RE Your Input, Please, on Three Working Drafts
The Grassroots Recycling Network has defined three simple messages
that we think will resonate with the American public:
1. CREATE JOBS NOT WASTE
2. END SUBSIDIES FOR WASTING - INVEST IN RECYCLING
3. STRIVE FOR TOTAL RECYCLING - ZERO GARBAGE BY 2010
We have a steering committee of eleven, all of whom have been active
in the National Recycling Coalition at one time or another. We are
Rick Anthony, Tim Brownell, Marty Forman, Dave Kirkpatrick, Dan
Knapp, Gary Liss, Brenda Platt, Neil Seldman, Mary Tkach, Dave
Williamson, and myself.
As an experienced recycling activist, we need your input. We are
developing policy statements for the three messages. We would
appreciate your frank opinions, ideas and suggestions on VERY
PRELIMINARY working drafts. I am sending the
statements as separate documents:
1. JOBS Statement by Brenda Platt and Neil Seldman
2. SUBSIDIES Statement by Rick Anthony, Dave Kirkpatrick and Bill
Sheehan
3. TOTAL Statements by Dan Knapp and Dave Williamson
Please give us your thoughts via
return email, if possible, and I will circulate them.
We will be discussing these drafts - and strategies for action -- in
Newport Beach CA on Sunday, June 16th (before the CRRA
Conference). You are welcome to join us if you can find your way
there. Call Gary Liss (916-652-4450) regarding schedules and local
arrangements.
If you get your comments on the three drafts to me by Monday, May
27th, I will mail them out to participants in the June 16th meeting.
Thanks in advance for your interest.
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Bill Sheehan
bill.sheehan@sierraclub.org
268 Janice Drive, Athens GA 30606
work 770-995-9606; fax 770-995-6603
home 706-208-1416
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Draft statement for discussion by Bill Sheehan 5/15/96
WHAT IS THE GRASSROOTS RECYCLING NETWORK?
[DEAR READER: This is simply one vision -- mine. Please write down yours
and we will mix and match until we get it right, and develop a consensus on
core
concerns.]
The Grassroots Recycling Network is an informal network of recycling
activists, business people, environmentalists, waste facility opponents
and other conservatives who believe that our waste-based economy is
radically out of balance with the requirements of a sustainable future.
We have formed out of a common desire to advocate and implement
policies for a sustainable materials economy, and out of a sense that
industries that promote and profit from wasting have grown powerful
and deceptive.
We aim to tap into the incredibly widespread and durable feeling that
recycling is the right thing to do, and the bedrock conservatism that
says "waste not, want not."
We want to educate people about the fact that recycling competes with
wasting for the same materials, to expose the hype of those who have a
vested interest in wasting, and to present a vision of what is possible.
We will provide technical information on practical alternatives to
citizens who are faced with unwanted waste facilities for imported
trash and who are willing to work to create local solutions.
We will show by example the local economic development potential of
reuse and recycling enterprises, and the feasibility of total reuse and
recycling of a communities' discards.
To do this at more than a local scale will require reducing or ending
subsidies to virgin material extraction, manufacturing, use and
disposal, and investing in recycling instead.
We aim to launch, with your help, a campaign to advance the three
messages. We are calling this the Total Recycling Campaign. In the
short term we will work to raise the three issues in the national
political debate culminating in the November elections. For the longer
term, we will define and advance a grassroots advocacy recycling
agenda for the next ten to fifteen years.