Today's Topics:
More thanks to Steve Seuss and to Rick Anthony
NRC Conf - Tuesday
Zero Waste
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Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 19:16:25 +0100
From: mappelho@madison.tdsnet.com (Mary Appelhof)
Subject: More thanks to Steve Seuss and to Rick Anthony
I, too, am appreciating the fact that Steve is willing to sit at his laptop
after a long, intense day and let his perceptions and conversations and
ghost-sightings pour out through his fingertips into messages we all can
read. Like Robin, I can almost feel that I am there.
I've felt many times as if I were swimming upstream as I tried to get
people think of waste as a resource, to convince government officials that
citizens would do the right thing if convenient options were available, or,
to get people to invite a colony of worms into their homes so they could
truly recycle their food waste on site. It sounds as if Steve is having to
swim upstream in his persistent quest to introduce Zero Waste to attendees
at NRC. Wouldn't you have thought he would be preaching to the choir,
rather than running into some of the difficulties he has had? I commend
you, Steve, on not giving up. By finding effective ways to express the
message. By keeping lines of communication open. By winning people over.
And, Rick, thanks for your work, too --putting the alert out on this list
to get people thinking about the conference and what they might do, hanging
around for two hours when no one shows up at a scheduled meeting to talk
with anyone who does come by, keeping the ZeroWaste concept in front of
people's minds and agendas.
I like Robin's ideas of having a Zero Waste track at next year's
conference, at pledging to have a waste-free conference. I am appalled
that Bill Sheehan has not given support for Zero Waste in his work with the
NRC board.
Look forward to another report, or two, and thanks again, Steve.
Mary Appelhof
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Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 09:38:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: STEVESUESS@aol.com
Subject: NRC Conf - Tuesday
Hellooo Zero Wasters,
Tuesday was the day to tlk Zero Waste. At 10AM was the "Next Step"
session which included a lady from Xerox talking about their goal to
eliminate waste - how they've eliminated more than 80% in the last seven
years, and how it has made them money to do so. A gentleman talked about the
Natural Step program which concentrates on teaching business to live in
harmony with nature. They now have more than a few examples of how this also
helps business make more money. John Young talked about the hidden costs of
hard rock mining and made it clear that things are more expensive than just
what you pay for them... and as the final speaker I showed "The Faceless
Ones" video that Mike Brown of Patagonia showed at our conference (The
audience reaction was the same - utter silence) and essentially gave the
speech I wrote up in yesterdays NRC congress report. This session was packed
to overflowing which meant a little over 100 people.
A hour later was the GRN organizing meeting. The GRN committee did get
together earlier in the morning and plasteres posters all over the conference
telling people to come to our organizing meeting, and they were at the
America Recycles Day Rally with Zero Waste posters - These went over fine and
everyone seemed happy. Anyway, the did an excellent job of running the
organizing meeting which drew about 40-50 people. Unfortunately more than
half were old timers. In a way we were dissapointed that there were not
more, but then there were five NRC Board members there and there was Anne
from MN who told us how she was one of those talked to last year about Zero
Waste. At first she was skeptical, but then she ended up going home and
began working hard to make Minnesota a Zero Waste state and she came to our
meeting to report how much they had accomplished. There were several such
stories from GRN and conference folks, and it was jut this kind of one by one
conversions leading to one by one action that I think will make this movement
succeed in the end. Speakers at the GRN meeting included Sen. James, Eric
Lombardi, Rick Anthony, Lance King, myself, Alycia Little - who is doing a
fantastic job organizing anti Coke recycling weeks in college campuses, and
lots more.
Last night found many of the conference attendees out by the pool -
They've got an outbreak of encephalitis going on here; you get it from
insect bites. (Another greenhouse effect?) They've cloed the pool at night
to keep people indoors and away from getting bit as a result. But around
10PM everyone wanders over to the pool and waits for the guard there to leave
and then jumps in. They've got a huge water slide and a hot tub for 30+.
Well, we did not get the Board to take up Zero Waste yet, but I am sure
that with five Board members coming to the GRN organizing session that they
will. Given the nature of the kind ofproceedures this group follows to do
anything, I am sure it will not happen overnight, but we should keep pushing
and we should keep the slogan moving.
As mentioned the other day I am the new California ambassador to the
NRC, and thank-you Krista Henkel for giving the SROC council a listserve -
You all know how much fun I have on listserves, and now I have a new one, one
with all the state recycling organizations on it. A whole new bunch to work
on.
Thank-you all for your support.....
PS: yesterday found Edgar Miller wearing the Zero Waste button, and Ed
Boisson is with us as well! Now we gotta work on those guys from the Soft
Drink Mfg. Assoc. and APC.....himmmm
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Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 12:23:13 +0900
From: oldxeye@crisscross.com (Hop)
Subject: Zero Waste
------------------------------
Date: (null)
From: (null)
>From: STEVESUESS@aol.com
>Subject: NRC Congress - Monday Night
>
>Helllloo Zero Wasters,
>...... Today found more than 200 people wearing Zero Waste buttons ......
>...... I spent the afternoon talking to people at the exhibit hall ......
>...... here is the distilled argument for Zero Waste that I am
>using on this group, and it works:
> All of us here at this conference are here because we want to conserve
>resources, we want to reduce waste. Everyone admits that once we get to the
>25,35, 50% targets we have, that we will not go home and call it done, but
>rather we will raise the target. Well isn't the logical extension of those
>actions the goal of Zero Waste? Pretty much everyone agrees to that line of
>thinking... They just begin the "buts...." there.
> I tell them to deny that we are working on a Zero Waste goal is to be
>deceptive! We are not telling the truth, we are liars! We are deceptive to
>ourselves, and more importantly we re deceiving the public! Through this
>deception we find ourselves needing to invent more complicated reasons for
>our actions, which leads to things such as the garbage barge. Through these
>acts of deception we arm the opposition such as the Tierneys of the world who
>sense this deception and find our lies. The pubic can feel this deception as
>well and thus only reluctantly supports us. Even worse - we deceive
>ourselves, and this leads us to creating all kinds of paths to our stated
>goals that all to often take us away from our true goal.
> Why do we deceive ourselves? We deceive ourselves because we've come so
>far away from this Zero Waste way of life, that we are hard wired in our
>genes to live, that we've lost sight of it and we do not know how to go back
>to it! We put our heads in the sand - we sweep the waste under the carpet,
>close our eyes and hope it will go away. We do not seem able to face the
>reality that the emperor really does not wear clothes and all the
>consequences of that realization. So like drunks on the tracks we shift the
>blame, we deny the problem, we move into the fantasy world - AND I KEEP
>WAITING FOR ROGER RABBIT TO WALK UP TO ME ASK I GIVE MY TALK AND TURN ME OVER
>TO THE CARTOON PATROL!
> If we want the public to support our recycling efforts we have to give
>them the truth, and we have to give then a vision that they can follow. Zero
>waste is the truth and it is the vision - the public will follow that vision.
> They will not follow the mass of confused rules and contradictory overly
>long arguments that fill the airwaves of todays unreality!
>
> Everyone who has heard that speech ha put on the fucking button -
>everyone except Ed Boisson! I'm still working on him!
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End of GreenYes Digest V97 #231
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