Greetings ATLiens 🖖 This #MotivationMonday in observance of #WorldOceansDay we would like to meet Dr. Brian Davis, President and CEO of the Georgia Aquarium. Originally from New Jersey, Dr. Davis earned his B.S. in Environmental Science at Rutgers University in 1992 and shortly thereafter migrated to Atlanta for a position at Zoo Atlanta. The rest is history.
Since moving to Atlanta 26 years ago, Dr. Davis has paid his dues teaching science for over 8 cumulative years in Cobb County schools, serving in senior leadership roles within a number of zoological and educational institutions, and earning his Masters of Education and Ph.D. in Secondary Science Education at Georgia State University. What you may not know about Dr. Davis is that he’s played an integral role in shaping the Georgia Aquarium’s educational programming since 2003.
If you take just one thing away from today’s #WorldOceansDay #MotivationMonday, let it be that Dr. Brian Davis has been working on and advocating for ocean conservation way before most of us were even cognizant of the impacts of plastic in our oceans.
Dr. Brian Davis states:
“I believe scientific literacy and a comprehensive cultural enrichment plan are vital to the continued progress of our students and society. In my current role as President and CEO of the Maritime Aquarium, I will continue my efforts to develop educational experiences that reflect the interconnectedness of scientific literacy to our daily lives.”
Source: Dr. Brian L. Davis (LinkedIn bio)
As President and CEO of the Georgia Aquarium, Dr. Brian Davis oversees the Georgia Aquarium’s research, animal rehabilitation, and education initiatives, including the Seafood Savvy campaign aimed at educating the public on the types of seafood to avoid in the interest of ocean conservation (see wallet insert here, and below), as well as the ongoing expansion of strategic partnerships with local and global organizations to fundraise, research, and promote ocean ecosystems conservation.
Call to Action
GreenATLiens everywhere can join Dr. Brian Davis in taking action for our oceans by practicing the 3 R’s: Reduce Reuse Recycle. See the quote below for more nuance:
“Remember to cut apart plastic beverage rings. Marine mammals can become entangled in the loops, which can be harmful and potentially fatal. Properly dispose of toxic wastes, such as oil from automobile engines or lawnmowers. Never dump waste chemicals down a sewer which can pollute water sources. Limit your use of disposable products, particularly plastic. Take a canvas bag with you when you shop instead of using paper and plastic ones from stores.”
7. Donate! Donate! Donate! Share resources that can help support coordinated mutual aid efforts and support our comrades taking the streets! Bit.ly/mutualaidatlanta
8. If you have contributed to the displacement of Black Atlantans redistribute your wealth by supporting our comrades at the MamaFund! AtlantaMutualAid.org
9. Support the Justice For All Coalition in their outreach to unhoused Atlantans. Donate to their CashApp ($Justice4Homeless) so they can get needed resources. Bit.ly/justice4allcoalition
Instead of posting a black square and moving on, open up your purse. Support a bail fund. Provide legal support. Donate to rent relief funds.
Donate to a rent relief fund. Offer healthcare and wellness resources. Host a healing/mourning space.
Make public comments at a government’s digital meeting. City councils, state legislators, utility regulators, School boards, and others have digital meetings. Voice your concern there.
Pay for an organizer’s self care. Food. Weed. Medicine. Yoga/Meditation. Therapy sessions online subscription.
Take water to those in the front lines. Host an organizing training. Host self-defense training. Donate to riot gear funds.
Unfollow and de-platform celebrities. Stop supporting non-organizers who are clout-chasing individual activists not rooted in community + struggle and cooperate with the police/political structure that are killing us.
Stop sharing videos and images of Black Death and brutalization without consent.
GreenATLiens stands in solidarity with the Justice for George Floyd protesters and Black Lives Matter.
greenatliens(Cont’d) police/political structure that are killing us. Stop sharing videos and images of Black Death and brutalization without consent.
Last Friday our spaceship landed at Centennial Olympic Park for a march to the Georgia State Capitol to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many other black lives that have been taken by police and white supremacists in this country for centuries.
The protest we participated in on Friday, May 29 was a large gathering of peaceful protesters holding cardboard signs with messages such as “Stop Killing Us,” “Black Lives Matter,” “White Silence is Violence,” and “I Can’t Breathe”. For what seemed like the majority of the march, hundreds of Atlantans marched in complete silence holding signs of cardboard over their heads. As we neared the Georgia State Capitol, marchers began to chant “No Justice (No Peace)” “Black Lives Matter,” “What Do We Want? (Justice) When do we Want it? (Now),” and “When Black Lives Are Under Attack, What Do We Do? (Stand Up Fight Back)”.
