[The P2Rx Center Directors have offered to post occasional entries in regional blogs. Thanks to Rick Yoder from P2RIC for the following.]
On April 19-20, I attended the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountain Consortium Green Jobs Conference in Des Moines. The consortium is comprised of IA, NE, MT, WY, UT (event info here). Much of the ARRA funding in these states went toward trying to get a handle on where green jobs are and whether they are increasing in number and whether the educational support structure (plans of study as offered by Career Clusters) are available.
My great disappointment with their efforts is that they chose not to tie any measurement of green jobs to environmental outcomes. (Really?)
But the wonky side of me likes the definition of green jobs that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) crafted, especially the segment that focuses on process rather than the part that focuses on specific NAICS segments or products. I think it’s a bit wrong-headed to say that all jobs associated with building and installing wind turbines are green. Environmental impact varies with material and process choices. But I do like the idea that every job can have an impact on energy efficiency of an operation.
It’s unfortunate that BLS isn’t going to support an annual survey of this second, process-oriented, part of their green jobs definition.
Why?
Because it’s just this sort of improvement that technical assistance providers have been doing for decades. In my mind, such a survey offers a real opportunity for EPA’s P2 office to help other federal agencies identify measures that promote source reduction.
P2TagTeam is collaborative tagging effort on Delicious, spearheaded by the Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx), to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more background on P2Tag Team, Delicious, and social bookmarking, see P2 is Delicious, my earlier post on the topic.
As an example of the kinds of resources being identified, here are the ten most recent bookmarks tagged for P2TagTeam. You can view the entire collection at http://www.delicious.com/tag/p2tagteam.
B.Y.O.B (Bring Your Own Bag)
380,000,000,000 plastic bags are consumed each year in America, 1% of them get recycled. Princeton SECN students explores the world of plastic, and non-plastic bags. Learn how bringing your own bag, can help the environment.
ScienceCinema, the source for Department of Energy (DOE) multimedia – Home Page
ScienceCinema utilizes audio indexing and speech recognition technology from Microsoft Research, allowing you to search for specific words and phrases spoken within video files. You can then easily access the exact point in the video where the words were spoken by the presenter. The videos in ScienceCinema highlight DOE’s scientific research.
The Green Grid
The Green Grid is a global consortium of IT companies and professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems around the globe. The organization seeks to unite global industry efforts to standardize on a common set of metrics, processes, methods and new technologies to further its common goals.
State of Green Business Report 2011
The fourth annual edition of our State of Green Business report continues our efforts to measure the environmental impacts of the emerging green economy. We document how well — or poorly — companies are improving their environmental performance despite the challenges posed by the Great Recession, and begin to note promising signs for a sea change in corporate sustainability efforts. The free, downloadable report measures the progress of U.S. business and the economy from an environmental perspective, and highlights key trends in corporate culture in regard to the environment.
Check Your Paper
The Check Your Paper scheme is WWF’s global benchmarking tool for responsible producers and buyers of paper products. It also provides a virtual meeting place for organisations who want to act sustainably and transparently when producing or buying paper products.
Over the past eighteen months, GLRPPR staff have been converting the topic hubs they’ve developed into LibGuides. To date, the following Topic Hubs have been converted:
LibGuides is a web 2.0 platform that libraries use to create topical guides to help their users find information. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, and blogs into one package. Librarians can incorporate RSS feeds, video, web links, bibliographic citations, search boxes, and other finding aids. LibGuides also allows librarians to create polls and allows users to comment on specific resources and tools within each guide.
Users can also sign up to receive e-mail alerts when new content is published, either for particular topics/keywords or for a specific librarian (in this case, GLRPPR). In addition, the converted topic hubs live in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s LibGuides space, which means that they’re more visible to the UIUC community, particularly students.
This is an announcement of the extension of the deadline for submitting P2 results data for calendar years 2007, 2008, and 2009. The National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) / Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) P2 Results Task Force requests that your program submits P2 results data to your regional P2Rx Center for input into the P2 Results Data System. If your program has already submitted 2007 through 2009 data, then we thank you and ignore this request.
Rick and Laura described many social networking and bookmarking tools (such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.), why using these tools has become important for those in pollution prevention and sustainability organizations, how these tools can be great sources of information as well as marketing, and also provided some great tips for using these technologies. The audience asked lots of questions, and overall the webinar was very informative even for those of us who already regularly use Web 2.0 tools.
If you missed the session, or attended and would like copies of the presentations, these are now available for download on the WSPPN webinar page (look for “Web 2.0 Social Media Webinar, Recorded on July 28, 2010”).
Thanks to WSPPN, and particularly to Donna Walden, for making this webinar possible.
[Jeff Miller, Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, CA, is guest blogging today. His topic: CBD’s petition to the U.S. EPA to ban lead shot and fishing tackle under the Toxic Substances Control Act. Thanks to Madeline Sten, P2Rx National Coordinator, for asking Jeff to contribute a post.]
Bald eagle with sternal recumbancy from lead poisoning, photo courtesy The Raptor Center, University of Minnesota.
When the Environmental Protection Agency ruled last year to phase out the use of lead wheel weights for balancing car tires, the decision passed with no opposition from car manufacturers, wheel weight producers, or public citizen groups. It was, after all, a common-sense decision that guaranteed a safer environment, reducing the lead released into waterways when weights drop off cars and are ground into fine particles by passing vehicles. Manufacturers will have to adjust their production processes, a small price for society to pay for removing a source of toxic lead.
In a similar effort, the Center for Biological Diversity and American Bird Conservancy, along with other conservation, hunting, and veterinary organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency this month to ban lead from ammunition used in hunting and weights used for fishing.
