Skip to main content

Minutes of the 0th meeting of Zero Waste Lancaster

The 0th meeting of the Zero Waste Lancaster club took place on August 20, 2019.

In attendance:  the founder and her 4-year-old granddaughter, the latter of whom slept through the meeting.   The participants nonetheless efficiently accomplished much on the agenda, as follows:

Set a regular meeting time
These will be the third Tuesday of each month.   So, for example, the first meeting of the Zero Waste Lancaster Club will be 
Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 7 p.m., at 346 W. James Street.  
Pass it on.

Create a logo
The logo for the club will adapt the Lancaster Red Rose, but have white arrows instead of white stripes.  An artist/collaborator of the founder has begun work on creating this.  All those present at the 0th meeting who were still awake whooped in appreciation.


Create a draft of a Mission Statement
This is what those present came up with, at least for now.
  • To educate ourselves about our use of natural resources, including land, water, and energy;
  • To reduce consumption of scarce or non-renewable resources;
  • To develop structural systems that enable and encourage our neighbors and our cit to use resources more wisely.
Create a possible list of activities for the Zero Waste Lancaster group
  • Targeting Trash (strategies for avoiding landfill-bound trash in the kitchen, or bathroom, or other)
  • Guest lectures from Charlotte Katzenmoyer or others on local water initiatives
  • Putting things "in the cloud" instead of in the landfill:  how to get things out of our homes in a responsible way
  • Canning workshop
  • Self-Awareness challenge; track an aspect of our lives & report back
  • Flex new muscles:  learn a vegan recipe, ride RRTA bus or Zagster bike
  • Idea Swap:  Share something we've learned or that we already do well
Create a list of resources
At this point, one attendee woke up and started acting grumpy, so the meeting started running out of steam.  

The founder's husband/PR guy listened to the report of the meeting and expressed approval.  The meeting adjourned.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Minutes (way too long) of the October 22, 2019 Meeting

The meeting of the Zero Waste Lancaster group on October 22nd began with eggplant parmesan, because that's what I happened to have a lot of at the time. The topic for the meeting was  "How to get things out of the house".    We talked about this in two parts:  first, sharing things that "could be useful someday" (and getting them to be useful now); and secondly, getting rid of things that nobody wants anymore (that is, trash).   We had a bit of a show on the computer, and added to it as we went along.  The notes are below. Our next meetings will be  November 19 (with luck, we'll get to talk about Lancaster's Climate Action plan and our city's water use) December 17 (how to avoid bringing stuff into our home in the first place). If you know someone who'd like to be on the Zero Waste Lancaster mailing list (getting two emails each month!), please have them send their email addresses my way! - Annalisa Notes:...

Next Meetings, spring 2020

Gratitude and Generosity:   February 18, 2020 It's easy to think of a Zero Waste approach to life as one of intense effort combined with deprivation.  But people who start to move in the Zero Waste direction often find that -- in contrast to expectations --there's an incredible amount of joy involved. At February's meeting, we'll shift our focus from the mechanics of going Zero Waste toward the philosophy and psychology of doing so.  In particular, we'll share our experiences with the twins of gratitude and generosity, two virtues that not only make Zero Waste easier to achieve, but also become the rewards that flow out of using our resources more mindfully. Commercial and community-level composting:  March 17, 2020 Eve Bratman, Professor of Environmental Studies at F&M, will discuss a project she and her students did in 2018, in particular assessing the viability of commercial/community composting for Lancaster.

Minutes of the December 17, 2019 meeting

There was a largely new set of faces this month, and it was good to get to meet even more people interested in supporting each other on our low-waste journey. The conversation was so engaging I didn't take copious notes, so these minutes recreated from memory. We talked about reducing food waste mainly in these four categories: 1. Composting food scraps and other organic materials.   Sending food to the landfill is apparently a major source of methane generation, whereas food in compost piles produces hardly any methane and lots of good soil additives. Sometimes, it also produces rodents and we chatted a bit about that side of it, too. Lancaster doesn't have curbside compost collection, and we lamented this lack. I'm thankful to Eve for forwarding me this NYTimes article on the subject: One thing your city can do: reduce food waste. 2. Wasting less food in the first place. It just so happens that Consumer Reports emailed me about 15 minutes before the ZWL meeting with...