Guest blog #27: Adrianna Bojrab's thoughts on little city nudges

Nestled in the heart of a culturally rich and active local community, the University of Michigan’s goals seem to mirror the objectives of local Ann Arbor.  Ann Arbor is a buzzing hub of innovation; start-up entrepreneurial enterprises, and cutting edge technology and research firms seem to make up the nucleus of the local economy. As such endeavors prove costly, efficiency seems to be a priority amongst local people, a primacy that is reflected in their business approaches.  Efficiency can be achieved on a variety levels: capital allocation, minimal time and energy expenditure and strategic business structures that minimize costs and boost profits.  Such efficiency standards can be met with numerous approaches; however, Ann Arbor companies seem to set the standard by equating efficiency with green sustainability, and considering local options and mindful environmental practices to reach the bar.

While residing in Ann Arbor for four years, I noticed incentives for reducing waste around the city.  Many food businesses receive base ingredients from local farmers, and donate leftovers to the homeless population.  Local farmers' markets are highly publicized and well frequented by students and locals alike.  Clothing and product drives reallocate excess, and a noticeable shift towards biodegradable materials for disposable products has become widespread in University and local business food and product packaging. A new wave of businesses promoting increased accessibility to public transportation has emerged.  Through the means of more expansive bus routes and initiatives to provide larger capacity cabs, Ann Arbor is moving more people and burning less fuel simultaneously.  Within the community, there is a strong biking population and more recently, an emerging skateboard culture.  Governmental regulations have rejected proposals for increasing parking accessibility, and this has proved to deter individuals from driving--a positive for fuel conservation.  Additionally, the physical layout of Ann Arbor makes walking or alternative transportation an easy, viable and reasonable option, along with the construction of new dormitories, co-ops and apartment buildings on Central Campus; people are being brought closer to their destinations.  Ann Arbor makes it easy to be environmentally conscious by providing the means to promote desired actions.  

Recently, I have moved to a neighborhood just north of downtown Chicago, Illinois.  My fascination with urban living and sustainability was redefined.  Generally speaking, subways and buses are the predominate mode of transportation for many city dwellers.  As a graduate student, I have the option to purchase an unlimited public transportation card for six months.  My commute to school on the subway has opened my eyes to the amount of fuel, finances, energy and time allotment that is being saved per person. Calculate $2.50 per one-way ticket, the price of a car, gas, parking and time in the context of city, and number is likely astounding. Chicago utilizes public transportation in a way unlike most other big cities, by utilizing both above ground and underground subway transport.  By doubling the expansive public transportation network, Chicago transports more people and employs more individuals to service and maintain the tracks and trains.   Read: Public transportation is quick, efficient, expansive...and arguably entertaining. 

Additionally, the state of Illinois encourages and provides a number of incentives for renewables and efficiency efforts--a mixture of grants, shorter permit process timelines and tax cuts.  These opportunities are available for commercial, industrial, residential, educational and institutional interests, and help to further the employment and adoption of new technology and environmentally beneficial practices.  Some of these practices involve: green building designs, geothermal heat pumps, solar space and water heaters, photovoltaics, hydroelectricity, LED lighting, renewable fuels and biomass.  The implementation and employment of new technology through state and federal incentives encourages a healthier environment and provides a financially feasible way to reduce operation costs and conserve valuable resources, materials and energy.  Such information for your own city is available through DSIRE, an online database funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

On a smaller scale, I have noticed a number of changes within my two short months of residence: public restrooms are beginning to remove paper towel dispensers and replace them with strong air current dryers. Inner city farmers markets are extending their hours of operation to weekdays, specifically lunch hours, providing an alternative for the working world’s lunch break and grocery run.  Recycling containers are found on every corner and clothing dispensaries for the needy are numerous.  Water bottle fillers that provide a “number of bottles saved” to users are engineered into many of the public water fountains, becoming a city norm. By providing such numbers for users, individuals are tangibly made to feel as though they are furthering change, thus encouraging usage.   A number of restaurants provide cloth napkins, regardless of their level of formality.  Chicago provides easy ways for people to minimize waste and reuse or reallocate resources.  Small incentives and practices add up, and the collective result could be major.   