Once the crowd reached the Capitol, many people dispersed by way of Uber/Lyft, MARTA, their bicycles, etc. Only when our space ship arrived back home did the majority of protesters hear about apparent vandalism that took place, which the Mayor, T.I., Killer Mike, and others addressed in a press conference that evening.
While many weaponize quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. to condemn rioting and promote peaceful protest, it is important that we remember Dr. King’s less-cited quote:
A riot is the language of the unheard
-Martin Luther King Jr.
The infographic below sheds further light on the nature of what happened Friday night in Atlanta.
Source: @drew_droege
Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
What is the connection between environmentalism and racial justice?
Here are a few suggested readings to better understand how racial justice and environmentalism are inextricably linked:
Removing invasive plant species from our own yards is an actionable way we can all help reverse the effects of climate change. As it turns out, our insect populations are being decimated by invasive plants, which out-compete native plants and create habitat “dead-zones”. Professor of Entomology and acclaimed author Bringing Nature Home, Doug Tallamy sums up why this is important: “Life as we know of it depends on insects,” Tallamy tell us. “If you take those insects away, nasty things will happen.” This is because insects are one of the only organisms on the planet that eat the food plants make from the sun with photosynthesis (I know! It’s like magic!!), and make it readily available to the rest of the food chain, including us. One native oak tree can support up to 280 different species of insect. Take into account that 97% of our terrestrial songbirds raise their young on insects alone, and we start to see how this snowballs very quickly.
Remember, without pollinators we also don’t have fruits and veg. And for you carnivores out there, without birds and rodents, we don’t have grasslands or forests to support sustainable meat production.
So, you want to help! That’s great! But looking at your yard and knowing where to start can be intimidating. Take a deep breath and remember that restoration is a process. You’re not going to lose that quarantine-15 you gained over the past 3 months overnight, and your yard won’t get “fixed” from years of neglect in one go. That’s why we always start with the most valuable ecological commodity in any ecosystem when we’re removing invasive plants: the TREES!
With that said, meet the first invasive plant in a long list of Atlanta’s most notorious invasive plants, English ivy! The biggest natural resource Atlanta has is its urban forest; its trees. The biggest threat to trees in the Atlanta Metro area is English ivy, or Hedera helix if you want to sound smart. English ivy strains and weakens the infrastructural integrity of the tree by acting as a dead weight and creating a wind-sail effect along the trunk. When the vines reach the top of the tree, they will drop down runners which anchor and eventually pull down the whole tree like a winch.
Removing English ivy seems easy, right? It’s just cutting some vines, right? Wrong! Severing the connections between the vines infesting a tree is a temporary fix. If you want your trees to breathe easy and get healthy again, those vines have to be pulled back and the roots removed. Keeping ivy out and away from your trees will inhibit it from reproducing and make it easier to remove from the ground layer over time.
Step 1: First thing to do is get prepared: wear closed toed shoes, pants and long sleeves because English ivy really likes to hang out with poison ivy! You will need a cutting tool, a digging tool, and a prying tool. I like my small loppers, soil knife, and machete but a handsaw, handpick, and pry-bar will work just as well.
Step 2: Now, cut the vines around the trunk of the tree. You want to cut them 6”-1’ off the ground, or where at the top of the tree’s root flare in order to have enough leverage to pull them off/out.
Step 3: Cut the vines connecting these sections and then begin to work your prying tool under the section to loosen them. The vines fuse together on the tree trunk, creating a living suit-of-armor. Like a suit of armor has plates, the ivy can be broken into sections.
Step 4: Pull back the vines along the trunk, being careful not to damage the bark. Like when you play with a rope as a kid and make a transverse wave that travels along it, use the vines’ own momentum in a snapping motion to pull them off if they are loose enough. Pull out, never down.
Step 5: Cut and roll back the vines, creating a circular berm with a 2’ radius around the base of the tree. Pull and dig out roots as you go. If there are roots that are too big to be dug out, cut them, leaving at least 1’ of the vine behind so it can be poisoned in the future if need be.
Step 6: Take the sections you’ve removed from the tree trunk and lay them leaf side down over your berm. This will help suppress future growth.
