Green Counsel

Oakland: There is a Green There There

Gertrude Stein famously said about her home town, Oakland, California, that “there isn’t any there there.” Surely she would have a different opinion if she were there today and, in fact, many green urban advocates like us wish we were there.

Oakland is the working class home to 500,000 people and one of the nation’s most racially diverse cities. Although it has one of country’s largest ports, many manufacturing jobs have disappeared. In its poorer neighborhoods, 40% of young people suffer chronic respiratory ailments, there are no supermarkets, and ten thousand people are on probation or parole.

Recently, however, hope has arrived in green robes with the potential to build an ecological and equitable economy. Last year, Ron Dellums was elected mayor after promising to grow a local green economy. Then, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights helped convene the Oakland Apollo Alliance (associated with the National Apollo Alliance). The Alliance has brought together labor, environmentalists and social justice activists with a mission to create “green collar” jobs for Oakland residents and to build a local sustainable economy.

The Oakland Apollo Alliance is advocating for three big green ideas:

1) Creating a “Green Job Corps,” with the help of labor unions, community colleges and the City, to train and employ residents to work in the green economy.

2) Developing “Green Enterprise Zones” where sustainable businesses will be given incentives to move and hire local residents.

3) “Green the Port” of Oakland and turn what is currently one of Oakland’s biggest public health threats into an international model of sustainability (by among other things implementing energy retrofits and converting the port to biodiesel).

Thousands of local residents are supporting this initiative, nonprofits are aligning strategic plans, and funders are pouring money into Oakland, all motivated by the chance to build a sustainable and just future.

If these efforts succeed, Oakland will become a model of sustainability by creating high quality jobs, cleaning the environment, improving public health and helping the country achieve energy independence.

For more information, see the article in Yes Magazine here, or visit the Ella Baker Center's Reclaim the Future website.

Photo Credit: Ella Baker Center.

Shop Locally, Share Locally

For the past four years, the Interra Project has developed an ingenious model for people to use financial networks to support their local communities and sustainability. Recently, Interra rolled out its first project -- Boston Community Change - in partnership with Boston Main Streets.

Boston residents can get a free (at least for now) Boston Community Change card that they present to participating local merchants. Every time the card is swiped on the merchant’s credit card terminal, portions of the transaction are returned to the user as a cash rebate, donated to a local community based non-profit or school of the user’s choice, and donated to the local Main Streets organization. Merchants sign up for free, and decide how much of a rebate to grant to users.

The Boston Community Change card is not a payment card, and users can pay for their purchase with any payment form accepted by the business. Users receive monthly electronic statements detailing total rebates and donations.

As Paul Ray, author of the “The Cultural Creatives,” has said: "The Interra model is a brilliant social and financial invention that can help bring a green economy into greater practicality. This is hot stuff, and needs all our support. It functions rather like an alternative currency or an airline miles program, to help encourage mutual loyalty among green/socially responsible consumers. In particular, it does a better job of incentivizing a mutual loyalty of businesses and customers who share the same values."

Interra has identified more than 100 cities for possible roll-out over the next 3-5 years.

Ten Steps Toward Sustainability -- Step 8: Bar "Formula" Restaurants

Fast food is often unhealthy, over-processed and its processing, packing and transportation create huge amounts of waste and CO2 emissions. A small but growing number of communities across the country have banned so-called "formula" restaurants. The New York Times reported September 24 that NYC Councilman Joel Rivera, Chairman of the Health Committee, wants to use New York zoning laws to limit the number of fast food restaurants in the City. New York City also became the first U.S. city to ban trans fats in restaurants.

See also:

Act Locally: Ten Steps Toward Sustainability:

What is Sustainability?
Step 1: Create a Sustainability Task Force
Step 2: Support Local Business
Step 3: Incorporate LEED and Energy Efficiency Standards in Buildings
Step 4: Set A Goal of Zero Waste
Step 5: Enact Environmentally-Friendly Land Use Laws
Step 6: Create Biotic Corridors
Step 7: Encourage Green Transportation

Act Locally: Ten Steps Toward Sustainability -- Step 2: Support Local Business

In his new book, "The Small-Mart Revolution," Michael Shuman argues that local businesses create a vibrant local economy with more local jobs and wealth.
A strong local economy also reduces transportation, and makes it easier for a community to maintain high environmental and labor standards (local businesses won't move simply to find a place with less protective laws).

And because shorter supply lines substantially reduce emissions (most food travels 1500-2000 miles before eaten), Bill Mckibben has said that local business may "be one of the keys to containing global warming." Municipalities can support local business by implementing local purchasing preferences, instituting "buy local first" campaigns, providing local business directories and training, and removing subsidies and other benefits for non-local businesses.

