 All right, all while given that it's new now, I think we'll go ahead and get started as folks start to and keep trickling in. So my name is Riley Stevenson. I'm on the Sierra Club Executive Committee and going to be moderating and facilitating today. So thank you everyone for being here and for joining us for the first day of our Earth Day Speaker Series. Just some housekeeping notes. We ask you to keep your microphone on mute throughout the presentation just to help with background noise. You'll see that there's a microphone symbol which is in the lower left of your screen as shown here. If the microphone symbol is crossed through you are muted. Next to that you'll see a video camera symbol and you're welcome to stay have your video on or off through the presentation. This webinar is being recorded just so you know so you may be recorded if your camera is on. If you wish not to be seen feel free to turn your camera off. Lastly, if you have any questions please feel free to put them in the chat, which as you can see is over on the right. I'll be monitoring the chat throughout the presentation and at the end we will have some time for some questions and answers after the presentation itself. Before we begin we'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the land beneath our feet. Here in Maine we live in occupied Wabanaki territory. Wabanaki people lived on this land and stewarded it for thousands of years. In these times indigenous communities are being hit hard by the pandemic, and in most cases have fewer resources and less support. Please consider making a donation to support your local Native American tribe. And at this point I'll hand it off to Fay. So Fay is our speaker today. Fay is the co-executive director of the post landfill action network. She is the founder of Anthropology and Anthropology at Erlum College where they were the founder of the free store and a leader in their schools responsible energy investment campaign. Fay studied abroad in India, Tanzania, New Zealand, Guatemala and Mexico where they researched waste management systems and I'll hand it off to you. Thank you Riley. Hi everybody good afternoon. I hope everyone has a lunch to go with today's presentation. Thank you so much Riley for that introduction and the land acknowledgement. Thank you for Marina for getting this set up. I'm really happy to be here I am a recent transplant to Maine so this is exciting I recently moved here from Philly. So it's exciting to meet folks and get connected to the Sierra Club chapter here. So to get started. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Some thumbs up can y'all see my screen right now. Yeah we're good. Fantastic. Thank you. Alright so the name of today's presentation is a zero waste world is possible. And I am presenting on behalf of the post landfill action network and I'll tell you a little bit more about us. So Riley already covered all this. Usually I do this ground setting. I just give some space if anyone needs time to remove distractions get note taking supplies if you need it sent to yourself get some water. We're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about some pretty serious topics today when we talk about waste we also talk about systems of oppression and intersecting systems of oppression. So if you need to at any point step away. I encourage you to take a deep breath. If you need to turn off or on your camera. Please feel free to do so. As Riley said we'll be doing questions at the end. But if folks have questions throughout you can send the question in the chat or raise your hand. I won't see the chat but Riley will be getting my attention throughout if someone has a question. Alright so for introductions again my name is Faye I use she and they pronouns and I'm the co executive director of the post landfill action network. So I want to invite everyone to introduce themselves as well. And we're going to do that in the chat because there are a lot of folks as much as I want to hear from every single one of you. I want to invite you to put your name and your pronouns in the chat and share one word or a short sentence that you think about when I say waste. So I'm going to give a minute for folks to do that. Alright I see some coming in. I'm going to have to catch up on these later. This is so we can all get to know each other a little bit. Please keep the intros going. I'm going to move on to the next slide. But if you just joined us please share your name pronouns and one word or short sentence that you think of when I say waste. So for those of you who are social media savvy. This is our social media handles from Twitter Instagram Facebook LinkedIn you can find us at post landfill. And this is our adorable team pre coded on the left hand side I work with a fantastic team of 11 full time staff members based throughout the country. And we've been working digitally remotely for a little over a year now as many of us have and want to give credit to all of what I'm going to present here across this team. So we are the post landfill action network. We currently work with over 700 college and university campuses across the US. This is our students for zero waste conference annually we bring together our network of students to talk about waste and the next step for the movement we're a eight year old nonprofit. And we've been growing a lot through the last eight years learning a lot about how to build this movement for a zero waste worlds. And real quick Riley can I ask you a logistic question. Sorry yeah. Can you see at the top of my screen is that blocked by the bar is that just on my screen. The top thing I can see it says building a movement for a zero waste world. Fantastic cool thank you. All