores; I agree that the warming is partly a natural phenomenon; I listen, biting my lips in disbelief.

Finally I explained my views. “One thing is certain,” I said. “The Earth has never had exactly the same temperature year after year, decade after decade, century after century. So with or without humans, the Earth would still be experiencing either a warming or a cooling trend. I also know about other possible natural phenomena: the Earth’s orbit changing, sun spots exploding, a change in the Earth’s orientation, volcanoes.” “However,” I told him,” there is one natural phenomenon people always forget. The big white elephant in the room that we never like to talk about: humans and population growth.” Amazing how people easily forget that we are not just the few millions we were a thousand years ago. From the day Tom was born, I assume in the forties, population of the world has tripled. Today, we have 6.7 billion humans on this planet, a third of whom are using the world’s resources as if we had “plenty more of where that came from.” “This, my fellow Rotarian, cannot be dismissed as one of the natural phenomena,” I said.

In the last few years, with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and the media focus on climate change, so much emphasis was put on global warming that people have forgotten about the true meaning of “sustainability.” Global warming is only one problem we are facing today; the other problems are the depletion of our resources, environmental degradation, social injustice, human suffering and animal abuse, among others. So being a socially responsible company doesn’t only mean being “green.” Social responsibility means just that, being responsible. Responsibility towards not only our atmosphere, but towards all things that make our world such a beautiful place to live. The way we are living today is neither sustainable nor responsible.

When the Rotary bell interrupted our conversation and the meeting was called to order, Tom nodded in agreement. I addressed these points in my speech that day with examples showing how our daily mundane lifestyle has affected people, animals and the planet.  I can only hope I provoked him just enough to contemplate his contribution to the condition of our world.

Time to start thinking outside the green box.

Good for business…, oh, and for the environment too!

I was on a conference call with the Merrill Lynch Environmental Town Hall for one hour and heard about the work that ML is doing with their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.

They opened with one employee question: “Why do we need to worry about social responsibility when we should concentrate on investment returns?” Their answer, which was brought up and repeated throughout the broadcast, was: “This is good for business,” followed by “and it also happens to be good for society and the environment!”

The leaders of the conference call were addressing the results from a survey that was sent out company-wide a few weeks earlier. They received over ten thousand responses, which is much higher than the average ten percent response one gets. The company has about sixty five thousand employees.

Despite the high number of responses, the talk concentrated on explaining the benefits of going green because of the high investment returns. They emphasized that the green movement is not just a fad, but a “secular” change with investments of several trillions of dollars in the next few decades.

Several employees asked questions related to what needs to be done within the company in regard to saving paper or reducing energy consumption. These are the usual questions I hear; they make me realize what a shallow understanding people have about what it takes to reduce our ecological footprint. Don’t get me wrong, I embrace every little step that people take to improve our environment, but here again, this confirms the need for education within organizations to bring social responsibility to the next level.

The questions that employees asked really showed how important it is for them to be involved in any changes being made within he company. With regard to saving paper, two simple questions were brought to the attention of the people in charge, and they put them immediately on the “To Do” list. This proves one important point about employee involvement, a point that Joel Makeover writes in his latest blog entry What Do Employees Really Want: “No one knows more about the waste and inefficiency inside a company than those in middle and lower rungs.”

Now imagine how much more employees would be able to bring to the “sustainability” table if they were more involved, engaged and educated about environmental issues. While ML emphasized the “enhanced profitability” for their company in pursuing a green mindset, they need to remember that at the root of it are individuals who grow increasingly concerned about our planet, and customers who demand change.

While I applaud Merrill Lynch’s initiative towards social responsibility, I wish they would turn their main statement around to say: “Because this is good for society and the environment ….and it also happens to be good for business!”

Semantics you might say, but it makes a big difference.

Trash away!

Imagine what kind of world we would be living in if we had to bury our trash right into our backyard? Luckily, we don’t have to do that because there is a place where we can pile all our toxic waste out of sight, a place called “Away.” Isn’t that the place? All our waste is thrown “away” once we are done with it, isn’t it?

That takes care of the problem, but to see the effect of that trash on our land if we leave it around our homes, if we don’t recycle it or compost it, if we continue acquiring things with excess packaging and toxins, we can simply look at what is happening now in the region of Naples, Italy.

The garbage crisis in Naples has been a problem for several years already, but never to the level reached today. The cause: mismanagement, political interference, mafia profiteering and the ability of those responsible to deflect the attention and the blame elsewhere.

That trash attracts rodents, with the heat, flies and insects come around, and the odor will make living in its proximity unbearable. Infection like salmonella and shigella can abound. The rates of cancer of the stomach, kidney, liver and lungs are already exceeding the regional or national norms.

Note that this problem is only related to the region of Naples, other regions of Italy are well organized with recycling and composting. Neapolitans are fed up with the problem, and like other Italians, they are disgusted with what is happening.

In the pictures below, you can see all the items that could have been recycled or composted, or simply avoided in packaging. When it comes to waste, recycling is not the only solution. What is also important is the amount of plastic, paper and metals used in packaging all of those items. Eliminating the problem at the source is the first step; including recycling and composting is the second.

I like to think about what I buy and how I can dispose of it. With an increase in our population and the way we are consuming, the consequences of too much trash piling up in the magic place called “Away” might come closer to our doors if we don’t pay attention.

Here are some pictures: