Hi humans! Icebreaker: favorite icebreaker
1. Sasha - what’s something you appreciate/learn about one of your coworkers
2. Rachel - what would your beer tap pull would be
3. Jesse - likes recommendations, things to do
4. Mykayla - easy questions
5. Ben - food-related
6. Lily - would you rather have a dog with human hands or a cat with Nicholas Cage’s face; rose/thorn
7. Caroline - favorite smell
8. Lindsey - which part of a bicycle would you be/why
9. Catherine - stuff that pits people against each other
10. zero waste pickup line
Recap open volunteer roles
divide and conquer community projects
**Start brainstorming next phase of research (**quantitative—>qualitative research) - we want to know the biggest challenges Madison faces with waste and how we can help, and we want to have a clear understanding of what questions we want to explore and how we’ll gather the information. research could look like interviews with experts/community members, open to other ideas as well
1. what are the challenges we know exist in madison? what issues do you personally see, or what gaps are there in existing efforts
  - no cobblers
  - businesses throw away things that other businesses need (batch throws out 4-gallon buckets, green box needs 4-gallon buckets)
  - lack of recycling/package disposal/composting in big apartment buildings
  - what goes to thrift stores that ends up getting thrown away
    - too much stuff, not enough staff
  - wish-cycling, wish-composting (why the university and the city both stopped composting)
  - landfill is about to be full
  - feeling like everything is fucked, we can’t do anything
  - inertia - hard to get people to shift from the way things are
  - so many things to care about - i can’t put this fire out because there are 10 fires over there
  - finding ethical businesses/products that are affordable, convenient
  - general information on hard-to-recycle items
  - easily-accessible and -digestible resources — people are pressed for time and brain power, can’t necessarily sit down and read a scientific paper; lots of contradictory information
  - how big of a problem is contamination in recycling?
  - individualistic culture - people don’t rely on neighbors and instead turn to consumerism
  - protein without plastic/general non-plastic options
  - construction waste - bigger issue than consumers
  - lake pollution - should be known as a gem in our community
11/17
- apartment buildings don’t have recycling
- contaminated recycling
  - can call building inspector
- recycling picked up every other week
- cleaners don’t actually recycle
- how much actually gets recycled at the recycling plant
- why are so many businesses still using plastic bags, paper coffee cups
- fighting qgainst powerful companies - help people not need them
- lots of different food vendors with different food service items that aren’t compostable
  - smaller events - rentable stuff
  - “buy nothing”
  - renting groups
  - Madison Tool Library / freecycle
1. what themes exist?
  - breakdown in communication - services provided and people recieving services (pelliterri landfill, other stuff that we want to happen - swaps, etc. // shops can be advertising to consumers)
  - mental blockers - how do we make zero waste joyful, less of a mental load for all involved
  - additional time and effort it takes - doing the sustainable thing is not the norm
  - getting larger groups like construction, energy companies, etc. to be held accountable (by their consumers)
2. discussion:
  1. what feels the most urgent? actionable?
    1. 2 levers of influencing habits - incentives / disincentives - disincentives are more effective, but need to be equitable/accessible for everyone / bag ban, 5 cents for bag; incentives are also successful
    2. working with businesses, especially big businesses, will be hard - making them go against customers
      1. local businesses would be easier
        
        festival recycled boxes - offer them to people to carry groceries
    3. apartment buildings - find out information
      1. ZWM-certified apartment building
      2. street art - put energy and waste usage for everyone to see
    4. madison-specific carbon calculator
    5. at some point - we should bring the map to sustain dane sustainable breakfast series
      1. good way to get out info
      2. round trip - could they put our little dots on our map?
  2. where could we as a group of volunteers (with many more community members on Facebook) make an impact?
  3. what areas do we need more understanding?
    1. what are the trends in Madison trash - takeout containers - who is contributing? construction waste - who is contributing?
  4. advocate for a bag ban
3. research questions:
  1. what do we need to learn? what types of people do we need to talk to?
    1. building inspector/recycling for buildings
    2. someone at the city
    3. someone at the landfill
    4. what are other cities of similar sizes doing - what worked well and what didn’t
4. what are our next steps and how will we accomplish them:
  1. refining research questions
  2. creating interview guide
  3. creating stakeholder list?
5. what is something we could produce as an outcome for the community (similar to the mapping project)
  1. take a theme and find out what other cities have done
  2. innovation in action - university of michigan do we know any connections on campus?
    1. UW extension

Mapping launch:

e-waste event
work on a timeline - launch in February
let all businesses know

general notes:

tour landfill, pelliterri
ZWM—> connect learnings from the landfill to coffee shops, businesses, etc.
all communication needs to be joyful/not focused on perfectionism

SOHE - school of human ecology

Mapping Group Notes:

Marketing The Zero Waste Resource Map

Informing businesses that they are on the map: Email | Call spreadsheet