Sustainable Tennessee

Yesterday was the final day of the three day Summit for a Sustainable Tennessee here at Lipscomb University in Nashville.

Each of the working groups Air, Water, Land, Sustainable Energy, Solid Waste/Recycling, Healthy Communities, Quality Growth, Natural Infrastructure made presentations with recommendations that had been voted on in each group session held Thursday and Friday. These recommendations will form the basis of an agenda that will be presented to the state legislature, the general public and the all the various statewide policy boards.

You can view the results of the weekend summit by viewing the Draft Sustainabillty Document here

A few ideas for a better summit in the years to come:

Get the governor to show up to the event.
Better public relations to get more people to know about the event.
The website for the summit needs to be up to date at least 4 months before a statewide event such as this, and there also needs to be updated current information on the website.

The cost of the event was one thing that kept many people away. I know at least 20 people who would have attended had it not been for the high cost. More sponsors are a good thing which would help alleviate the cost. Focusing more on early registration for a lower fee (which is why having the website ready for registration more than a month before the event is key) Also, developing a volunteer system where people staff tables and keep the conference on track by helping out in exchange for getting into the conference for free would be great. The Green Festivals do an amazing job with their volunteers and something similar would be nice to see here too.

I think that would also attract more young people and a more diverse, non-white crowd to the event. Issues such as environmental justice affect many people of lesser means and it would be nice to see those people represented more at the summit.

All in all though, the folks at the Tennessee Environmental Council and the Tennessee Conservation Voters did a great job in putting the summit together. It was great to see so many different people from all the various environmental organizations working together under one roof for a few days. Hopefully, this will translate into action and policy changes on a statewide level.

You can support these organizations by donating your time, energy and money to help further their good works.

Tennessee Environmental Council

Tennessee Conservation Voters

Afternoon breakout sessions for the Summit for a Sustainable Tennessee moved into several working groups; Sustainable Energy, Healthy Communities, Quality Growth, and Natural Infrastructure.

I attended the Healthy Communities session which was focused on things such as food security, sustainable agriculture. Some of the points presented were…

Small farms are good. For every 6 or 7 small farms, a new business is created.
Good farming is good for the land.
Local food sources are better for the health and well-being of communities.
Quality of life is higher when there is less disparity between the rich and poor.
Access and affordability for healthy food is an issue.
State self sufficiency when it comes to access and creation of food is important. Not having to ship in food from other states saves fuel costs and local food tastes better.
Food safety, access and availability via better agricultural infrastructure.

All of these ideas and recommendations will be added to the working group agenda that will be made into policy recommendations on a statewide level.

Day two of the Summit for a Sustainable Tennessee started out in the morning with breakout sessions on Air, Land, Water, Energy and Solid Waste. Participants focused on developing some action items for the coming year for each breakout group.

The solid waste and recycling breakout session which I attended, was an informative look at some of the issues facing the state of Tennessee when it comes to landfill safety, nuclear waste disposal, recycling and solid waste disposal.

Some facts were discussed:

Over 71% of the waste stream in TN has the potential to be raw material for business and compost.
12% is food waste
13% is yard waste
36% is paper/cardboard
15% is construction and demolition waste.

Tennessee spends 250 million dollars to dispose of solid waste though landfills.

The TN Bottle Bill would put a 5 cent deposit on glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers.
4.5 billion containers are disposed of in the state of TN. 90 percent of these containers are tossed in the landfill.

25% of the cost of landfill disposal would be eliminated with the passage of the bottle bill.
Independent redemption centers would be funded to accept these recyclable materials.
18 sponsors for the Bottle Bill during the last legislative session for 2008.
Keep Tennessee Beautiful opposes this bottle bill.
Funding for KTB is from the beverage industry. Keep America Beautiful was started by Coca Cola back in the 1950’s.
5 million in litter grants comes from the beverage industry.
Many state municipalities rely on KTB to pay for local recycling funds.

Keeping that 71% of raw material out of TN landfills would lower the cost of waste disposal immensely.

Day two breakfast talk had Tony Massaro from the League of Conservation Voters speaking about 2008 election polls. They did some election night polling in 11 battleground states on issues related to the environment. Some of the findings were:

68 percent are concerned with issues dealing with the environment
77 percent consider global warming as a threat
62 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of Democrats consider global warming is a threat.
Voters are divided on the scientific conceneus behind global warming.
Large majorities across party line support action on global warming issues.
Voters believe that Obama and the Congressional Democrats have better ideas on energy.
Republicans are more interested in nuclear power while women and democrats are less supportive of building more nuclear plants.

The remainder of the first day for the Summit for a Sustainable Tennessee was spent in smaller focus groups based upon regional groups. First we broke into urban, suburban and rural subgroups to discuss issues that pertain to each place. Then we broke into statewide regional groups. Western, Middle and Eastern Tennessee had separate confabs dealing with issues of environmental importance that each part of the state are dealing with. There was some discussion by those of us in Middle Tennessee to hold a Middle Tennessee focused gathering sometime in the next year to delve deeper into issues pertinent to our region. In the past year, both Eastern and Western Tennessee had their regional summits dealing with environmental issues and those groups presented their reports which covered both the problems and the opportunities that were discussed.

There was much discussion on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the state of Tennessee when it comes to environmental, economic development and energy issues. Each region of Tennessee has much to bring to the conversation when it comes to the environment. The key is to become involved and engaged in the process, rather than allowing apathy to take over. More tommrrow for day two.