Large box stores and shopping malls are a particular problem. They contain huge impervious surfaces, lead to more driving by shoppers, and result in longer supply chains in the delivery of their products. Localities can enact size ordinances limiting the size of single retail stores and shopping malls. Localities may also require that new retail stores undergo special review if they exceed a particular size, or generate substantial vehicular traffic. The Institute for Local Self Reliance has put together an excellent BigBoxToolKit to help communities keep out big box stores, or reduce their footprint.

Local business networks are cropping up around the country. For example, in the Hudson Valley in New York, the newly formed Hudson Valley Sustainable Business Network, a project of Sustainable Hudson Valley, is working on a wide range of projects to support the local economy. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies is an alliance of 37 independently operated local business networks with more than 12,000 members dedicated to building local living economies.

See also:

Act Locally: Ten Steps Toward Sustainability
What is Sustainability?
Step 1: Create a Sustainability Task Force

Toolkit to Fight Big Boxes

No -- it's not a new children's toy, but rather a whole arsenal keep large box retail stores out of your community. The Institute for Local Self Reliance has just launched a valuable new website, www.bigboxtoolkit.com, designed for people who want to stop big-box proposals -- whether because of their adverse effect on local economic development and small businesses, traffic congestion, environmental issues, community impacts, or low-paying jobs.

The site explains how to navigate local land use policies, how to organize a citizen-based campaign, and how to enact local policies that put citizens in control of community development. It even includes a model store size cap ordinance, and an interactive map showing communities that are fighting big box stores.

The website notes that more than 200 big boxes have been blocked since 2001 through the local land use laws -- many of them through the help of the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

Celebrate Independents Week By Buying Locally and Helping the Environnment!

The American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) is celebrating "Independents Week" by asking people to take the Indie Challenge by purchasing as much as possible from your community's independently-owned businesses July 1-7.

AMIBA points out that buying locally keeps your money circulating in your community three times longer than buying at chains where most of it it leaves the community immediately. Buying locally also helps the environment by reducing supply chains (and corresponding transportation/green house gas emissions). "Locavores" -- a group that promotes eating locally -- publishes a list of "Top Twelve Reasons to Eat Locally" that includes freshness, taste, nutrition, purity, regional economic health, variety, soil stewardship, energy conservation, environmental protection, and cost.

Participants in "Independents Week" include the American Booksellers Association, American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), Association of Retail Travel Agents, Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Council of Independent Restaurants of America, Institute for Local Self-Reliance/New Rules Project, National Grocers Association (NGA) and National Main Streets Center/National Trust for Historic Preservation.

To register your community, go here. For more information on purchasing localy, see AMIBA's "The Benefits of Doing Business Locally."

Tax Exempt Status for Businesses With A Triple Bottom Line

At the conference last week in Burlington, VT, for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, there was much talk about companies with a Triple Bottom Line. Profits, yes, but also people and planet.

I wonder: what would it mean for our planet if businesses truly had a legally enforceable Triple Bottom Line? What if businesses were legally required, or agreed, to internalize all the costs that many now externalize? What if manufacturers incorporated the true life-cycle costs of their products (production and waste) as part of their business expenses? What if businesses valued their employees as much as they now do their shareholders?

Is it possible?

While it's unlikely -- at the moment, at least ;-) -- that government would legally require businesses to adopt a Triple Bottom Line, there is no legal reason why a business could not voluntarily create such a legally binding commitment in its articles of incorporation and bylaws.

And what should society do for a corporation that puts people and planet on a par with profits? Given the tremendous saving that accrues to society from a business that internalizes its environmental and societal costs, I'd say the business should be given a whopping tax benefit including, at least, tax exempt (or extremely reduced) status for profits, distributions and employee incomes.

To quote Gary Snyder: "We are defending our own space, and we are trying to protect the commons. More than the logic of self-interest inspires this: a true and selfless love of the land is the source of the undaunted spirit of my neighbours."

No Big Boxes in My Back Yard

The New Rules Project Institute for Local Self-Reliance reports on three recent developments where localities have succeeded in keeping out big box stores:

1) A California appeals court upheld (against a challenge by Walmart) a local ordinance that banned supercenters on the grounds that the ordinance was reasonably related the city's efforts to maintain stores throughout the community to support neighborhoods, and to avoid excessive driving and air pollution. (Anti-Supercenter Ordinance Upheld).

2) A Montana County unanimously adopted a 60,000-square-foot size store cap following a public hearing (Crowd of 1,400 Turns Out as Montana County Bans Big Boxes).

3) A Maine town adopted a 35,000 sq. ft. limit in an election that may have been the largest turn-out in the town's history, and three nearby towns are considering similar legislation (Damariscotta, Maine, Rejects Wal-Mart and Endorses Size Cap).  The ordinance was enacted in spite of a study, issued two weeks before the election, that was comissioned by the town and paid for by Wal-Mart, and concluded that the supercenter would be a boon to the local economy and would raise wages in both the retail and non-retail sectors. The citizens group supporting the ordiance quickly issued two rebuttals to the study, one produced by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.