Step 7: Replace leaf litter from the site in your now cleaned 2’ “circa-base”. Step back, admire, brag to your friends.
Step 8: Do it again 🙂
This may seem like a lot, but don’t get discouraged – it’s all about technique, baby. At EcoLogic, we’ve come across trees with infestations over 50 years old. It’s pretty remarkable that in an afternoon, we can free a 150 year old oak tree that can support over 280 insect species, which support hundreds of vertebrates like us.
Stay tuned as we make our way through the list of Atlanta’s most notorious invasive plants and learn how to DESTROY THEM (or manage them in an ecologically friendly and sustainable manner).
About the Author
Meet Tanya “Tea” Povolny, expert on native and invasive plants and founder of EcoLogic, an invasive plant removal service. You can follow her on Instagram at @ecologic.atlanta. You can read more about Tanya here and on her company’s website Eco-Logic ATL.
We don’t often think of manmade structures as part of the environment, and yet they are. Humans, also not often thought of as part of the environment, dwell in these structures. Many others dwell without them, something humans have termed as “homelessness” -a loss of human habitat accepted by too many of the fortunate as resulting from the moral failings of the homeless. Humans and housing are a part of our environment, whether it’s accepted or not.
This week the Georgia Conservancy hosted a panel on “The Economics of Housing in Georgia” on their weekly Facebook Live this past Tuesday May 19th at 12 noon. You can watch the 1 hour live here. If the privilege of time escapes you, please see the GreenATLiens summary below.
The Economic Impact of Housing in Georgia
This panel consisted of three presentations, one by the Georgia Conservancy, one by Bleakly Advisory Group, and one by Electric Cities of Georgia. A Q&A followed the presentations to discuss housing development issues in Georgia further.
The majority of Georgians’ income does not match the rising costs of housing. The difference between an affordable home for the workforce and the average home price is a staggering $159K. In the Atlanta area 30-40% of households are considered “cost burdened” or spend a third or more of their income on housing. Georgia will grow by 4 million people by 2040. Taking into consideration high home prices vs. low wages, cost burdened households, and population growth, raising the state minimum wage and lowering the cost of housing will be crucial to Georgia’s future resilience.
Takeaways: We’re experiencing dramatic demographic and generational changes that directly affects housing in Georgia. Household size has been shrinking steadily over the decades, and our housing supply is primarily built for the American nuclear family that is no longer the norm. Younger generations prefer walkability and work from home options, which makes housing and the amenities surrounding housing more important. This market is willing to pay more to live in “walkable” areas. Investing in downtown areas has been shown to improve cities’ economic growth even more than large shopping malls.
Takeaways: It’s important for cities to develop a well balanced tax base that’s a mix of housing, industries, retail, as well as investing in their downtown and quality of life enhancement (such as parks). Doing so will provide a more stable tax base for cities to fund programs that enhance the lives of residents. Holistic economic development required hard and soft infrastructure (see slide 5 for factors cities can control). Housing diversity is especially important given the demographic changes we’ve been experiencing over the decades of smaller households as well as expected economic hardship as a result of COVID-19 that will make more affordable housing more heavily demanded. Mixed use and walkability will be increasingly important going forward to meet the demand of residents.
What is example of a community or a project that you’d like to lift up for having done really great housing projects that support local economic development in a thoughtful way?
Geoff: Two that I can think of that are not necessarily Atlanta-centric are West Point and Rome, Georgia. West Point has a great historic core. Buildings had been sitting there for decades without being fully used and through concentrated efforts they now have 30 or 40 new housing units above retail in their downtown core. In Rome, Georgia they’ve done a lot on the affordable housing side and focused on downtown housing that I think can serve as a model throughout the state. (main emphasis: mixed use, focus on inner city center, walkability, affordability)
Mill: Thomasville, Georgia brought in a lot of progressive housing types into their urban development. Providing quality affordable housing within a quarter mile from downtown it’d been just a great project overall that other rural communities can aspire to.
Katherine: I’d like to give a nod to Georgia’s Mill villages and Mill neighborhoods. These are tremendous opportunities for fresh eyes. They are walkable in and among themselves. Mills can lend themselves as loft opportunities and we see this again and again across the state.
What are some ways that you can promote affordability on top of just promoting good housing policy and housing diversity.
