Emailing for Sustainability

The following is an email exchange between my e-pal, Geoff Badenoch and I. Geoff is a good friend and an avid mentor for The Global Award Challenge I'm currently involved in. He's a brilliant model of what role civic duty should (in my opinion) play in a person's life.

Here's the exchange from top to bottom. The impetus was a striking ProgressiveU blog entitled "EPR to the EPA" that I'd come across yesterday and passed along to Geoff.

From: geoffb@ism.net
To: o-exotic-rubber-soul@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Have you heard the news?
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 07:56:31 -0700

Go ahead and send it along to Kunyu. Any ideas that reduce waste should be considered. The blogger has a good point.

Remember the economic law that will cause manufacturers to pass this on to consumers. Unless there is a component of competition in the extended producer responsibility, that is, unless the manufacturers get rewarded for making the most efficient packaging, consumers will have to pay for it one way or another.
Best,
GTB

From: maximillian smith [mailto:o-exotic-rubber-soul@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 7:53 PM
To: Geoff Badenoch
Subject: RE: Have you heard the news?
Right you are, and what an economic law it is. I just found it stimulating! The fact that it would initiate (or force) industry to think up more sustainable ideas. Easier said than done, right?

And there is the notion that a blogger presented the other day-- basically he said we shouldn't support Walmart and other corporations that haven't embraced organics and haven't gone completely 'green', because he thought that their stimulus was profit. Essentially we should put 100% into supporting fully sustainable enterprises, which makes some sense: how else, with the increased production costs, can some of these good companies stay afloat?

This is difficult for me to grapple with. Encouraging businesses that have had a tradition of poor practices (by my standards) also need the support. How will they ever see the merit in change if I don't support the little that they're doing. So anyways, I forsee a time when I'm at the grocery store making less than concious decisions. I must fight that. So I figure as long as we think about it, at least we have the potential... blah blah blah.

See you tomorrow, ye oceanlubber!

From: geoffb@ism.net
To: o-exotic-rubber-soul@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Have you heard the news?
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 22:14:20 -0700

The pure capitalist believers have faith that the market will make everything OK. That is, in the market where people buy and sell, buyers won’t pay more than they think something is worth, and sellers won’t sell for less than something is worth. The true believers contend that that will create the equilibrium of price—nothing will cost more or less than it should. If some smart person figures a way to make things so he or she can sell them cheaper than every other seller, he will get more customers because the buyers will get more for their money. And that will drive everyone else’s price down, or it will drive them from the market because they can’t match the smart guy’s efficiencies. That’s what gave us Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is a special kind of seller because they don’t make anything themselves. They just sell stuff other people (from China, the Phillipines, etc.) make. Since Chinese workers work for less than American workers, the American SHOPPER can buy all the cheap stuff they want. And some good stuff, too. Because Wal-Mart’s share of the market is so HUGE, they are able to beat up their suppliers like nobody else.

Getting into fully sustainable thinking means sacrificing the efficiencies of world markets. How can it be sustainable to pay some guy in China $1.00 a day to assemble toasters Wal-Mart sells for $19.95? That toaster traveled halfway around the world on trains, trucks, and ships to get to the store. How can that be sustainable? American wage earners have been in such a crunch to get and keep a piece of the American pie that they are grateful for the chance to buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart.

Since Wal-Mart is only a supplier and not a manufacturer, they will say that they only sell what the market makes. If you want the packaging right, go tell the Chinaman.

If you want to get to the root of sustainable, we have to think of Missoula as one of those African villages we want to help in the Global Challenge. What do we need to survive in our little valley? How much food can we grow to sustain ourselves? (Did you look at the TED lecture by Michael Pollan yet? Way cool. Lulu would love that—be sure to share it!). How do we keep our water clean? How do we deal with our waste? It’s all the same questions. But we have to look to local solutions because we can’t rely on the feds or even the state to make things right here. While telecommunications have become among the most efficient parts of our systems, everything else is falling apart—roads, bridges, railroads, employment systems, welfare, medicine and healthcare, law enforcement—because those systems are all grounded in a MEGA system that has been abused, neglected, and ripped off. Resources and wealth are really screwed up. The market is subject to anomalies. That explains the reason why it isn’t a perfect system.

Jeepers. You should know better than to set me off. I should know better, too.
GTB