Self-Haul v. Franchise Haul

The County Council is currently considering eliminating the self-haul option from the SJI transfer station. Reasons for doing so include reducing operating costs and facility expansion costs. Seems good on the financial side, right?

It is.

On the environmental side, we'll see real benefits from 1 packer truck servicing the same waste as 100 self-haulers. This means much-reduced carbon emissions from vehicles driving to and from the transfer station. Also, island-wide curbside recycling would run earlier than expected, because the local franchise hauler would be able to introduce this service with the expanded and more frequent vehicle routes.

Write your local councilmember to let him or her know what you think about eliminating the self-haul option. And even better, ask you neighbor or friend what they think of it!

Sustainability Defined

I'm sure out there some where is an agreed-upon definition of sustainability. I'll put down, then, the general idea of what it means to me:

Sustainability: Meeting both environmental and financial needs.

Too often environmental ideas become stalled because they don't make business cents.

Too often businesses or their ideas don't get support because the don't make environmental sense.

Sustainability is the idea that brings these two parts together into a cohesive solution, a balance between the two. We must be careful not to throw too much onto either the environmental or the financial for risk of unbalancing the equation.

Recycling at Roche Harbor

Here's an update on the recycling project at Roche Harbor:

Our recycling provider had trouble making it up the hill with one-week's recyclables in-tow.

Wow.

Best estimates put the 20-yard packer truck with 700 pounds and 90% full at over 6 tons of recyclables. That's phenomenal! We diverted more than 12,000 pounds of waste from the landfill through our efforts. That's pretty darn good.

I'll post y'all on the savings soon!

Laundry

I love laundry.  

We've introduced a new extraction system at RH this month called Formula One, an EcoLab solution.  The switch-over will save us about 25% in water usage per load, or 25 gallons per cycle. 

Plus the solution uses low phosphate solutions and comes in containers that minimize plastic usage.

What is your supplier doing for you to save your company resources?

Solid Waste Matters

Bam!  Back again...

It's been a while, I know, but it's not because I'm not doing Good work out there, folks.  Oh no...I've been quite busy, actually.

So my next idea has to do with carrying on a community conversation regarding garbage.  I like to call it Solid Waste Matters.  The intention is to get people to share ideas and start to come together on solid waste ideas before it gets heated and people entrench themselves.  The forum would be open to anyone and facilitated by SWAC.  

Any one have any thoughts?

Sustainable San Juans Event

Sustainable San Juans greening your business discussion today went over some of the activities we’ve engaged in at Roche Harbor, especially in the Lodging Division.  Here’s a brief summary of what I mentioned:

 

Three simple steps:

 

1)    Awareness—involve your guests, customers, clients, employees, managers, vendors, partners, collaborators, and community groups when letting people know what’s going on with the business activities you are engaging.  Also, don’t forget to create awareness  in yourself, by educating yourself on the many opportunities out there in this community.

2)    Action—Programs must be simple, systems-based and make sense/cents.  Do not make things too complex, too grandiose.  Stick to low-hanging fruit.  Don’t create a program around one person, even if it’s you.  You must create a value-based approach that will carry into everything the company plans and decides.  And remember that if it doesn’t pan out financially in the long run or is just too difficult to implement, don’t even start it.

3)    Assessment—You must create baseline data and then measure against that at regular and frequent intervals.  You need to see where improvements/successes/failures have been made or found.  React to data, not emotions.

 

And the bottom line, find ways to TURN OFF THE SWITCHES!!!!

Update to the Climate Change Resolution

Well, we got word back from the county on what kind of progress they've made in the past 13 months on the climate change resolution.

The general tone of the presentation was hurried, joking and non-specific.  The information was not very detailed and lacked few benchmarks to measure against past or future numbers.  Nearly a third of the action items had not been addressed, and we reported to be too difficult or expensive to do in the foreseeable future.  

All in all, disappointing.  I do feel that the Green Team that will be created soon by the administrator is going to be a good, grass-roots effort for the county to see what can really be done by committed individuals.  This is the only hopeful item from the presentation.

I'll keep everyone posted next year when I ask for the update, again.