Geoff: I’m a big fan of land banking. Granted cities and counties already have a lot on their plate trying to figure out this year’s and next year’s budget. But in a perfect world cities and counties are out there looking for ways to bank land for housing and using resources and federal government grants to buy land or even buy buy units in their historical downtown. If it’s under public control, especially if you’re controlling the housing units, you have the ability to control how much a person is going to pay for those housing units. Through downtown development authorities and other avenues land banking can then be aggressive in getting that land developed to provide housing. Once the city or the public sector controls the dirt underneath there’s a potential opportunity to impact how much a resident is going to pay for that. In doing so you have the ability to really impact what kind and what price of units are being built.
Mill: I’d completely second Geoff on that one as far as a really effective strategy and one that honestly we’ve always utilized at ECG. It’s an extremely effective strategy and one I think that is going to work for those communities that are able to do it. From a bigger picture what most communities may be able to allocate some of their resources towards are really identifying redevelopment opportunities in their communities. This should be a priority for every city across the state if they can is really to identify where these redevelopment opportunities are and take a strong look at your housing.
In addition encourage specific areas that allow the types of housing that we know can be more affordable such as duplexes and fourplexes and things of that nature that for most municipalities of Georgia are not allowed by regulations and ordinances. What I’ve seen in other communities across the country is places where they’ve established areas in their downtown or within certain neighborhoods that have been historically low income allowing that type of development to encourage more affordable housing in those spaces.
Do you have any experience in land bank resources being put to use through community land trust?
Geoff: The work Amanda Rhine is doing at the Atlanta Land Bank comes to mind. I know Brunswick has set up a community land trust recently. I would look into what Amanda has been doing here in Atlanta.
Mill: Amanda’s work is a great case study. Albany, GA has one. Athens land trust could probably be a good resource as well.
How has the pandemic affected housing?
Geoff: The other shoe hasn’t dropped yet on housing and the economy. Housing prices and rental payments have held up pretty well so far. If you just look at the numbers through the beginning of May you would hardly know we’re in the middle of a a pandemic with 15% unemployment. It just seems unreasonable to think that’s always going to be the case over the next 12-18 months. So there’s a lot that remains to be seen. It will impact housing no doubt.
The demographics I talked about, they’re not going to change. We’re still going to have small households and a mismatch between our household makeup and our housing stock. That’s not going to change with COVID. We’re still going to have a tremendous amount of smaller households looking for smaller and different housing. What that looks like at the “end” of all of this I think we’re still working through that and waiting to see what happens when that other shoes drops on the economic side of housing. It’s a bit early to tell but again the demographics are going to drive the future of housing to a large degree. So, we’ll see.
Mill: Geoff you’re completely right, the demographics are always in the driver’s seat with respect to this so COVID’s not really going to change a lot of that. We’re probably going to see more renters I would imagine coming out of this and just in general communities that kind of have a monoculture of a housing product. When I got ot a lot of my communities there’s a whole lot of single family. If there’s any sort of struggle coming out of this with respect to foreclosures and things of that nature I think those communities with fewer diversity of housing types are going to take a hit. There’s a lot that remains to be seen. If anything [COVID] could potentially be an impetus to accelerate some stuff around retail evolution which we’ve already been seeing but also with housing. The biggest challenge I see is from the government regulation side to allow some of these types of housing. That for me is one of the biggest challenges moving forward and I think COVID-19 could be an impetus to really push that discussion to the forefront. Whether it’s something around your downtown built environment or just your housing a lot of people are going to come out of this worse off than when they went into it and so a lot of cities will be looking at this. andsaying what can we do to help and there’s a lot we can do on the housing front.
Geoff: You’re probably hearing and will continue to hear a lot about resiliency. The colloquial evolution of resiliency is “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” If something fails and that’s where all your eggs are then we’re in trouble, so disperse the risk I guess you may say. Thinking about that in terms of housing is essential coming out of this. The more resilient cities, towns, and counties that have a wide variety of housing means that you’ve got a variety of housing ready to go no matter what the case whether we’re in a pandemic or not your housing stock is ready to accept the future. But if it’s all in one basket and the future heads in a different direction you’re left behind. So that’s just something to think about generally whether it’s retail, housing, your budget, whatever it may be is to think about that resiliency and how you can disperse the risk when things take a turn for the worst.
This was an extremely informative hour-long panel by the GA Conservancy, and the information shared here will be highly valuable when joining local groups such as the Housing Justice League to advocate for affordable housing.
