Green Marketing and Outreach Campaigns

Terrence Gellenbeck with the city of Phoenix Public Works Department in Arizona presented his city's new recycling program Wednesday afternoon during the Green Marketing and Outreach Campaign session. Terrence provided excellent information on how they improved their recycling program by rolling out the “Recycling Changes Everything” campaign.

Keys to improving their city’s program included a three part initiative: new slogan, community outreach, and media outreach. The first part of their program included changing their slogan. The city has provided recycling since 1989 and had used the same recycling slogan for eight years, so Terrence believed the city needed a new recycling slogan to revamp and improve the program.

Secondly, community outreach was vital to improving recycling participation and reducing contamination. They formed a focus group and asked residents how to improve the recycling program. The focus group’s best idea was to incorporate pictures on education literature and materials. Terrence said this idea really helped their recycling program.

Lastly, he provided ways to maximize advertising. The city program organizers developed 30-second radio commercials, but radio stations sell advertising in one-minute blocks, so the city worked with a public water organization to share the cost of the advertising.

Another initiative the city of Phoenix rolled out was a bag reduction program. In three months, they found a 12 percent increase number of cloth bags used at grocery stores and an 8 percent decrease of plastic bags being used at grocery stores.

Lessons learned from a new campaign:
Know your customers
Identify key stakeholders
Develop a common vision for your organization
Be cost consciousness

Terrence’s parting words on recycling: It’s more expensive, but it legitimizes what you do.

For more than two years Roberta Fernandez has committed to taking action to educate others on climate change.

Roberta spoke at Wednesday's keynote presentation and her passion and commitment showed as she talked about Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth climate project message.

Al Gore personally trained Roberta in Nashville to present his climate change message publicly. She said every action taken by an individual or organization that is positive and measurable is meaningful.

Roberta provided clear data about how the planet is becoming hotter and the stated the 9 of the 10 hottest year occurred in our last decade. She provided three reasons why our planet's temperature is changing. I. Population 2. Scientific and technological advances 3. The way we think.

The third reason, the way we think is harder to understand because people may not believe that we have caused the planet to become warmer based on our activities such as industry or driving. Many people don't believe this is a real problem.

Roberta said the misunderstanding is based on media perspective, which tries to explain both sides of the story, when scientific journals clearly and unanimously agree that the planet is warming and burning fossil fuels is a major culprit. We get 86 percent of our energy from burning fossil fuels!

She said every action taken by an individual or organization that is positive and measurable is meaningful. She changed her consulting business into Planet Partnership. It's an organization that educates people to take action in their own lives to reduce their carbon footprint.

Her message was clear, there are no national boundaries when discussing climate change and we're all in this together. So, let's take action and make a commitment to reduce our carbon footprint!

Waste Conversion Technologies: What does the future hold?

Many communities are adopting greater diversion goals and must find new ways to reduce municipal solid waste. Technologies discussed at Tuesday’s session included Waste-to-Energy, Gasification, Plasma Arc, and anaerobic digestion of MSW.

Dan Costello with DHR Engineering, Inc. presented at the Waste Conversion Technologies session. To improve their waste diversion goals, DHR completed five international tours in three years to get a feel of the global community on waste diversion technologies.

Tour sites were chosen in Asia and Europe, including Japan, Germany and Belgium.
Waste-to-Energy sites are mainly used in Germany and Belgium. With more than 300 plants in Europe, this technology costs about $150-$200 US per ton.

Gasification processes are mainly present in Japan, but not in Europe, Dan said.
This technology seems to work best with more uniform and select waste feedstock. This technology costs about $300 per ton.

The Plasma Arc technology has operational issues due to fuel feed stock that is still being worked out, Dan said. No extension operation studies at a full load rate and cost per ton information were not available on the plasma arc technology.

The last technology he discussed included anaerobic digestion of MSW. Dan stated odor is a problem with this technology and no emissions data is available, though he expected emissions to be low compared to EPA MACT standards.

Patrick Matthews, with Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority in California discussed their research on the autoclave system technology.

The authority is made up of five cities and eastern unincorporated area of Monterey County and generates approximately 260,000 tons of waste per year. Fortunately, their authority diverts 50 percent of their waste, but has set of goal of 75 percent by 2015 and 50 years of sustainable processing/disposal capacity.

With strong opposition to landfills, Patrick wanted to research other technologies to divert waste with less environmental impacts. The authority is conducting a 2-year testing program on the autoclave system.

The autoclave is basically a large pressurized steam cooker and looks like a big cement mixer, Patrick said. The authority is in second year of testing. When speaking about the marketability of products from steaming MSW in the autoclave, high amounts of cellulose remains. Cellulose is a feedstock for ethanol production. The autoclave can process up to 2 tons of municipal solid waste per day up to three times a day and reduces waste volume by 60 percent.

We have to consider new technologies because there will probably not be very many landfills built in the next 10 years, so we have to look at new ways to handle waste stream, Patrick added.
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Greetings fellow trash lovers!

I'm probably not alone saying last night's Opening Reception of SWANA's WASTECON 2008 was a wonderful kick-off to the conference! It's a great, relaxed way to network and make new friends.

I feel such synergy when talking to others about waste reduction, recycling and sustainability! Not only did I chat with folks from the United States, I spoke with attendees from Canada and Australia, this truly is an international conference! It truly makes me believe that we're all in this together.

John Biedenharn, solid waste manager of Coconino County's Public Works Department, which is located in Flagstaff, AZ is looking forward to renewing his professional career with SWANA after being out of the country for more than 10 years. John worked in solid waste careers in Guam and North Queensland, Australia before moving to the states. "The short version of my passion in this work is to try to make a difference. It's the truth," John said.

Also attending last night's festivities included former international president Tom Parker encouraged members of SWANA to become involved with the organization. He has been involved on committees and boards throughout the past 10 years and feels he has gotten a lot more out of the organization by being involved.

Enjoy the conference and please come back to read more of our conference coverage!

Carbon is a Hot Topic - For Everyone

WASTECON in Tampa is just a days away and it sounds amazing! This year's conference showcases energy and climate issues. There has been a lot of interest and concern about the reducing our carbon footprint lately. It's a hot topic!

Energy use and climate are issues that require assistance and action from an individual, business and governmental perspective. It must be addressed domestically and internationally since we're all in this together, right?

Some of the technical sessions you don't want to miss include: Food Waste to Energy, Sustainable Recycling and How Green is your Landfill? The latter session will discuss how to measure the carbon footprint of your landfill!

Be sure to check out the WASTECON blog at www.wastecon.org for conference information and updates.

I'll see you at Opening Reception!