We are the generation that will turn the tables.  We will change and revitalize the American culture by using innovative ways to introduce and implement sustainable and efficient business regimes into our communities.  Our health, safety, and happiness derive from our atmosphere.  If we focus on sustainability, and intentionally challenge ourselves to reuse materials in innovative ways, we will revitalize our communities.  Look at your lifestyle, identify the source of waste, start small scale and take an active role within your community to further new practices and become a catalyst for reform. 

~Adrianna

For more of Adrianna's thoughts on this blog, click here, here, and here.

"Instantaneous" trash

I apologise for the non-thought-out nature of this post; there's just a lot going through my head and for once I can't wait until it is the weekend! 

One kind of trash I am particularly struck by is the sort of "instantaneous" trash, i.e., the trash that comes out of an activity so small on a time scale, that it is truly meaningless and avoidable and selfish. (If you have a better name for this kind of trash, please let me know.) I am talking about how at BTB (formerly Big Ten Burrito), the worker will put a burrito in a paper bag, followed the person that ordered the burrito instantly taking it out of the bag, sitting down literally two feet away from the register, eating the burrito, and throwing away the bag. I have seen this numerous times. Another example is the trash that comes out of just a moment or an event. This past Saturday was the annual Hash Bash in Ann Arbor, which left the town literally drowning in trash, as you can see here.

 

This touches on a previous experience I had in Chicago, as well as on some things I thought about a long time ago about why we trash - we honestly don't think about more than just ourselves or the small group of people around us.

How much choice should we have in a sustainable world?

What our "competitive" economy has done has offered people a lot of choice. If someone is making a product or a good for a certain amount of money, other people may try to enter that business and try to produce the product for cheaper, thereby taking business away from the other producer. The first producer may then try to cut their costs, and drive their prices down. Once their prices are fairly equal, you end up with two businesses making similar products. Then they might get into the business of differentiating their products, and sometimes this differentiation may make the price of one of the products go up. What we end up with then are two businesses, making two slightly different products, that may offer you slightly different services. Regardless, we now have two enterprises making two things. We have now two choices. It is not so difficult to see how this may result in several choices. All the while, resources are extracted, in higher and higher amounts, at higher and higher rates, resulting in environmental degradation. (Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, we have a monopoly, that of course, has its negative social implications, too.)

We live in a world in which we can choose between modes of transportation. I can fly to Chicago, drive there, or fly there. We feel (and it is justifiable) that it is important to give people the choice of these options. We now have the choice of eating tomatoes in the middle of winter, and oranges thousands of miles away from where they were grown. But what I think is that it is very easy to take choice to an extreme, and we end up doing things just because we can (you can read more thoughts about this here, here and here). This results in trash, waste, degradation and downright violence, against other people and the environment. What the problem of sustainability throws in our way is the issue of limits to consumption, which necessarily will limit the choices available to people. I concede that I do not have the answer to what the choices we have should be pared down to, but I do know that this is probably not the right direction to look in, macro to micro. Rather, we should look at ourselves first, and see what it is that we think constitutes a happy and meaningful life, given the constraints the natural world puts on us. I think this is a more tractable approach.

Chicago

I went to visit Melissa in Chicago last weekend. Melissa had asked me what she needed to do to help me out in trying to generate no trash. I said that I was sure it wouldn't be that big a deal - maintaining constant vigilance was something I needed to work on as mentioned previously. Well, it turns out it is way easier to be vigilant in Ann Arbor than in Chicago. The first night I was there, we went to a nice looking bar to eat. I ordered soup with Irish soda bread, and failed to anticipate the butter in little packets that came along with the bread. When ordering my beer, I assumed that since the beer was local, it would be a draught beer. I ended up with a bottle. When we went to eat deep dish pizza, napkins, totally unused, were whisked away because they were a little "wet" and were promptly replaced by other napkins. Indeed, I learned (again) that I need to be very upfront with everyone about what I am trying to do. It was hard convincing a Pakistani man on Devon Avenue that I was sane after I asked him to make me paan (after-dinner mouth freshener) without any wrapping around it.

Have you heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Here's a picture of an albatross chick (a marine bird) that died because it was fed plastic.


In the next post, I'll post about the the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly restaurants in Ann Arbor regarding trash, and some tips for all of you on how to avoid trash.

A win for Chicago, a loss for the environment

As you may know, the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup after a really long time...49 years? Indeed, this was a call for celebration. But unfortunately, another landfill was probably started because of it. The team parade through downtown completely trashed it. I'll talk about Chicago again in the next post, but until then, savour the following...