right. So we work with college students for the most part. I don't know if there are any college students on here feel free to make yourself known. But just for folks who have college students in their lives this is basically what we do. We provide campus membership for students doing waste work on their campuses and campuses can become members of our network which means they get all sorts of support it's basically the support that we wish that we had had when we were students because our staff is made up of very very recent grads. So we provide leadership skills we provide best practices. We help students navigate the ins and outs of organizing on a college campus. We also do annual events, like I just mentioned our students for zero waste conference, our regional beyond waste student summits, and we help students ban single use disposable plastics on campuses, and do campus consulting called Atlas. Feel free to check out our website if you have questions or you're interested. At the end of this presentation I'll do a little more information on how to get involved. So for this presentation format we're going to do a problem solution action format. So we're going to start by understanding the problem. I'm going to share with you all how we understand the intersections of the waste crisis. And then I'm going to tell you about our. And then we're going to focus on case studies for the world that we're working towards. And finally we're going to chat. We're going to discuss what it looks like to maybe apply these things where we're all living now. Before I jump into any of that I just wanted to highlight there is an event coming up on April 22 that is organized by organizers on the Penobscot organizers in partnership with you main. So there's going to be a car caravan for they're calling it the caravan from other earth on April 22. Leaving from the UMain campus and looping up on Indian Island with the Penobscot organizers and trying to basically just make a big fuss about the issues going on there with the Juniper Ridge landfill. And the out of state waste importation so I'll touch on this again at the end but if folks need to leave early just wanted to put that there was a call for call for action. In the or no old town area of Maine. Okay, so jumping right in. What we will not be talking about today is lifestyle zero waste. That is not where my work sits so we're not going to be talking about how to reduce your specific waste in your life. We're not going to be talking about how to keep your trash in a mason jar. We can touch on some of those things if they come up. But what I want to try and do with you all today is share with you a systemic perspective on why we have a waste problem and what we can do about it. So the way that we look at waste from an organizational perspective is a little bit beyond the common definition of zero waste. And the industry definition is at least 90% diversion from landfill or incinerator. So what does that mean. So you see on this waste hierarchy that top bar, that's the standard diversion rate, the amount of material that is being recycled, or being composted. So when we look at it. We want to also include reuse we want to include reduction we want to include rethinking and redesigning and changing the system overall. We don't want to be just looking at recycling and composting because that's not really bringing us towards the circular economy that we need to develop. So we're looking at what we call the linear consumption economy, extracting resources from the ground, producing them into products, distributing those products across the world, consuming those products and disposing of them. This is a linear process where we extract stuff from the ground we make it into stuff and then we throw it away. These are the problems that are intersecting with this we understand this crisis by breaking it down into these five areas, consumer culture, landfills and incinerators environmental racism, global climate change and resource depletion. And I'm going to dive into all of these. Starting with consumer culture. I might have seen this image before it's a common piece of art. We live in a culture where this is what we're told by the media by big box stores we define ourselves by the stuff that we surround ourselves with. Are you a sparkly iPhone cover, or are you a matte black cover, are you a PC or are you a Mac, we define ourselves by the stuff that we surround ourselves with that is consumer culture and that is perpetuated in our advertising. For example, I want to invite folks to take themselves off mute and make a guess as to what you think this is an advertisement for. So you can take yourself off mute and just yell it out if you think you know, liquor, liquor, what do other people think. Wine. Wine. What else fashion trends, fashion trends, dating site, a dating site. What else. Yeah. I missed one was that last one stockings stockings. Yeah we have toast play dance love flirt kiss. What are they selling us it could be any of those things. This is an Urban Outfitters ad. They're selling us clothing. If they're selling us clothing, why is there barely any clothing in this advertisement. Because they're not actually selling clothing they're selling a lifestyle. They're not saying, check out how great these leggings are they're so durable they will never rip they're made sustainably. They'll never rest your life you'll pass these down to your grandkids. They're saying, don't you want to be cool, like these people. This advertisement was also saying that. Don't you want to be cool, like these people, completely different generation. Honestly, I think this is back but completely different generation. What is there is planned obsolescence. And