Since moving here in 2000, I have found that Cleveland has so many positive things going for it. While the economy and population shrinking is bad for morale, business and prosperity, it has also served as a wake up call for NE Ohio. Everyone is starting to realize that the steel mills are never going to come back in abundance, and that manufacturing jobs that are lost rarely return. Yet, with groups like E4S, Green City Blue Lake, Local Food Cleveland, and a host of other small groups we can see change coming. It starts with a few people. People like Holly Harlan who come together to form a little group to make a change. As we need to reinvent the regional and national economy, these small groups have begun to flourish. And all these groups got a big boost from the city of Cleveland with the introduction of the Sustainability Summit last August.
I have talked about the Summit several times, and it was great! Somewhere between 500 and 700 people attended the event where we strove to create new public policy and identify key areas where we can use sustainability to drive Cleveland’s economic engine. I am a member of the Waste to Profit group. I joined this group because of my passion for recycling and the need for educating Cleveland’s populace on this issue. Besides, I already work in the Green Building industry and wanted to work on something outside my norm. I was drawn to a sub group that was working to create a locale where building materials and other volume amounts of items could be redirected from landfill and turned into resources. Among the people seated at the table were Nicole McGee, a materials reuse artist (if you have ever been to an Aladdin’s restaurant, then you have seen here flowers on the tables), Mike Dungan, the driving force behind Zero Landfill, and Chris Kious-Cleveland’s king of building deconstruction. We built a prototype to present to the group, and then thought, “Why not make this happen?” We set a time and date for our first meeting before the conference day was done. Since that time, we have met on a regular basis. We are working on the final Executive Summary and Business Plan. We applied for some preliminary funding and are looking at the future to see what we can do next. While this is exciting for us, we are not alone….Other members of the Waste to Profit group were members of the Regional Zero Waste Collaborative. While the group was actually formed in 2008, the summit gave them some added members and galvanized some of their efforts. They are working on practical ways to get the city toward zero waste and trying to figure out how to form public policy on this issue.
There were 20 groups developed at the summit on a range of sustainability topics. But how do we keep up the good intentions of this occasion and drive movement forward. Cleveland has done its part. They are forming a sustainability committee and have promoted Andrew Watterson to Chief of Sustainability. They are committed to moving forward and are setting the date for another summit next year. Meanwhile, representatives from the various groups are meeting to set dates and plan the next summit. There are so many people engaged, and many things moving forward, so I can’t wait to see how some of these groups are progressing. We have a report out meeting coming up next Tuesday. If you were at the summit, and want to see how it is going, join us at Great Lakes Brewery Tasting room on Tuesday to hear some of the great news. Afterward is the E4S sustainability awards. This should be a great event as well! Stay and see what some of the leaders in the movement are doing in Cleveland. Go here to register for the E4S event!
Tags: E4S, Sustainability Summit