A few action items
Sign the Beltline For All petition by the Housing Justice League (HJL) to support efforts for affordable housing around the Atlanta Beltline.
Happy #MotivationMonday Green ATLiens!! We are headed into week ???? of Quarantine 2020 and who else is tired of staring at that English Ivy in their yard? This week’s Motivation Monday feature is Tanya “Tea” Povolny, founder of EcoLogic, an invasive plant removal service, and she is an expert on just that!
Tea grew up moving around quite a bit before landing in Atlanta in 2016 by way of Austin, TX. One of the things she immediately admired after growing her ATLien antennae is the ecological landscape and beautifully integrated urban forests that call our city home. As she says on the EcoLogic website, “Atlanta’s forest is in our backyards.”
Tanya founded EcoLogic after working on several similar restoration-based efforts (including the Fernbank Forest) and discovering how important this work is to our native habitats. EcoLogic specializes in invasive plant removal, such as English Ivy and privet, relying strongly on a “light touch, heavy effect” approach. According to Tea, sometimes she will leave a site and there will be no noticeable difference, but that’s the point. Much of her work is tailored specifically to the space and the current native species there, so any invasive plant removal is done in such a way that they will not create a vacuum in the landscape, or cause later erosion problems in the soil. So in fairness, it is a little more than just pulling up ivy! The overall goal of Ecologic’s work at a site is to return the landscape to an equilibrium that allows native species to flourish, with as minimal human touch as possible.
EcoLogic is strongly based in restoration rather than conservation. The difference is that conservation is as an effort to keep things the same, and restoration takes into account changes to the area and how to create success in a way that factors in those changes. For this reason, some spaces require aftercare, such as replanting of native species following the removal of invasive ones, or being aware of erosion factors following the removal of an invasive species.
Tea recently began volunteering with the Georgia Native Plant Society’s propagation site and is excited to potentially grow that connection in regard to planting native species.
Tea’s Call to Action
Of course, Tea has done quite a bit of research and field study to know our native plants so well and best understand a space’s needs. But she advises do not let that stop you from bringing these practices into your own yard’s landscaping. According to Tea, the most important thing she would like ATLiens to know about her work is that truly anyone can do it. Tea’s mission was founded on the desire to spread knowledge in Atlanta about how to be good stewards to our native species. A little effort each day can go a long way, so spend a little time each day pulling out privet, or removing ivy, and you will start to see a difference. As we head into another week of quarantine, maybe it is time to #getmotivated and #getoutside to tend to some of Atlanta’s urban forest that might be in your very own backyard!
When astronomers gaze into their telescopes to search the crevices of the universe for habitable planets, they are hoping to find one thing: water. Water is one of the most important elements necessary to sustain life. We use it for everything. Try to name at least one essential activity you do every day that doesn’t require water in some shape or form. Pretty difficult, right? Because water is an integral part of our lives, local governments are constantly developing strategies to sustainably manage and conserve it. This fact is especially true for the city of Atlanta. Did you know that the city’s emergency water reserve has only enough for three days? How is this even possible, you ask? What are city officials doing to address this? To answer these questions, we need to first talk a little bit about Georgia’s watersheds.
Watersheds. What is a watershed? A watershed is an area of land that drains all the water from rainfall and snowmelt into a common body of water. If this definition isn’t quite clear, think of an open upside-down umbrella. The rain falls on the surface of the inside of the umbrella, slides down the ribs to the center near the handle, and creates a pool of water. In this case, the upside-down umbrella acts like a watershed and collects the water into a central place. Additionally, like the ribs of an umbrella, watersheds are composed of networks of smaller waterways like creeks, rivers, or lakes that ultimately drain into larger bodies of water. They also vary in size ranging from small puddles to huge tributaries that span several states. Georgia has fourteen major watersheds. However, for our purposes, we will discuss two: the Chattahoochee and Coosa.
(Photo Source: University of Central Florida)
Now, that we’ve learned about watersheds. It’s time to get back to Atlanta’s problem. When I think about Atlanta’s water dilemma, it reminds me of baseball. Baseball is a game of strikes and home runs. Let’s first examine Atlanta’s strikes by identifying the conditions that contribute to the city’s limited water supply. The first strike is its location. The metropolitan area isn’t in the most water rich area. In fact, almost all of the metro-Atlanta region’s water supply is from surface water, while only a small percentage comes from groundwater. Therefore, the region relies heavily on the reservoirs (A reservoir is a place where water is stored.) Lake Allatoona and Lake Lanier in the Coosa and Chattahoochee river basins, respectively. Eighty-seven percent of city’s water supply is from these reservoirs, primarily Lake Lanier.