that is a form of planned obsolescence that is called perceived obsolescence, where every season, there's a new style. Every year, the fashion trends change. You can't go around wearing this outfit anymore. I guess you'd probably be like the coolest kid ever if you wore this outfit now. But a couple years ago, that would not be the case these things, these things change, and these advertisements sell us a new lifestyle every season, which creates a huge amount of waste. Additionally, there's another type of planned obsolescence which is functional obsolescence. So I'm going to read this quote out loud. The whole economy is based on planned obsolescence. We make good products, we induce people to buy them. And then next year, we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned out of date obsolete. We do this for the soundest reason to make money. This is a real quote from 1958 from an industrial designer. Talking about planned obsolescence. And so I want to also, again, invite folks to unmute themselves and yell out. What would you think is an example, a product example of functional planned obsolescence? Forever changing the style and the design and we can't get things fixed. Hmm. Not being able to get things fixed. That's a good one. Well, skin tight jeans and now very loose jeans like in the 60s. Yeah, yeah, so there's style obsolescence right there. Yeah, perceived obsolescence. What about functional obsolescence something that is made to break. Oh God, everything. Phones. Phones. Yes. Yes, appliances. Yeah, appliances appliances. Yeah, Apple products are some of the worst perpetrators of this the way they change their outlets. So you can't use the same chargers year after year. Any other examples folks want to add. VCRs. Yeah, now the new stuff you can't, you can't repair that anymore. My Karik machine that didn't last a year. Yeah, that's a great example. These are all good examples this is all planned obsolescence we live in a society where things are made to break and they're made to be obsolete. And why is this a problem. This is a problem because the stuff that gets made is made in a deeply unethical way. And this this images is, I should have done a content warning before this I apologize. This image is really intense. This is a factory collapse from 2013 from a factory in Bangladesh. This happens regularly. This is the fast fashion industry. This was a factory that was creating clothing. The impact of just clothing, just our fast fashion industry is broken down here on the left. Fast fashion industry is the second largest consumer of water globally. It contributes 20% of global water pollution 10% of all carbon emissions. The average, like clothing worker is making less than $3 a day. That is modern slavery that is slavery 85% of all textiles 85% are thrown away within a year. Within a year of being made. That's the stuff that gets made, just our clothing that gets made. So when this stuff breaks so quickly it has to get made again, and again, when that stuff goes out of style, it has to get made again, and again, and the impact of making that is massive. That impact is this stuff is made from oil. So the image that you see in front of you is a visual representation of the amount of oil fossil fuels that goes into making a teddy bear and a rubber duck. These things are made from oil plastic is a petroleum product, and the majority of the things that we interact with the fabrics that we interact with are made from petroleum products are made from oil. There is very little natural fiber that's still used in fast fashion and in typical product development. So this is not just a problem with how we make things. It is a problem with what we make things from oil is a finite resource there is only so much of it. So we make that stuff. We use it. We throw it away. The two outlets that stuff typically goes to when we throw it away are a landfill or an incinerator and I'm going to talk about both of those. The first is a landfill. This is a cross section of what it would look like if you basically cut a landfill in half and looked into the center. It is a common misconception that landfills are big stinky places that contain a lot of decaying, like plastics and stuff. Landfills are actually, they are stinky, we'll give them that. They are actually generated to try to keep all of the stuff inside at a complete homeostasis. They're trying to keep that stuff from deteriorating because that will release as many, they'll release more gases, it will spontaneously combust. Landfills actually contain a ton of fill, dirt, cement, sand, things like that. And that stuff continues to be volatile. So what ends up happening as this stuff decays is we have greenhouse gases coming out the top, methane, carbon dioxide, and we have leachate coming out the bottom. Basically, when it rains, the water percolates in the landfill and it runs out the bottom containing all of these chemicals that are listed below. There are toxins, heavy metals, carcinogens, cancer causing materials, and landfill sites attempt to contain these things, but there are case after case after case of those holding ponds breaking of leaks. So we have to look in our own backyard at the Juniper Ridge landfill up in Old Town, Maine to know the impact that that's happening on the Penobscot River. Landfill impact on the local community is massive, but it also has an impact on climate change. So this graph on the right, this is an EPA study showing US methane emissions by source. On the right here, landfills contribute 18% of methane in the atmosphere. Methane is the most harmful greenhouse gas. When we talk about climate change, we need to be talking about landfills. We need to be talking about the