Friday, 7 Sep 2001
EUGENE, Ore.
The day at the Association of Oregon Recycler’s 23rd annual conference began with a talk and slide show entitled “AOR Goes to Russia.” AOR has partnered with Khabarovsk, Russia, to help set up a multifamily recycling program for 50 very large apartment buildings. The infrastructure in Khabarovsk is vastly different from what we have here, but there is a lot that is exportable. For example, education methods need to be slightly tweaked for a different culture, but they still work. Equipment needs are unique. Access to some dumpsters in the Khabarovsk project is a little tight, and many of these dumpsters are kept indoors until pickup time. The containers aren’t emptied on site. They are removed and replaced with empty ones. So hauling and collection require different equipment. Cold weather also has an impact. I could go on. The important thing about this partnership is that we are able to help them and they are educating us.
6?ssia, we got to climb Mt. Everest. Vicariously. Our keynote speaker was Stacy Allison, the first woman to climb the mountain. What a great person and a great motivator. She encourages us to take risks, motivates us to overcome obstacles, and invites us to look ahead and accept failure as part of the process to an end. She got this conference started off on the right foot.
We had planned this conference so that some attendees could come for only one day and get a lot of good information from a variety of sessions. Our targeted audience for Friday was the construction and demolition (C&D) industries. One session for these folks highlighted green building techniques. What does it take to become LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certified? How does this affect the price and the marketability of a building? How are developers addressing the requirement by some governments to have LEED-certified construction for public buildings? There was a lot of good information shared here. The next session for construction and demolition folks dealt with the end of the pipe — the recycling and recovery of materials at the construction site. We got to see pictures and hear stories about the demolition of Seattle’s Kingdome. What a process. Portland’s Brewery Blocks had similar demolition considerations. Both sites are in highly populated urban areas and had maneuverability constraints and safety considerations.
The rest of the day was full of sessions on waste prevention, waste reduction, and recycling. Did you ever wonder why a city will offer and encourage recycling at home and at work, but the minute they have an event at a park, everything gets thrown in the landfill? Well, Oregon’s Race for the Cure, the Oregon Country Fair, and the University of Oregon all have recycling programs in place to reduce the waste at these public events. Planners of these programs got to talk about their successes and their few failures. Another session allowed businesses to share their methods of greening up the work area. One of them told of the ordeal of becoming ISO 14001 compliant. Another talked about The Natural Step and how they are using the guidelines for sustainable practices in their business decisions. One of the companies has in-house Green Teams that are continuously finding more areas to pursue for minimizing waste and toxicity. There is a lot of good work happening out there.
Our conference includes the Compost Council of Oregon. The council had a meeting this morning and presented one of the sessions this afternoon. They had talks on commercial composting, collection, recruiting participants, and product testing. I am always amazed at the science that goes into composting at this scale.
Again today, I am ending my diary early. We have some partying to do tonight. A big dance with a Eugene band called The House, (yep, that’s the house band) and some entertainment by some longtime members of this garbage organization. We will finish up our conference tomorrow and rest for a few days before we start planning next year’s conference in Seaside, Ore.
