When Noah (Close the Loop Program Manager) asked if I could give him a ride to work on Tuesday morning, I assumed he meant to the Highfields’ office in Hardwick, VT. I arrived at his house promptly at 8 a.m., feeling a little drowsy and wearing a t-shirt with holes in it (normal office attire for me). But as I sat down for a cup of coffee, Noah proposed the idea of me accompanying him to an “Act 148 Communications Working Group” meeting that the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) was holding in Montpelier. I was excited about the invitation to sit in with members of ANR as well as other stakeholders such as staff from solid waste districts across the state. I quickly jumped at the opportunity, then looked down at what I was wearing…”Can I go home to change first?”.
I returned to Noah’s in more formal garb, and we embarked to Montpelier. We got to the meeting a few minutes late, and I found a seat in the back and took out my notebook. The meeting was underway, and on the white board an agenda was taking shape that included discussion on haulers, variable rate pricing, and local governance. The last topic on the agenda proved to be the heart of discussion for the rest of the meeting: education and outreach.
It was enlightening to be a witness to a group of key stakeholders in the solid waste sector of Vermont “throwing spaghetti at the wall” to come up with concrete strategies on how to engage Vermonters to take part in the new movement of waste management that Act 148 has initiated. Vermont is among the first states in the country to have the forethought to enact a law that recognizes that our previous notion of waste is not accurate. Why throw away reusable resources in a society that is depleting our natural capital more and more each day? The nutrients in a banana peel shouldn’t be wasted in a landfill when they can be retained in a compost pile, just like an aluminum can shouldn’t end in a trash heap when it can be melted down and reused for something else. It was truly awesome and inspiring to sit at the same table with the think-tank that is driving this novel waste paradigm of resource retention instead of simply…disposal. Just another day in the life of a rot-star in residence.