third highest contributor of methane in our atmosphere. The other way that trash is typically dealt with is through an incinerator. Incinerators are often called waste to energy plants. There are massive greenwashing campaigns to try and paint incinerators as a sustainable alternative or a renewable energy source because incinerators do generate energy, but the amount of energy that they generate is minuscule based or compared to the amount of impact that they have on the environment. The only way they could ever be considered a renewable energy source is if we're saying that our trash is an unending source of material, like our trash is like the sun, our trash is like the air, the wind, our trash is like water, which I think is not a good goal for us to send. Similarly, incinerators are the most polluting form of energy source of compared to coal or oil. They contribute the highest carbon dioxide, another potent greenhouse gas compared to these other sources. In this graph here, how much higher the amount of carbon dioxide emission from incinerators than from even coal-fired power plants, which we know coal-fired is bad. I think we can all agree here coal-fired power plants are bad. But when told that incineration is a solution, it's really important to stand up and be able to say why that is not the case. It's not just these materials, these facilities that are a problem, it's not just a climate change issue, but it's also an environmental injustice issue. So I'm going to read this quote again. This is a quote from the private consulting firm that was hired to consult for the California Waste Management Board. Basically, the California Waste Management Board asked them, where should we put our polluting infrastructure? And this private consulting firm said, all socioeconomic groupings tend to resent the nearby siting of major facilities, but middle and upper socioeconomic status possess better resources to effectuate their position. Basically, nobody wants polluting infrastructure in their communities, but you should put them in poor neighborhoods because they can't fight back. That was their advice. And we can see that all across the country is the poor neighborhoods, the immigrant neighborhoods, the communities of color, those are the neighborhoods that are experiencing impacts from plastic productions facilities, from landfills, from incinerators. We see it right here in Maine. The Penobscot community is the community, the First Nations community is the community that's facing the direct impact from the landfill in our own community. And this is a symptom of something called redlining. So redlining was a practice that was outlawed in the 70s, but it was legal before then. And it was the practice of creating maps like what you're seeing here for major metropolitan areas. And the map that you see here indicates, this is Philadelphia, and it indicates red areas, yellow areas, blue areas and green areas. And this was done in partnership with banks and with cities. And basically it identified the undesirable neighborhoods for providing loans for putting in infrastructure for adding supermarkets for packaging businesses. It was used most heavily by banks to decide where to grant mortgages and where to not grant mortgages. And we see, even though this is technically illegal now, we see this practice continuing. And when do you overlay redlining maps with maps of major polluting infrastructure. I do find that those red areas that have been historically marginalized, systemically marginalized, continue to have the highest amount of polluting infrastructure. They also have the highest amount of asthma and cancer rates and skin rashes from this. This is an environmental racism issue. It's an environmental classism issue. It's an environmental injustice and it is rampant across this country. So all of that is if the infrastructure that we have in place works perfectly. That is how it's set up to work. But the reality is, it doesn't really. Only 9% of all plastic ever made has been recycled. The recycling infrastructure that we have in place. I'm honestly not going to talk a lot about recycling because of this fact, because our recycling infrastructure is not what it needs to be to deal with the capacity of the problem that we are facing. Only 9% of all plastic ever made has been recycled. The rest is pollution. And because of that, it's estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. And that actually I think is now a outdated number. I think that the estimates are sooner than 2050. And that the crisis of plastic in the ocean is not just a matter of the material of plastic in the ocean, but the chemicals that leech out of that plastic and into the wildlife into our bodies into coastal communities. That is massive. And I could talk about that for a really long time, but we're not going to spend forever on the problem. It's important to understand the intersections of this problem and how, at every point in this system, there are intersections of race and class and gender, and the systems of injustice are perpetuating each other, they're holding each other up. When we think about solutions, we need to think about those solutions in a way that is systemic. So the image that I'm sharing here is our theory of change. We call it the points of intervention theory of change. And you can see the linear consumption economy in red, we extract resources, we produce them into stuff, we distribute that stuff, we consume it, and we dispose of it. We also are changing the system. We are finding points of leverage to create change. We're resisting extraction. We're redesigning products and creating new renewable forms of production. We're redesigning and repairing and reusing