Additionally, these reservoirs are located near the source of the river basins or headwaters and they travel down and across the state borders of Alabama and Florida. The river basins are Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) and Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (AFC). All three states share the AFC river basin, while only Georgia and Alabama share the ACT river basin. Over the years, there has been a lot of debate, conflict, and litigation around how water in the river basins should be allocated and used. The clash between these states is commonly known as the “Tri-State Water Wars.” Technically, each state has water rights to the basins. However, Atlanta must limit the amount it takes from the reservoirs to avoid significantly decreasing the water flow in Alabama and Florida. STRIIIKE ONE!
(Photo Source: Atlanta Regional Commission)
Make sure to come back for my next post where I’ll talk about Atlanta’s other two strikes and some of its home runs. Have something to add or thoughts of your own on ATL’s water supply? Leave a comment below or on our Facebook or Instagram page! See ya next time!
About the Author
Sydney-Alyce is GreenATLiens’ Water ATLien and resident ecologist. She’s passionate about approaching problems through an ecological and sustainable framework. You can follow her on Instagram at @thesoulleaf. The full bio of Sydney-Alyce and all GreenATLiens content writers will be coming soon!
Can ATLiens do better than a 20-25% recycling contamination rate? Here’s how you can fix your recycling fails & stop wish-cycling.
We ATLiens are fortunate to live in a city that has a strong recycling program. But, if you’re like me, sometimes it’s tempting to toss an item into the blue bin hoping that it’s recyclable, but not really knowing for sure. This is called “wish-cycling” and leads to higher recycling costs, contamination and inefficiencies. So this week, we spoke with the city to find out how ATLiens can do better when it comes to recycling. Here’s some of what we learned.
Let’s look at the top 2 of the 7 most common recycling mistakes residents make:
#1 Bagging Recyclables
Atlanta’s recycling program is a single-stream process where we throw all our recyclables in one bin, which means bagging up your recyclables is a no. Bags muck up the process and get tangled in recycling equipment, adding to facility maintenance costs. Throw your recyclables in the blue bins loose ATLiens! It’s surprising that this is the #1 violation, but it is.
#2 Including Plastic bags, Wraps and Film
Plastic bags, wraps and film are recyclable, but not in our curbside bins. These materials cause jams in the recycling equipment. To recycle these items right, they need to be returned to designated plastic film recycling drop-offs at stores or reused.
So what goes in the blue bin? Think clean, loose and dry:
Metal – Aluminum and Steel Cans
Paper – Cartons, Mixed Paper, Newspaper and Magazines
Plastic – Bottles and Containers
Want to know more about what’s accepted curbside? Go to www.atlanta.gov/recycling where you can use the “Waste Wizard” to look up various items. It’s kind of your secret weapon that tells you if the item can go in the blue bin, and offers advice if not. The city states “Recycling is local and can change from one community to the next. You may have moved from Smyrna to the City of Atlanta and notice slight changes. That is how local recycling can be. It is also changing and evolving… as technology to process that material adapts.”
Interview transcript between GreenATLiens Zero Waste correspondent Karen Green, Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission Community Affairs Manager Moses Tejuoso, and Keep Atlanta Beautiful Commission Executive Director of Kanika Greenlee:
What are the 5 – 10 most common “recycling fails” you see residents make when recycling curbside?
Recycling can be simple. We want our 98,000 households to fill up their curbside recycling cart with the following items clean, loose and dry: Glass (bottles and jars*), metal (aluminum and steel cans), paper (cartons, mixed paper, newspaper, magazines), and plastic bottles and containers.
The most common “recycling fails” from the Feet on the Street cart tagging program have been people bagging recyclables and putting plastic bags/wrap/film in the cart. Though recyclable, these items are not accepted in your curbside cart. They should be returned to retailers or re-used. All in all the top recycling fails we see are:
Bagged Recyclables
Plastic Bags, Wrap or Film
Food or Liquid
Scrap Metal, Wood or Furniture
Clothes or Linen
Tanglers, Cords, Hoses or Chains
Yard Trimmings
The City of Atlanta’s Feet on the Street recycling contamination brigade in action! The program is currently suspended during the COVID-19 crisis.