The petition to eliminate lead from hunting and fishing sports has nothing to do with the rights of Americans to bear arms and to hunt. Literally hundreds of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies have shown the dangers of lead in the environment for both wildlife and human health.
A variety of non-toxic bullets, shot, and fishing weights not made of lead are readily available and are equally effective. Some non-lead ammunition costs a bit more, but once lead-free regulations are in place and manufacturers re-tool and begin producing copper, steel, and tungsten bullets and shot in higher volume, prices will drop dramatically, just as the cost of eco-friendly light bulbs fell as they became commonplace.
Lead is an extremely toxic substance that is dangerous to people and wildlife even at low levels. Exposure can cause a range of health effects, from acute poisoning and death to long-term problems such as reduced reproduction, inhibition of growth and damage to neurological development. Bald eagles, golden eagles, California condors, and other predatory and scavenging birds die in significant numbers every year as a result of feeding on carcasses or gut piles contaminated with lead fragments left behind by hunters.
Up to 15 million mourning doves die each year from lead poisoning from consuming spent lead shot pellets, which they mistake for grit– that’s almost as many doves as are intentionally killed by hunters. Swans, cranes, ducks, geese, loons and other waterfowl ingest spent lead shotgun pellets and lead-based fishing tackle lost in lakes and rivers, often with deadly consequences.
The deaths of these and other lead-poisoned birds due to renal failure, neurological dysfunction, or seizures are slow and painful. Harder to measure, yet possibly more significant than direct mortality, are secondary losses due to the “sub-lethal” effects of lead, such as reproductive failure, increased susceptibility to disease and infection, and increased predation due to anemia and weakened muscles.
In the United States, 3,000 tons of lead are shot into the environment by hunting every year, another 80,000 tons are released at shooting ranges, and 4,000 tons are lost in ponds and streams as fishing lures and sinkers. The science on the environmental impacts of lead ammunition poisoning is indisputable. The petition references nearly 500 peer-reviewed scientific studies that starkly illustrate the widespread dangers from lead ammunition and fishing tackle. At least 75 wild bird species in the United States are poisoned by spent lead ammunition, including our national symbol, the bald eagle.
Humans who eat game meat shot with lead bullets are also at risk. X-rays of shot deer and of packaged game meat reveal tiny fragments of lead left behind when bullets disintegrate on impact. Children are particularly sensitive to even low levels of exposure to lead and can suffer neurological damage. In recent decades our society has taken actions to reduce human exposure to lead from paint, gasoline, water pipes, toys, waste dumps, and shooting ranges. Spent ammunition and fishing weights are the major remaining uncontrolled sources of ecologically relevant lead exposure.
Hunters have made substantial contributions to conservation – funds from their hunting licenses and the voluntary purchase of duck stamps support National Wildlife Refuges and wildlife habitat. Shooting non-lead ammunition is a logical continuation of hunting conservation ethics, which is why the hunting group Project Gutpile, one of the co-petitioners to the EPA, has been rallying hunter support for the switch to non-lead.
The change to lead-free ammunition is essential, reasonable, and timely. Advances in technology and increased knowledge of lead’s risks mean we can now enjoy hunting and fishing without contaminating the land, wildlife, or ourselves.
For more information visit the Center for Biological Diversity’s Get the Lead Out web page.
NEWMOA and the Massachusetts Office of Technical Assistance (OTA) have developed a materials use and profitability software tool, called Energy & Materials Flow & Cost Tracker (EMFACT) and recently made it available online free for download. Please check it out. We are currently seeking opportunities to conduct training workshops on EMFACT for small and medium-sized manufacturers, regulatory program staff, and/or technical assistance providers and consultants. This training could be in the form of a webinar, a half day or full day in-person workshop, or an in-person presentation at a conference or workshop. Please send an email to Terri Goldberg if you are interested in exploring such opportunities. NEWMOA has funding to support this training.
Here’s more on what EMFACT is –
EMFACT is designed to be used within small and medium-sized companies for systematically tracking materials and energy use; releases, discharges, and wastes; and associated costs in ways that can create value for their business. The tool can provide a comprehensive picture of resource use and its relation to production and planning that will help improve both business and environmental performance. We have been hearing from users that EMFACT™ can provide critical support for pollution prevention efforts within firms and for technical assistance providers and consultants that are working with firms.
EMFACT’s benefits to its users are:
Easy navigation and data management
Connecting material inputs and all outputs, including products, wastes, and other environmental releases to estimate mass balances and flows
Effective tracking of all material inputs, including chemicals, commodities, and fuels, and their associated costs
Effective tracking of all wastes, wastewater discharges, and air emissions
Automated reminders and notices about upcoming reporting and other deadlines
Automated reports on materials use efficiency and environmental releases
Easy transfer of data to spreadsheets for further analysis and reports
EMFACT was funded by a grant from the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development.
Laura Barnes and Joy Scrogum of GLRPPR are winners in the P2tagteam world. P2Rx is sending delicious prizes to the top bookmarkers for the P2Tagteam on the Delicious site. Laura won a quart of custom made ice cream for being the top bookmarker. The ice cream was delivered frozen.
Joy received a bag of chocolate kisses for her bookmarking efforts.
You can see photos of the winners and their prizes on GLRPPR’s Facebook page.
In case you have not heard, Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place.
Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you’re not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.
For more information on Delicious, see their Help section, which includes an excellent list of frequently asked questions.
P2Rx has started a collaborative tagging effort on Delicious to encourage P2 professionals to share the resources they find and bookmark. If you locate a resource that you think would be helpful to other P2 professionals, simply add P2TagTeam tag in the Tags field when you add the bookmark to Delicious. For more information on P2TagTeam, visit the P2Rx web site or contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu).
