Hasta La Gadget!

This is part 3 of a four-part article series “Cultivating Climate Justice” which tells the stories of community groups on the frontlines of the pollution, waste and climate crises, working together for systems change. United across six continents, these grassroots groups are defending community rights to clean air, clean water, zero waste, environmental justice, and good jobs. They are all members of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, a network of over 800 organizations from 90+ countries.

This series is produced by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Other Worlds.

Cultivating Climate Justice: A Tale of Two Cities

This is a tale of two U.S. cities building solutions to the climate crisis from the bottom up.

We start in the Northeast of the country, with Cooperative Energy, Recycling and Organics (CERO), a newly formed worker-owned cooperative in Boston, Massachusetts. While providing family-supporting jobs for the community, CERO works with businesses on separating out materials that can be recovered. They then collect this waste in a truck and bring it to facilities where it can either be recycled or returned to the soil as compost. (See this video on CERO.)

CERO’s board members and employees are people like Guadalupe Gonzalez and Josefina Luna, who have been recycling informally for years or decades. Guadalupe Gonzalez used to do backbreaking work, cleaning commercial buildings during the day while picking bottles from the trash at night. She was one of the thousands of underrated recycling workers, earning precious extra money to support her family. Josefina Luna explains that, at CERO, “Now we can earn a living while protecting the environment.”

CERO’s first truck hit the road this past October, 2014. Lor Holmes, one of CERO’s worker-owners and business managers, says that the coop is currently diverting four  tons of organic waste per week from being buried or burned. Within a year, CERO expects to divert 1,000 tons of organic food waste and return it to the soil. It will be working closely with its customers to help separate as much organic materials, like food waste, from garbage as possible.

Boston only recycles about 30% of the its waste, which means that 70% is sent to incinerators and landfills in surrounding communities, polluting the air and contributing to climate change. Creative, bottom-up solutions like CERO eliminate the need to burn and dump waste by returning it to a closed-loop system instead.

Boston is not the only US city where zero waste activists have been making clear the links between climate, waste, and justice, and building solutions. This fall, residents of Detroit earned a hard-won victory: curbside recycling across the entire city.

Infamous for its shrinking manufacturing base and severe budget problems, Detroit is also a city plagued by cumulative impacts, which means a range of environmental pollution sources and other social and economic stressors. Cumulative impacts are a reality lived in many low-income communities and communities of color. Detroit is home to dozens of highly toxic and polluting facilities–including one of the the world’s largest municipal solid waste incinerators.  

The  Zero Waste Detroit coalition came together with the mission of “advocating curbside recycling, a materials recovery system which will bring new jobs and economic development to the city, and an end to waste incineration,” according to the group’s statement.

For twenty years, recycling efforts in Detroit have been blocked by a “put or pay” contract with the city’s incinerator. In other words, if the city did not send enough trash to be burned and reduced or recycled it instead, they would actually have to pay the incinerator company for income lost. In 2009–the very year that contract ended–curbside recycling started with three pilot programs. And last month, in October 2014, that was expanded across the city. There is still much work to be done to make curbside recycling a reality and ensure that recycling workers rights are respected, but it’s a major step.

For many of us, taking out the recycling is something we do because we know it’s good, but it’s not something whose impact we can immediately feel. For the folks of CERO in Boston and Zero Waste Detroit who are making city-wide recycling programs work, the impacts are clear. They are keeping trash out of landfills and incinerators, doing away with health-hazardous toxic smoke, and creating worker-owner jobs.

This is what democracy looks like!

Don’t expect bribery to get you far in New Zealand. North Korea, however, may be a different story.

A new map by Transparency International, a non-profit group dedicated to fighting governmental and corporate corruption, shows how levels of corruption vary around the world. Using data and expert opinion from 12 independent institutions specializing in governance, the group ranked 175 countries on factors such as the prevalence of bribery, how countries prosecute corruption, and how governments respond to their population’s needs, such as guaranteeing basic human rights.

North American and European countries were relatively less corrupt than countries in South America, Central Africa and Asia. Somalia, known for high levels of piracy, and communist-ruled North Korea ranked as the most corrupt countries in the world. Denmark and New Zealand were the least corrupt.

Check out the map below to see how countries range from very corrupt (dark shades of red) to less corrupt (yellow).

Imae credit: Ulf Svane

Recipe courtesy of Sweet Paul Magazine.
Crispy yet moist pistachio banana waffles make a beautiful breakfast. Served with fresh slices of tangy grapefruit, marvelous mint, and drizzled with the blond chocolate Dulcey, with its caramelized notes and a twist of salt.