We’ve all heard that contamination in our blue bins can ruin a truckload of recyclables. Can you tell us how this works? At what level would an entire truckload get sent to the landfill?
The decision to reject contaminated loads is made by staff at the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) and not by the City. Individual truckloads are unloaded and visually inspected to determine the level of contamination while loading equipment places materials onto conveyor belts for manual/automated sorting. Trash and non-recyclable materials travel through the MRF until they are eventually discarded. A load would be considered clean with only a single greasy pizza box. Whereas, the City would receive feedback regarding bagged recyclables, plastic bags, food waste/liquids to provide targeted education to the servicing route. Our contamination rate is approximately 20-25%. (National Average – 17.67%*). Source: The Recycling Partnership 2020 State of Curbside Recycling Report.
Our contamination rate is approximately 20-25%. (National Average – 17.67%*).
Given the COVID-19 situation, residents may have specialty recyclable items piling up as CHaRM is temporarily closed. Do you have any suggestions for places that may be still open accepting items?
Our department supports CHaRM operations and understands the inconvenience caused by it’s temporary closure. We too have had to make operation changes for the safety of our employees. For instance, we’re no longer collecting items that don’t fit in curbside carts during our regular collections. Many donation centers have ceased operations for material handling concerns. Visit www.atlantaga.gov/solidwaste for updates related to COVID-19 operation changes which includes CHaRM.
Is there anything you would recommend to all Atlantans, for example learning more about the Feet on the Street campaign, encouraging people to download the ATL311 app and use the Waste Wizard, etc.?
Yes, please visit the www.atlantaga.gov/recycling webpage to learn about the Feet on the Street recycling contamination program (currently suspended). There you can find the following:
Is there anything else you would like residents to know?
Recycling is local and can change from one community to the next. You may have moved from Smyrna to the City of Atlanta and notice slight changes. That is how local recycling can be. It is also changing and evolving as technology to process that material adapts.
About the Author
Karen Green, Zero Waste GreenATLien
Karen Green is GreenATLiens’ zero waste and circular economy correspondent. She is the creator behind Instagram’s @yourrecyclingteam account. The full bio of Karen and all GreenATLiens content writers will be coming soon!
Happy #MotivationMonday ATLiens! Meet Stephanie Melara, sustainable fashion stylist and ethical slow fashion boutique owner based in Atlanta. Originally from San Francisco and a long-time Floridian, Stephanie grew her ATLien antennae >3 years ago when she moved here with her fiancee and life partner for work.
Stephanie brought with her impressive credentials in sustainable fashion -her BA in Fashion Merchandise & Marketing from the Miami International Institute of Art & Design + >15 years of fashion industry experience where she’s pushed the envelope from within to reduce waste and improve sustainable practices. While many retailers would landfill merchandise, hangers, and mannequins without batting an eye, Stephanie organized a mannequin swap in Gainesville, FL while working at a big box fashion retailer, and has consistently made an effort to repurpose waste through the secondhand economy. It hasn’t always been easy, for many fashion retailers this is against company policy, but when a policy is unjust should it be followed?
Stephanie founded her ethical fashion boutique ShopCaliRose in 2016, partnering with L.A.-based designed Lily Chavez of Together California to design bathing suits made from bamboo and recycled plastic.
After arriving on the scene in Atlanta, Stephanie became actively involved in the OwlSwap clothing swaps on the KSU campus. Post-pandemic Stephanie looks forward to getting involved in facilitating more clothing swaps in Atlanta once it is safe to do so.
Stephanie’s passion for sustainability began with family camping trips as a child. Her Dad was really big on camping and from those early experiences Stephanie grew to appreciate nature – and by extension want to protect it from environmental degradation. Having climbed the ranks in the sustainable fashion world, the next challenge she’s chosen is to conquer sustainable built environment. Stephanie is currently completing her real estate license to become an environmental agent and looks forward to applying her passion for sustainability to that realm as well.
Stephanie’s Call To Action
Go thrifting more! Go to a clothing swap! There’s so much quality, usable secondhand fashion to go around, it would be such a waste not to tap into that overly abundant resource.
