I'm looking forward to our field trip to the ENC this Saturday. It's located in my neighborhood, and I've spent many a pleasant hour there either with my students, on my own with a sack lunch or wandering down the impressive trail looking at birds. I've personally seen its transformation from a portable plunked down on a piece of rough land, surrounded by a glorious trail through a dozen simulated classic California habitats, to now a dazzling LEED platinum certified green building - providing a stunning portal into the nature center. This building is the first in Orange County to receive this level of certification! LEED-certified buildings, "have smaller development footprints, are healthier environments for occupants and serve as stewards in environmental and social responsibility." In the words on the ENC website,
The ENC has been teaching and growing within our community for over 35 years. Having a building of our own has been a dream since our inception and we can finally say that our dream has come true. Our 8,500 square-foot sustainable learning center provides vital classroom and educational spaces and serves as an educational tool itself. We hope that our building can show the benefits of environmentally-conscious design and teach our visitors how to implement sustainable features in their homes and businesses. Most importantly, we hope the center will inspire our visitors to make personal investments in the protection of the environment.
To learn more, please follow this link to the LEED Platinum ENC Building page: http://www.encenter.org/visit/greenbuilding.shtml
I'm excited to see an such a vital, important and worthy organization grow exponentially. The ENC truly is spreading the word for the environment. With the advent of their Green Building, it's an impressive place now both outwardly and inwardly.
So far I'm thinking I want to work as a Green / Sustainability Consultant in the RRM field. I've been consulting for 20 years in the educational and academic coaching field, and truly love the consulting process. I enjoy being called in to figure out what the problem is, come up with solutions and design a plan, which I then help my clients implement. Watching a client's transformation for the better is truly inspiring! Efficiency and creativity are my middle names, so I'm grateful that in the Green field ... I've found a niche that fits me just right. Mother Earth is dear to me, and I passionately and wholeheartedly throw myself into her service!
I've learned a ton of things in the past 6 weeks in my classes at IVC - especially, and simply, an expanded consciousness about discards. This is probably the biggest change in my life as a result of taking these classes: I'm now more aware than ever about how the improper discard of items after their useful lives has created a nightmare of epidemic proportions. That being said, the next most important thing I've learned is that SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT! And that I am a part of that something! I just cannot wait to keep learning more about the entire field and settling into what my part in this trashy transformation will be :)
From Cradle to Cradle gives a great description of one of the many problems with landfills:
Imagine what you would come upon today at a typical landfill: old furniture, upholstery, carpets, televisions, clothing, shoes, telephones, computers, complex products and plastic packaging, as well as organic materials like diapers, paper, wood and food wastes. Most of these products were made from valuable materials that required effort and expense to extract and make, billions of dollars' worth of material assets. The biodegradable materials such as food matter and paper actually have value too - they could decompose and return biological nutrients to the soil. Unfortunately, all of these things are heaped in a landfill, where their value is wasted. They are the ultimate products of an industrial system that is designed on a linear, one-way cradle-to-grave model.
What wasting! We're throwing away value resources and commodities, plus not making use of the second-life of so many things. The whole book is about transitioning from a cradle-to-grave model to a cradle-to-cradle model, where products provide nourishment for something else after their own lives are done. This is nature's model, of course. What a great example we have all around us. We too can design like nature does. And so we shall, in order to save the planet and life on it.
Cradle to Cradle mentions a kind of Frankenstein product (as far as recycling goes) man has made: Monstrous Hybrids. These are, "mixtures of materials both technical and biological, neither of which can be salvaged after their current lives." What a disaster! Citing the common leather shoe as an example, the author goes on to reveal how the particular amalgam of material and processes, including chromium tanning and the lead and plastics in rubber soles, make it totally unsuitable for recycling. Can we not design a better way to make shoes, with eco-friendly materials and chemicals? Such is one of our many, many tasks on the way to sustainability and zero waste.
In Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, the author brings up the notion that, "Whether it is a matter of cutting the amount of toxic waste created or emitted, or the quantity of raw materials used, or the product size itself, reduction is a central tenet of eco-efficiency. But reduction in any of these areas does not halt depletion and destruction - it only slows it down, allowing them to take place in smaller increments over a longer period of time." So don't emit so much waste, don't use so much material and don't make the product bigger than it has to be are the messages here. All great messages, but in reality we're only conserving better the little we have. It makes me think that in order to get to zero waste, we must come up with a better model ultimately. However, the four Rs are a great beginning. Especially the regulation, as forcing people to comply with a zero waste model - or the closest we can get to zero waste - will ensure success (well, as long as the players involved do act with integrity).
The field trip to the Frank R Bowerman landfill was revelatory - so THAT's where our garbage is going, and that's how it gets there, and that's what's done with it once it arrives! I was really impressed, with the size of the landfill and the sheer volume of traffic going up, dumping and then going back down. Wow. There was a constant stream of huge trucks of all shapes and color and brands, in long lines both on the way up and the way down. And this was a Saturday. I wonder if the volume is even greater on the week days?
Christine Knapp was powerhouse of energy and information. Turns out this landfill is one of three in the OC, and is scheduled to close in 2053. The other two will close in 2021 and 2067 ... and there will not be any other landfills opening up in the county. They've taken a canyon basically and are filling it with trash here. Likely by the time these landfills close, we'll have zero waste policies well in place and won't need landfills anymore ... IF we work super-hard on the problem NOW!
This landfill isn't open to the public - all we saw were business garbage trucks and haulers. I couldn't help but wonder where exactly MY garbage was on this huge pile we were standing on. Perhaps I even saw my garbage being unloaded, as we stood there and watched! I must say, this visit to the landfill inspired me to keep going forward with my green training, as there's definitely "a need and a half" for work done in this field!
Please visit our Orange County landfills website at www.oclandfills.com for the full scoop.
