Opt In Phone Book Ordinance Passes City Council

This is the official press release from zerowasteseattle.org, a fiscal sponsoree of Sustainable Seattle.

Grassroots Activists Applaud Seattle Council for Passing Yellow Pages Ordinance Today

Toughest Phonebook Restrictions in the Country

SEATTLE -- Today, the Seattle City Council voted 8-1 in favor of a new ordinance which creates an enforceable opt-out system restricting unwanted delivery of yellow page phone books. In addition, the distributors of the books will pay the city a per book ($0.14 per book) and per ton fee ($148.00 per ton) to recover the costs to the city to recycle the phonebooks and set up the opt-out registry. The mayor is expected to sign the Council bill.

Council Member Mike O’Brien has been the leader of the effort, taking up the issue early on and even asking citizens to bring him their unwanted books. His office was flooded with hundreds of books, creating mountains of books that his staff had to peak around in order to speak to visitors to his office.

“This is a big step forward for citizens who are tired of getting unwanted phonebooks dropped on their doorsteps,” said Jeanette Henderson who has been one of the grassroots activists as part of Zero Waste Seattle promoting this legislation for the past year.

Seattle citizens will be able to go to a single web page to cancel either all phone book delivery, or to select the number and types of yellow page books they still want delivered. This opt-out system will be similar to the national “do not call” registry for unwanted solicitation phone calls

“We have seen an immense amount of public support for this ordinance,” says Ellie Rose of Zero Waste Seattle, “It is not every grassroots campaign where you have people lined up six deep to sign your petition!”

Heather Shute of Environment Washington highlights the savings to the city, “According to Seattle Public Utilities, the city currently pays over $350,000 per year just to handle the recycling of phone books. In addition, many people toss the books into the trash, and off they go to the landfill!"

Another feature of the ordinance is a restriction on non-recyclable attachments to phonebooks. “How many people remember to pull off those magnets when they toss their books,” asked Jolie Lemoine of Zero Waste Seattle. “Those magnets end up going to the paper mills and getting slivered up and contaminating the recycled paper. We are pleased that these will no longer be allowed.”

In addition to cost savings, grassroots activists raised issues of privacy and climate change. Scott Stromatt of the Cascade Chapter Sierra Club said, "The ordinance is a positive step forward in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Seattle and in limiting the intrusion of unwanted phone books on our property."

Heather Trim of Zero Waste Seattle continued, “Seattle is already a leader in working to reduce our carbon footprint and advance zero waste goals. We expect that many cities across the US will be following suit quickly. Most jurisdictions are looking to save money, reduce waste, and address climate change. This ordinance is a win-win!”

“We applaud the leadership of the City Council to stand up to the pressure of the Yellow Pages lobbyists who worked hard to fight this ordinance,” said Sally Wolf of Zero Waste Seattle. “Our City Council voted to implement a simple system to let Seattleites to say “No” to unwanted phone book delivery.”

For more information about Zero Waste Seattle: zerowasteseattle.org

City Council Carbon Neutral Panel

April 13, 2010

SEATTLE-It was a packed house as the City Council opened up the panel to public presentation and comment. There were guest speakers invited by the council to give testimony and advice on the ways to the ends of Carbon Neutrality (a term one of the speakers derided as sounding too passive) that included a US representative, an executive director of a non profit, city employees and a leader in the sustainability field.

The crowd listened intently with applause and accolades coming at measured clap friendly quotes and themes for the mostly left leaning audience. One of the loudest applause lines was from Representative Jay Inslee when he touted the need for the US Senate to pass some form of energy bill like the House already has. This line was repeated at appropriate times throughout the meeting.

Representative Inslee also talked about bringing the conversation away from environmentalism and morality, but to economic stimulus and necessity. He gave examples of the green technological revolution China is undertaking as a matter of national directive. The biggest solar power plant is being built in China as we speak and the representative, channeling a diet version of the ghost of America being left behind, spoke of the amount of jobs, treasure and leadership the US was leaving unexplored because we do not have a governmental mandate for green technology.

Alex Steffen, executive director of Worldchanging.org, was a panelist whose views and ideas were all backed by science, data, and a heavy dose of cautious optimism. He spoke of the interconnection of social justice, women's rights, lowering consumption, and the emergence of a new city the size of Seattle being built every other day for the next forty years.

He spoke of the need for cities to be built smarter as nearly 70% of humanity will live in major metropolitan areas with the other 30% nearly all living in suburbs connected to major metropolitan areas by 2050. "We need a different plan; maybe they will be building their cities on the Seattle model," said Mr. Steffen. If we make Seattle carbon neutral though innovative technologies, and most important behavior change we could once again be a leader in the world in the face of an existential threat.