and recovering and reclaiming our communities. And all of these points of intervention, that's what makes up the movement that we are working for. That's what makes up the type of work that we support and the way that we think the world can change. And we see campuses as a really important part of that. So I'm not going to harp too much on this because I know that there's not really that many students here, but this is an important part of what we do at PLAN, the Post-Landfill Action Network. And I think it applies to small communities as well. We see campuses and small communities to be able to test out solutions, to be able to try out new ways of creating resources, new ways of distributing things. And campuses specifically have the incredible privilege of resources and support networks. And that's why we see campus networks as an incredible place to test out zero waste. Additionally, students always have been catalysts for change. The images that you see here are all examples of students and young people who through the years have made massive systemic change, whether we're talking more recently about Greta Thunberg or the student fossil fuel divestment movement, or we want to talk about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the Civil Rights Movement or students who stood up against apartheid, or students against the Vietnam War. One of these examples are times that young people and students stood up and said, no more. This is too much. We don't want to live in this world. We want to live in a different world. And we believe that this movement that we're building here can also be powered by that student innovation and student energy. And we're seeing it happen with these examples. So I'm going to dive into a couple of examples of ways that this change is happening and then we'll get into our discussion, but I want to pause real quick and just see if there's any questions. I know I've gone all the way down. I want to see if folks have any questions at this point. There's a question in the chat. Casey Seaman asks, what do you think about some of the legislation that's being proposed? Are there any parts in it that will be effective in beginning some systematic change? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm assuming that you're talking, are you talking about the break free from plastic legislation? Yes. And some of the Green New Deal things and, you know, we're hearing more conversations about it now, which is helpful. So, but, you know, what are other pieces in there that will really make a difference was what I was wondering. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. I will be fully transparent with you and say that the work that I do is not as policy based. So I'm not an expert on the policy that is happening. I'm much more program based. Well, I do think that the Green New Deal is really important and has come a long way. The work that we have been focusing on is around the break free from plastic act. So that's something that I would really encourage folks to look up. And part of the break free from plastic legislation that's being proposed is the investment and the like ground level creation that has happened with folks who are most directly impacted by the problems that the policy is trying to address. So I can say that having known how that policy has been developed for the break free from plastic acts. I don't know as much around the Green New Deal. But I think that's a really important part of policy development. Because what it does is it ensures that it's basically not creating new problems. And it's going to the root of what the individuals who are most impacted need to develop solutions in their own communities. Any other questions. All right. Keep going. All right, so we're going to go into solutions. I know we talked about some deep pieces of the problem. But we're going to dig into some solutions. Before we do, I want to share with you all a phrase that we hold at plan, which is no one can do everything but everyone can do something. And together we can fix this broken system. A big part of our work is helping students and young people find what we call their point of intervention, find their point in this system where they can make change on a systemic level. That will be long lasting. So together we believe we can fix this broken system. Okay, so what does points of intervention model look like in practice. This is the fun part. This is the part where I get to talk about solutions. Talk about the amazing people who are working in this movement and really making change. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share a couple of solutions with you all. And then we're going to do our activity, which includes generating solutions yourself. So if you want to take some notes, think about how these things might be applicable in your communities. I invite you all to think about that now in preparation for your breakout group. So starting with, sorry. Okay, well, starting with shutting down pipelines. This is an example of intervening at the point of extraction and the point of distribution. The line three pipeline is a tar sands pipeline in the Minnesota region that has been threatening native communities. And shutting that pipeline down is a part of challenging this system of linear consumption economy because it is transporting a dirty fuel, a dirty fossil fuel to be created into these short term products. Another example is divesting from fossil fuels, the fossil fuel divestment movement. This is really the organizing space where I cut my teeth as a as a college student and now has grown massively and really shows the impact that moving your money as a form of protest can have when it comes to