Respectable members of Congress,The high cost of eliminating public television and radio is abominable. The higher cost of eliminating public options across the board is stifling and offensive. In the past two months, as an Ohio Resident, I have witnessed years of statewide rail planning quashed by the sentiment of then-governor-elect John Kasich. He has since eliminated $70 of public transit funding in Ohio. Now you want to take away public radio and television for all, in the name of "budget issues".I am offended by the narrowly representative interest of Republicans in Congress, who aim to take action against an "overinflated government". However, it is the government-aided non-profit organizations, institutional and public construction projects, and others that defend a public process and provision for all. In the case of PBS and NPR, listeners and viewers keep them afloat but government funding keeps it alive.We need public radio and television to maintain last remaining near-non-partisan media outlets. Private enterprise has changed the way we are delivered the news--special interest groups with enormous lobbying power, former big oil/ag/industry executives appointed to government positions, and so on. These decisions are not in the interests of Americans but in the interests of the sovereign well-dressed and self-interested.Please do not take away from us what millions actively support and value.Sincerely,XXXXXXX
Cincinnati is enhancing their recycling service by partnering with RecycleBank - a rewards program that motivates people to take greener actions, like household recycling, by rewarding them with points that are redeemable online for rewards from local and national retailers, restaurants, pharmacies, grocers and more. Similar to frequent flier programs, the more a community recycles, the more RecycleBank Points participating households earn. Single or multi-family residences with Cincinnati curbside trash service are eligible to participate in the program free of charge.
• You must register to redeem rewards. To sign up for RecycleBank: visit www.RecycleBank.com or call 1-888-727-2978
• All eligible households have received their new recycling carts - to find out which phase you are in and which week you will be picked up, check out the City’s enhanced recycling program overview at: www.cincinnatirecycles.org or call 513-591-6000.
[Rumpke Recycling] only collects narrow-neck plastic bottles in both its Curbside Recycling Program and Recycling Drop-Off Centers. Narrow-neck plastic bottles such as water or soda bottles, shampoo bottles, and detergent bottles are accepted regardless of the recycling number found on the bottle and usually contains liquid contents. A narrow-neck plastic bottle is one that has a neck smaller than the body of the bottle. [Rumpke Recycling] does not accept wide-mouth plastic containers such as butter or yogurt containers because the manufacturing process differs from narrow-neck bottles. Narrow-neck bottles are what are referred to as blow-molded plastic while the butter tubs and yogurt containers are injection-molded plastics or a "punched" plastic. While the types of plastics for both blow-molded and injection-molded plastics is still the same, the manufacturing process is different. This results in each plastic having a different melt index, which means that they melt at different temperatures. There are not many markets for other types of plastics, which do not have a narrow-neck in the regions around [Cincinnati]. Without a market to accept the items, [Rumpke Recycling] does not have a resource that will accept and process this type of plastic.
Today's post is very much sparked by a recent MaddowBlog entry, which paraphrased a Salon article titled, "Losing Our Cool": The high price of staying cool. Salon spoke to Stan Cox, the author of the new book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer). It discusses the impacts of air conditioning on American population shifts, since the 1960s. The interview and book also (more than) allude to political implications for mass movement to the South and West, and how it corresponds to Republican constituency.
What about the social side of air conditioning? As funny as that sounds, the quest for comfort confines us to our own spaces, which have become more personalized than ever. When air conditioning first appeared in performance and movie theaters, they were the places to seek refuge from the heat. But they were also places for people to meet, share leisure, and patronize local businesses. Theaters were centers of attraction when business centers turned dark, but they were certainly destinations during the day. What are our Twenty-first Century attraction centers? Nearly every private residence or multi-unit building has air conditioning (or the option to have it). Urban dwellers have less incentive to leave their homes to find both cool air and leisure. 
PROJECTMILL's Gone Pagan!Spring has sprung so come celebrate your chosen sun and rock and twig gods with a sweaty raindance this Saturday at NST, where we bring you... DANCE_MOTHERNATURE!Green is the new black, so wear it! Also bring your old cell phones to drop in a box and be recycled by the zoo... something about chemicals in the SIM card or something... we're not sure but we support it!!Only recycled dance moves acceptable this time, mf-ers.See you there! Save the world!Reduce, Reuse, Re-Running Man,PM
 |
| "Can you save the planet without driving your family crazy?" |
PHW’s Beautification CAT identified several projects that would benefit from my initial mapping of the business corridors. These included:
1. Old, painted municipal waste containers along Warsaw are fading and falling into disrepair. I was to map them and show examples of those in poor shape. The mapping would be use to identify redundancy with other municipal waste facilities and where they are current lacking.
