Zcause Blog; Anthony Zolezzi.com

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Will GreenOps Be the Ultimate Solution
To the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’?

September 9, 2009

Just as a new report by University of California scientists was revealing the extent to which the north Pacific Ocean has been plastered with plastic, I had the somewhat unique opportunity recently to personally apprise the mayors of a number of southern California coastal communities how they might help mitigate the problem.

The occasion was the Mayors Ocean Summit, a half day conclave hosted by West Marine in Watsonville Calif., which was attended by the chief executives of towns from Santa Monica to Pacific Grove. The speakers who preceded me --Walter Robb, president of Whole Foods, Jim Ayers, vice president of the Pacific region of Oceana, the world’s largest ocean protection and restoration group, and Dennis Takahashi-Kelso of Ocean Conservancy -- offered some incredible statistics about how California’s maritime economy is responsible for $22.1 billion in revenues, providing $12.4 billion in wages and salaries and approximately 369,000 jobs.

Also discussed was the threat that the massive coating of plastic debris forming what’s known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” poses to that economy, and to both marine life and sea birds. At one point, a garbage bag containing the plastic contents of a bird’s stomach was passed around the room.. By the time I got up to speak it was pretty clear that the Garbage Patch had been framed pretty well. So I needed to chart a different course, and only talk about solutions.

I began by relating the GreenOps story, explaining how Greenopolis and Think Green Rewards had come together to create this dynamic new recycling system They seemed intrigued but not overwhelmed, until I told them how this system could create jobs in their cities by making "this product," at which point I held up a sample of plastic plywood replacement produced from curbside recyclables. I then explained to them how this, rather than beach cleanups, could be the ultimate solution to this problem for their communities. If it were made mandatory that all such material sold in the state of California contain just 25% recycled plastic, there would be an economic incentive to reclaim the plastic now ending up in the ocean, which would stop posing a threat to the marine environment and ecosystem.

In fact, I was so fired up by my own rhetoric that I hardly slept all night, so captivated was I by the thought that this is something we need to make happen without delay. With that in mind, I proceeded to call everyone on the team and tell them to be ready for us to start taking GreenOps to the next level of creating jobs in local communities.

To read about the latest study on the Great pacific garbage patch, click here.

Humane Society Head Castigates Pork Industry’s Bid for Bailout

September 6, 2009

In all the talk about health care, one issue that really isn’t being addressed is the role our system of factory farming plays in putting Americans more at risk from contagious diseases as well as chronic ones. Typical large-scale hog-raising operations, for example, not only abuse antibiotics in a manner that helps render their use in medicine ineffective, but can provide ideal conditions for pathogens to breed.

So it would seem to be the ultimate in chutzpah that the U.S. pork industry would come crying to the government for a bailout, complaining that its business was suffering because of the swine flu, which its practices may well have been instrumental in bringing about (or so some experts believe).

For the full story of how taxpayer funds are being sought to help perpetrate conditions that are both inhumane and hazardous to public health, I recommend you read the report from Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States by clicking here.

Our problems seem much simpler to solve when contemplated in the calm of Iceland

September 3, 2009

The one thing that really stuck with me about Iceland during my recent visit was its simplicity.

There was an aura of absolute calm, with few noises if any noises. The silence filled voids of activity with this feeling that everything in nature is working and we really don't have to do anything but let nature take its course.

This atmosphere of genuine tranquillity provided a perfect backdrop for our "Iceland Conference,” infusing it with an underlying sense that there are simple, basic solutions to all of the current problems facing mankind. Couldn’t we all simply make up our minds to manufacture things without ever again using any toxic chemicals, or to design every product and component so that it could be reused in perpetuity, or to never allow people or animals to be harmed by our enterprises? Could we manage to resolve all of our issues by setting such clear, simple objectives four ourselves?

Perhaps, just like Reagan and Gorbachev, all of our world leaders should make it a point to hold their “summits” in Iceland. It just might give them an entirely new perspective -- and help crystallize the simple solutions to problems that seem so vexing and complex when discussed amid the static of the rest of the world.

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