massive institutions. There are thousands of campuses, churches communities, investment funds that have moved their money out of fossil fuels, which has created a movement where not only is it a form of protest against the fossil fuel industry, but it is also made investment in fossil fuels. This is the unsound form of investment. It is not a place where institutions are even making money anymore. And this is a huge in huge part to student movement. So this is a way of intervening in extraction and production. This is micro plastics. This is another student project. These are students from the University of Santa Barbara, who successfully banned I love this story because they successfully banned micro beads on their campus. And for anyone who doesn't know micro beads are often present in the products that you see them holding toothpaste face washes, and they are literally tiny balls of plastic that are used for exfoliation. They're really bad for your skin. And they're really bad for our waterways because we literally just wash them right down the drain. These students banned them on their campus, banned them in their town, banned them in their state and now they're banned nationally because of these students. This was an example of them intervening at the point of production. So pressuring these companies companies to change their production and the point of consumption. So changing the way that we consume products. So changing packaging. This is a company called ecovative packaging is an area of a massive area of waste, especially lifestyle waste but packaging waste is a really big problem in in industry so beyond lifestyle. And this company ecovative ecovative is making packaging from mushrooms. So that packaging that you see there is actually made from that that's mushroom that's my ceiling. And so that is intervening at the point of distribution and the point of production. The fun fact about this company they actually are also starting to make home like renovation materials so they're starting to make insulation and they're starting to make like wall siding all out of mushroom, which is a very new area I don't know how far they are but it's a really cool area of research that is happening. And then we have fighting for the right to repair which someone mentioned earlier. This is a really, really, really important point. It's literally illegal to try and repair some of your own stuff. If you open the back of an iPhone, it becomes has waste hazardous waste, and you're technically not allowed to bring it into repair you have to buy a new one, according to the store. So this movement for right to repair this is a national movement that is working to pass local legislation all across the country. This is a great place to look into getting plugged in there advocating for right to repair legislation that will completely change the way that repair is managed across the country. This is an example of intervening at production. If we can repair our stuff we don't have to produce new stuff and consumption. If you can buy something that's repairable, you're much like much more likely to change your consumption patterns to something that is repairable and easily repairable for a long time, rather than something that you can't repair at all. If you're really interested in repair another place to look is a company called I fix it. They have super easy to use step by step videos and tool kits for repairing your items, they'll even sell refurbished parts for repairing everything from the waistband of your genes to your laptop. So I fix it is a really great resource to check out and they support the right to repair legislation through their nonprofit arm. Sharing our resources tool libraries. This is a form of intervening at distribution and consumption. Example here is the West Philadelphia tool library so this is a neighborhood that I just moved out of, which had a great tool library where you could rent anything from a plumbing wrench to a lawn mower to make a great book on how to fix your lawn mower. It had so much stuff and what it did is save individuals from having to each have their own lawn mower, but having a couple lawn mowers for the entire neighborhood tool libraries are gaining in popularity. As we learned that basically we're being duped by the corporate machine so this is a really great resource to dig into. Reclaiming food waste. This project is really near and dear to my heart scrap dogs is a Recently started business by a couple of former students who we used to work with. That's actually based in Rockland, Maine, and they serve Rockland and surrounding towns, picking up compost or start picking up food scraps from individuals homes and from businesses, and then composting it and then providing soil right back to you. The two individuals that started this were students who we worked with and went off to start this business they are what we call alumni or plan alumni, and they are intervening at the point of production and the point of disposal. And then finally, intervening at the point of disposal we have fighting about dealing with trash. Excuse me. Did someone have a question that must have been an accident. Okay, feel free to ask if you if you want to ask a question. Intervening at the point of disposal. This is the fight against the Juniper Ridge landfill again. Shutting down that infrastructure is a really, really important part resisting that infrastructure, changing the way that that infrastructure is taking over is a really, really important part of this fight. At the bottom of this slide. There's a link here and I debated whether or not to share this video but it is like it's like 14 minutes long so that would have been basically my whole