2. The Beauty CAT is working with Metro to consolidate bus stops with benches and shelters in Price Hill. Once again though, there may be a problem with advertisement benches in locations not zoned for them. Some are zoned; some are not (“parasitic as in nature,” as Emily put it). I was to map and photograph the benches in Price Hill, who owns them, and if they are authorized. Those that are not can be relocated or eliminated altogether. This may reduce eyesores in the community and augment Price Hill’s reputation as a “Cincinnati’s greenest community”.
3. Compile a photographic inventory of each block from Warsaw and Grand through Glenway and Crookshank.
So, what were some of my findings?
You are always invited to any of Price Hill Will’s Community Action Team meetings. The next Beautification CAT meeting is this Thursday, March 11th at 6:30pm at Price Hill Chili. The next Eco-neighborhood CAT meeting will be held tonight at 5:30pm at PHW, as last week’s meeting was rescheduled.
Brought to us by the those who brought us Who Killed the Electric Car, Tapped—a documentary mostly about bottled water—recently screened as part of the UC|Sustainability Film Series for Winter 2010. The film exhbited where bottled water is sourced, which companies are behind the various brands of “natural spring water”, the containers in which it is sold, and the generally hidden impacts of bottled water on our environment and health. Although I was aware of the concerns of plastic packaging, as well as the unnecessary use and waste of water resources, Tapped was an engaging work that seemed to impact all in attendance.
Several topics in the film caused my innards to sink. It was the same disgust when I feel when the following ingredients are applied to the same recipe: individual ignorance by choice and corporate apathy. It is fairly simple for someone to point the finger solely at the insiders’ club—vile industry and the government at its mercy. But several times during the film, it was expressed that voting with our feet is ever so important. In this case, it is all about voting with our wallets.
One topic that disturbed me was environmental degradation in the name of plastic, If I recall correctly, 30 million plastic bottles are disposed every day, but only half make it into the recycling stream. The other half makes its way into landfills, rivers and streams, and even wash up on distant islands in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The film exhbited one such beach that no longer had the pure white sand it solely featured for thousands of years. Instead, it was littered with millions of small pieces of plastic. Our consumer choices translate into loss of habitat for marine life. Our culture of convenience translates into a lower quality of life for fellow humans and entire ecosystems alike. This is precisely the big picture thinking that I fear lacks in collective society only days after seeing realm-rocking documentaries about real life quasi-chaos.
My primary concern leads me to borrow a couple terms from the business world, both of which I picked up an Organization Theory course. After seeing several environmentally focused documentaries like Food Inc, The Age of Stupid, No Impact Man, and others, I cannot help but think of a class discussion on the difference between “corporate responsibility” and “corporate responsiveness”. Companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Nestle likely will not alter their practices of virtually stealing water from local water bodies, (which was shown to result in “overharvesting” even during droughts), unless they are trounced with government regulation. Their image of “pure” and “clean”, and their sleek bottle design is about as bad a Starbucks’ recent greenwashing.
Corporate responsibility usually comes into play when a company comes under fire for objectionable practices. It is a chicken-and-egg issue though. The film interviewed a former EPA official, who quit the agency after being told that he was not permitted to take action against a petrochemical company (those which make the petroleum-based resin used in plastic production), which was causing adverse health effects in residents of nearby Corpus Christi. However, if enough people complained to the agency, he would then be allowed to enforce penalties. But where do we obtain that critical mass, when much our bountiful news and informational sources tell us what they want us to know?
However, I would actually like to concurrently mention both my concerns by replacing “corporate” with “environmental”—and not just our natural environments. Both industries and communities must find a way to coexist in good health somehow. Leveraging partnerships with big corporations seems to be a key ingredient of establishing sustainable relationships, no matter how large or small your neighbors really are. Perhaps it could be via institutions with government as a silent figure at the table—a mediator of sorts. The creation of a long-term plan to live in harmony with each other—that is necessary, I feel. But like the uprising against tobacco companies and their evil mind tricks, government must play a facilitiating role. Government has regulatory measures in place to prevent the free market from taking over our societal reins. It seems that we run into problems when an adminstration comes along that deregulates the corporate realm.
We are ingrained in a culture that responds to chaos but does not do a very good job at using preventative measures, that is, until tragedy strikes. That is environmental responsibility, motivated by a range of factors tied to consequence. Environmental responsiveness—I believe—in achieved when two or more partners engage in a long-term commitment to address the always-looming issues in our lives. The different is that environmental responsiveness can be an antidote to the cynical response that laymen have against the limited scope and results of environmental and corporate responsibility. In the case of bottled water, government can help to take back our local waters. There is evidence that it is always working.