Serves 2
Ingredients:
2 ripe bananas, mashed 2 eggs
2 oz pistachios, unsalted,
finely grinded
1 teaspoon pure vanilla powder
1 grapefruit, cut into sections 1 small handful fresh mint,
finely chopped
1 oz Dulcey blond chocolate from
Valrhona, melted

Directions:
1. Whisk together all the waffle ingredients.
2. Heat up your waffle iron and turn it to a medium setting.
3. Cook the waffles.
Serve hot with grapefruit, mint and Dulcey.

When I was in first grade, my teacher asked me what I wanted Santa to bring me for Christmas. “I don’t believe in Santa,” I told her matter-of-factly. I still remember the look on her face — a mixture of surprise, concern, pity and fear. I realize now I might have unwittingly set off a chain reaction of “Is Santa real?” questions at my classmates’ houses that night.

The reason my parents never “did Santa” was party practical, partly philosophical. Besides not wanted to tell us kids something that wasn’t, in the strictest sense, true, we were never at home for Christmas. And to prevent having to schlep all our gifts from New Jersey to Syracuse, where my extended family lived, we opened presents at our own Christmas celebration a couple of days before. Sure, my parents could have made up a story — “Santa knows you’re going to be away so he came early” — but that just wasn’t their style. So, I went through my childhood Santa-less.

I see the looks of sympathy as you read this. “Poor kid,” you might say. “To have missed out on the magic of Christmas, the magic of believing. To have your imagination squelched so thoroughly. To grow up so fast.”

But I never looked at it that way. I never felt that I was missing anything — and not because I didn’t know what I was missing. To me, Christmas didn’t need Santa.

Here’s how it would go: After having our own special Christmas at home, my parents would load up the station wagon with presents for my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We’ll pile in and make the four-hour drive, sometimes through a snowstorm. We’d arrive in Syracuse to my grandparents’ house, brimming with relatives we hadn’t seen all year. I remember the smell of garlic and tomato when we opened the door. The laughter of 20 Italians talking over each other. My sister and I running to see the tree in the sunken family room. The piles and piles of lake-effect snow on the ground (I had a white Christmas every year). The fish dinner on Christmas Eve. Staying up late and finally going to bed thinking of The Nutcracker, in which a young girl gets transported to a magical land. Thinking of the nativity story. Even thinking of Santa. And then waking up to more relatives, to another big dinner, to another day of joy to have the people who love you finally so near.

Now that I’m an adult, I still love Christmas, although we don’t make the pilgrimage to Syracuse anymore. I wish for snow. I watch Elf and even Miracle on 34th Street. I deck the halls really well, if I do say so myself. I sit in the living room when it’s completely dark except for the glow of lights on the tree (always real, no fake ones). It looks so, well, magical.

My son is still too young to understand who Santa is, but I don’t really plan on introducing him to the concept (although my husband, a former believer, will argue this with me). I guess I just don’t see the point. Kids’ sense of wonder does not rely on thinking things are “real” or not. There is a fine line between pretending and believing, and that’s where their imagination lives. I also don’t believe in using Santa (and definitely not the creepy, Big Brother-like Elf on the Shelf) as a means to make my kids behave. And I can’t see looking my son in the eye and saying, “Better go to bed or Santa won’t come!” or trying to devise elaborate explanations for all the Santa-related questions that will inevitably be asked. I don’t think I could keep a straight face, and I want to tell things like they are to my kid.

If Santa is your family’s cup of tea, go for it. It’s just not mine. And I think Christmas is pretty magical without it.

Tina Donvito blogs about parenting after infertility and loss at foggymommy.com. Follow Foggy Mommy on Facebook and Twitter.

After watching the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer several hundred times, now you are in the mood for more merchandise. While you can’t buy a rolling droid or a three-pronged lightsaber (yet), you can get yourself a cool ring or two.

These stainless steel rings will look great on you. You can choose from A Long Time Ago, Rebel Alliance vs. Galactic Empire, or Star Wars designs. They come in size 8, 10, or 12. Two are spinner rings. They don’t go as fast as the new Sonic the Hedgehog inspired droid, but hey, that’s a great idea. When are we getting a spinner ring of that rolling droid? Get on that Disney.

Anyway, these cool rings will geek up your fingers for $19.99 – $29.99(USD) at ThinkGeek.

[via Fashionably Geek]