presentation. This is the sunlight media collective which is a youth collective of Penobscot youth media creators who did a short documentary on the fight against the Juniper Ridge landfill and it is really, really good, really good. I think everybody who lives in the state of Maine should watch this video because not only does it help to understand what's going on here. But it helps to clarify the way that it is impacting the Penobscot community and the rest of the surrounding community in the old town area. And with that landfill is they're accepting out of state waste, and they are constantly expanding. I've been connected to folks living in proximity to this landfill for seven years now. And the landfill has gone through three expansions, three expansions in seven years that is a unbelievable amount of trash. They've had a kind of mind numbing feel for the impact of this landfill every year. Kasella, who operates the landfill hosts an event called dinner at the dump where they basically try to woo the local community into being supporters of their landfill. But they also give out free food so that's great. They take a bus to the top of the landfill. And it's very gimmicky but it is a way to see the impact of that landfill because it is. It's a view from the top of the landfill. And that's all trash. So I would I would highly suggest learning a little bit more about this and getting involved and I'll make sure that these slides get shared so that you all have the link to this video. I'll go along with what what's going on here. All right, so we're going to do an activity. Let me see so we have about 10 minutes left. So Riley if we can do breakout groups of like five people for, let's say five minutes. And what we're going to talk about while you're getting that set up. We're going to talk about the question of how can your community take action using the points of intervention. So thinking about all the examples of intervening at these different points of intervention. How can your community take action what would different projects look like how could you engage what could you support. And feel free to like throw ideas that are similar to what we just shared. That's why they're there to really jog those thoughts. And I do want to really encourage folks to go beyond individual actions think about systemic change. So Riley do we have the groups ready. Cool. All right go ahead for five minutes and then we'll come back and share back. It does feel good. Yeah. Welcome back. So we don't have a lot of time left. And I do want to share a couple of resources at the end. So I want to open up space for three or so minutes for folks to just share what they talked about, or anything else they want to discuss in this space any questions. I want to leave like two minutes at the end so Riley do you want to facilitate if there's like hand raise to a system. Yeah I think if folks just want to shout out or use the raise hand feature that's fine do case. Yeah I can I can start off a little bit because we were talking to Roshanna who was out collecting trash as they was doing this, which I thought was so awesome. This is a this is a conference in action man that was I thought that was great. There we go. It got us really talking I think about the break free from plastic act and and the, the things that we can do with our local legislators to start to make an impact and some of those points of intervention locally like I, I talked to our state legislators, quite often. And now I can talk to them about this too, because that's, that's a critical piece and learning more about it so that was that was a big piece of what we were talking about. One of the things that we talked about was something that you haven't covered, and that is waste energy. And a few people now are talking about net zero. And we have a college very near me called unity college that built a dorm, a new dorm a number of years ago that essentially, I think takes no energy from the from the grid, but that may be no net. So it's built very tight, and it has solar panels on the roof, and so on. And that's something that we need to talk about as well. Yeah, absolutely that's a great point Peter so talking about the waste of energy. You know I also didn't talk a ton about food waste. There's a lot of forms of waste that hopefully when you go away from this presentation. What happened to me when I started to become what I call a trash nerd is seeing waste everywhere wasted potential wasted energy wasted resources wasted food. So that's, that's a great point and I think that's a really good example of you said it was unity college. Unity college has great. So, in our little breakout group, am I there. I had to ask Faye about how you build consensus how you build a momentum for any good cause, specifically environmentally based cause. Faye made some fabulous points about, first of all, escalation which includes keeping at it and don't just send one email and be discouraged if you don't hear back, send 45 emails to your city counselors or district representatives and meet them in person if they don't respond and build power through children's letter writing and art projects. Get yourself in the news so it was it's just you know on any of these issues it's so hard to break through the mundane and the routine and build momentum and so that was mainly what what we talked about in our group. I don't have time to hear from. Well actually no one else. I was going to say one more but we are almost out of time. So I'm going to go back and share my screen just to wrap up. Thank you everyone who shared. And I want to encourage if you all want to have future conversation about this. I hope Riley at the end of this you can share info about