Bright and early on Friday, May 1, 2020 at 7:30am 158 or so people gathered in front of their computers to attend Southface’s first virtual Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable. This month’s roundtable was dedicated to a heated topic in Metro Atlanta – development without displacement. As the Atlanta Beltline and other developments have caused property values to rise , affordable housing has become a central issue for mitigating the economic and geographic displacement of Atlanta residents (1, 2, 3). Panelists Nathaniel Smith of the Partnership for Southern Equity, Donell Woodson of the Lupton Center, and Alex Trachtenburg of Southface joined moderator Michael Halicki of Park Pride for a discussion on equitable development in Atlanta.
But first, what does equitable development have to do with sustainability? If we define sustainability as maintaining an ecological balance by avoiding the depletion of natural resources, there are many linkages between environmental sustainability and equitable urban development. The first is urban sprawl. Equitable development can help prevent displacement of low-income residents and in turn prevent further urban sprawl. Increased urban sprawl presupposes car dependence, which leads to a number of environmental issues. Adverse environmental effects of urban sprawl include:
Carbon emissions, known to increase atmospheric temperatures, otherwise known as climate change or global warming (4)
Air pollution, directly harming plants and wildlife as well as humans -think increased cases of asthma and asthma hospitalizations, or the less obvious effect of increased infant mortality rates (5, 6, 7, 8)
Noise pollution, known to adversely affect wildlife as well as humans (9, 10)
Adverse public health outcomes, such as increased rates of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease associated with a car dependent lifestyle (11, 12, 13). These adverse public outcomes make our healthcare systems more expensive to maintain, which in turn limits available funding for allocation to sustainable development, cyclically reinforcing environmental injustice.
This is just one linkage between equitable development and sustainable development. There are others. Now that it is clear how equitable development is connected to sustainability, captured here for you are the presentations from Southface’s Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable on Development without Displacement:
Q. Nathaniel: Is there a gold standard for development without displacement an if so who’s doing it right? What is the first step or the top policy priority locally and statewide in GA?
A. (Paraphrased) There is no gold standard. Solutions in NY will be different from solutions in the Rust Belt because the communities are structured differently. The 14th St. Bridge Project in Atlanta has been a very encouraging development. Efforts around Climate and Energy with the Equitable & Renewable Cities Initiative being carried out with PSE and the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability is helping build racial equity through sustainable development. We have to undo and redesign the delivery system for affordable housing and development in cities and in regions. Right now the delivery system is driven by profit, is imbalanced, is not driven by the voices of community -and values success through production rather than creating whole, sustained communities. Focus more on people over production and profit is the way forward.
(Two more questions, uncaptured. If you have notes on these additional questions in the Q&A session please send your notes to greenatliens@gmail.com to have them added to this post)
Q. 83.2% of those in the hospital for COVID-19 are black. Recent New York Times article As Georgia Reopens, Virus Study Shows Black Residents May Bear Brunt raised legitimate questions of structural inequality and structural racism in public health. What efforts will you make to turn “lemons into lemonade” and return not to the old normal but to move forward into a more equitable and inclusive now?
A.
Nathaniel: I hope COVID-19 has helped the world understand that no matter how hard you try to avoid it, structural racism will continue to be the great sin of america. If we don’t find ways to undo that sin we will all suffer. It’s not just about COVID-19, it’s also about the 2008 foreclosure crisis, it’s about us sitting in traffic because structural racism won’t allow MARTA to expand into commuter communities. We must continue to push our white allies and advocates to be more bold and courageous in confronting structural racism and inequality and speaking truth to power. Staying on the sidelines makes us complicit. That is the space I am currently trying to create.
Alex: COVID-19 has exposed unjust systems across the globe. Hopefully people are seeing that we’re all inextricably linked. We can all be affected, we can all lose our jobs and our quality of life. How do we look at development in a way that uplifts everyone, that promotes intergenerational wealth within marginalized communities? Hopefully this pandemic will prompt more policy conversations at the local, state, and national level to achieve that.
Donell: Two thoughts: Dr. King’s thought of beloved community, which is not just theoretical but actionable. Let’s all think about place, our geographic location. Name what we love about it. Then start from that point to work our way back to the issues so that we hold our intention – that which we love in our place – and what needs to be righted. Place is where we find common unity or community. Orienting ourselves around place is the launching pad for building community.
What else do you think can be done to achieve more equitable, sustainable development in Atlanta? Let us know in the comments on this blog or our Facebook and Instagram!
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