Mr. Steffen then dropped the most impactful line the entire night in response to a question about human population growth. The question was what are we going to do about a growing population that is expected to be 9 billion people by 2050. Mr. Steffen said, "Population doesn't matter. But if the rest of the world starts living the way the United States, and Europe does, that is a death sentence to this planet." No one clapped, no one even breathed. You could hear your neighbors breathing as the blame was shifted from those poor people having five or six children back to where the blame needs to be centered, our over consumption.

The council members had a chance to ask questions at the end of the presentations and Council member Licatta asked the question I've been hoping to hear from our political leaders for months now since the council published its 17 priorities. What about poverty and social justice? How can we ensure that the technology and planning does not leave behind the downtrodden and poverty stricken? The answers ranged from inclusion in the initial decision phases to diversifying the outreach for ideas.

The public questions were insightful for the most part with questions ranging from the viability of walking to schools, having a partnership with Metro and schools to eliminate school district run buses, to bringing bicycle sharing to the city as long as the city council doesn't get in the way. One speaker explained that bicycle sharing would create green, sustainable jobs and would not need any money from the city to get started. The audience applauded that.

Seattle Should Be That City

Seattle is at a crossroads. Will Seattle rise to global prominence or lag behind other cities?

Last Saturday, March 13th, a group of Seattle residents put on a Building Day to address this question. The goal being to start building the tools needed to make Seattle a carbon neutral city. Over 70 members of the Seattle community participated, from government, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, business owners and many other groups.

The answer to the question depends upon our ability to stimulate innovation and promote cross-sector collaboration. Building day started the discussion about how to create innovation engines and tool building for a vibrant regional economy.

The "unconference" is part of a bigger project, called "Seattle's Innovation Engine" and is the brain child of Sustainable Seattle Board Member Joe Brewer. I along with a host of Seattle residents are involved with making "Seattle Innovators" a success.

Last Saturday's event was just the beginning. I want to share the details of the event, what's happening next and show you how to get involved.

Why a Building Day?

We called this event Building Day because we feel that Seattle has done enough planning and talking. We want to start making, doing, building, and inventing. In one word innovating towards neutral.

Our main purpose of this event is to start building the infrastructure needed to even think about making Seattle carbon neutral. Thus, this day was a chance to start thinking about what tools, systems and structures we need in place to start down the path of carbon neutrality.

Our outlook is this: we can do more together than we can do on our own. All the tools that were brainstormed and articulated by participants were at the core related to strengthening our ability to collaborate with one another. A movement map, that shows what projects are being undertaken and what people have skill sets useful to other is an example of one such tool being designed.

Here's a link to a detailed description of Building Day.

Taking It To The Next Level

Obviously one event and one day of tool building is not going to be enough to meet our goals. Building Day was just the first step. It's a catalyst to take collaboration to the next level.

Currently we are doing several things to harness the momentum of building day:

• Creating a web of online forums to build tools for collaboration;


• Writing an in-depth case study about Building Day to further develop our idea and strategy;


• Expanding our network to include an even broader set of skills and perspectives.

The forums will be useful for people that attended the event to continue collaboration, and be an opportunity for others to add much-needed input. We will continue to seek individuals from all sectors of our community to be involved with Seattle Innovators. This project needs as many diverse opinions as possible to succeed.

We Need You

We do not have all the answers and will never pretend to. Collaboration is what we believe in, which is why we want your knowledge and expertise. This project is just starting out and we are open to new ideas, new points of view and new criticism. If any of this fires you up or if you think you can lend a hand in any way please reach out.

We are looking for builders first of all. For example if you have experience starting businesses, building brand-new software, designing new systems or just enjoy making things from scratch, then you are a perfect fit.

You can get more information here

What We Learned

Learning is everything. Here are a couple things we learned from putting on this event.

Lessons learned:

1. Set a date and work towards it. Joe picked the date of March 13th before we knew exactly every detail of putting on such an event, or what exactly we wanted to accomplish. The time constraint forced the team to come together quickly and initiated action. We were forced to learn and figure things out. We did not have a luxury of large amounts of time, thus eliminating laziness.

2. Get attendees involved. Our event was not a typical conference. No speakers (except less than an hour dispersed through out the day by Joe and others), no panel discussions. We actively engaged attendees and discouraged passive participation. This was the key to the success of the day and energized participants, because they were actually participating.

3. Lack of resources is not an excuse. Do not let yourself or your organization trick yourselves into thinking that you lack resources to do a similar event. If you have the passion and will, take what you got and make something great.