future Sierra Club meetings. So conversation can continue. So, I'm going to put a quick plug again for the event on the 22nd. Really looking for organizers or for anyone in the area to show up with signs. This is the caravan from Mother Earth against the, the dumping and the importing of main way out of state waste. At the junior village landfill in partnership with Penobscot organizers. So I hope folks show up to that. This info will be in this presentation which you all will have at the end of this session. The fourth event that I want to plug really quickly is specifically for college and high school students so for anyone who has college and high school students in their lives please feel free to share this free virtual event. It is the fourth event in a series called the beyond waste student summits it's a weekend intensive weekend training. This May 1st event theme is on establishing a circular economy, and it's going to be on fashion forward so talking about fast fashion, and thinking about thrift stores and free stores and economic systems. Was that a question from someone. So you can email Ramiro at postline fill dot org to sign up if you'd like. Finally, we're always looking for new members so feel free to share this with the college students or staff in your life. You can always contact us at info at postline fill which I'll put on the last slide. And a couple of additional resources you can sign up for our monthly newsletter. I've also included some databases here mutual aid database which is an awesome form of zero waste and community resiliency and campus organizing tactics for remote organizing and this actually Abby the question that you asked about getting the attention of your representatives. Town representatives and campus administration are basically the same. So this remote organizing toolkit I think would be really relevant for what you're working on as well. So feel free to pull tools from that. Thank you all so much for coming thank you for having me I know we're a little over time I'm happy to stay a couple of minutes and continue chatting. But if folks need to leave I understand thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Riley did you have wrap up you wanted to do. I did yeah just super briefly. So again, yeah as was said wrong slide should be right. As I said thank you all so much for coming and just wanted to let you all know about our next events this week for Earth Week. So tomorrow our event is two inches who is the author of advocating the environment how to gather your power and take action, which will be released a summer she'll be sharing effective strategies for advocating for the environment attendees will leave this conversation feeling both empowered and motivated to use their new skills. I recommend that you join us for that and again that the link and way to get registered for that can be found on the Sierra Club main website. And additionally feel free to follow us on social media and keep up with everything we're doing. Yeah, thank you all so much for coming. Thank you, Riley. Riley, can I make a comment. Sure. For you and face face still there. I'm here. Okay, many, many years ago. I think one of the important things is to give positive feedback to companies that are doing the right thing. I'm sure you guys, you know, are doing that. Many years ago I was working for Oxfam. And I stumbled upon the fact that UPS Corporation had donated millions of dollars to fund what they call the prepared food rescue program. I think in 30 major metropolitan areas in the United States, they got, you know, connected with a local 501 C three now, you know, charity, and they funded these trucks these refrigerated trucks that would go around every night, and pick up all this leftover food from, you know, like fast food joints and corporate cafeterias that's how I found out about it because corporate cafeteria. I was really impressed with that at the time because they were helping to save, you know, a lot of waste from going to waste as opposed to in being able to feed people who were desperate for food. And I've always been very impressed with UPS and I don't know what they're doing these days, but they were very supportive many years ago for this kind of, you know, kinds of programs that you were talking about today. You know, eliminating waste and also the other side of it like Oxfam and so on feeding people so anyway. I love that idea Casey, thank you for mentioning that because I struggle with attitudes and polarization in our community and how people like us could be considered freaks for even wasting an hour in the day talking about this stuff. Thanking people who are doing such a good job and even having a festival to honor them if we can ever get back in person would just be magnificent because there are community organizations and and industries even in schools that are just doing some very, very good things and an implicit way to urge others to get on the bandwagon. It's a beautiful idea. We need to do more of it. And I'd be willing to try and help and dig into it. There's a huge UPS distribution center about a mile from our house so I probably could if they knows how to get a hold of me. Yeah. We all share a supermarket chain Hanifords. I think Hanifords has a sustainability program. I don't know. Seems like they're trying to do more and more at least around our area in Belfast. And I think it's worth plugging their efforts as well. It is absolutely. Well thanks for this great presentation today. I absolutely loved it. Yep. Yep. Thank you everybody. Thanks. It was great to hear from you. Thank you. Thanks y'all. Thank you everyone. And Riley, you're awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, for sure.