The vision is a worker owned manufacturing business which uses garbage as the resource to create a product for sale in an economically sound, socially and environmentally responsible manner in Mendocino County.
Currently, there are 5 of us; Anna Marie Stenburg, Jonathan Sheppard, Luz Francisco, Mike Salamone, and myself, who are using the sum total of our knowledge and life experience to turn this utopian vision into reality. We have been at it quite a while now, but have only begun to solve each of the large and small problems that arise when doing the work necessary to take concepts and theories to their practical application. We have made a good start. Where we are now, and how we got there, is the essence of this article. I hope it will be, at the least, informative and at the most, inspiring.
Last year the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 939. This bill mandates, among other things, that 50% of our garbage be diverted from land fills by the year 2000. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle are the community education buzz words for this legislation. Reduce and reuse are the most environmentally sound parts of this education program, however, they are currently the most costly to big business. Until more legislation forces big business to change, there will be only token efforts made in these area.
Recycling, however, is becoming big business unto itself. The logistics of how garbage is diverted, what garbage can be diverted,where it's diverted to, and who does the diverting has sent some of the big business thugs into a mad scramble for the obvious big bucks someone is going to have to pay to divert the garbage. How we, as a community, react to this scramble is going to affect not only our environment but our pockets for many years to come.
We are that someone who is going to have to pay. Association of Mendocino Recyclers believes this is like paying a thief to rob your house, and the community seems willing to pay as long as the thief takes the trash along with the silver. Environmentalists have long recognized what the state mow realizes--there is value in the garbage itself! Urban ore, it's now called.
In the summer of 1990, the Arcata Community Recycling Center completed a Rural Waste Enterprise Development Project entitled, "Recycling Entrepreneurship: Creating Local Markets for Recycled Materials." This study was paid for from various grants, and prepared by the environmental consulting firm of Gainer and Associates along with the Arcata Community Recycling Center. The basic conclusion of this in depth study that an economically feasible, environmentally sound manufacturing business can be created in rural areas using recycled feedstock (newspaper, compost, and/or glass).
This study has hit California communities both large and small like manna from heaven. The Arcata Community Recycling Center has pursed all the steps outlined in this study, and has projected opening their business sometime in December of 1991. Association of Mendocino Recyclers only a few steps behind Arcata, and many steps ahead of all other interested communities.
One area where we radically divert from the Arcata Community Recycling Center is in how the business is managed. They have decided that their business will be privately funded and owned. Their product is also a proprietary secret, so we don't know yet which of the feedstocks they decided to use. We want to base the business created in Mendocino County on the Mondragon system of worker cooperatives.
Very briefly, as a reaction to the Franco government's fascist, direct control over all Spanish organizations of any political and economic importance in the 1940's, the Basque population in the northern region of Spain formed themselves into worker collectives. How these culturally separate and highly independent people did this, despite a repressive government, despite world wide economic depressions, and despite fantastic competition, is a story too complex to detail here. However, today, the Basques have an economically sound, socially responsible network of worker cooperatives comprised of 21,000 workers. Some of the basic elements of their cooperative complex will give you a general idea why we are using the Mondragon system as a model. The elements are: democracy and self management that works by 1 member, 1 vote; policy is set by membership, with elected managers making day to day business + technical decisions; the reinvesting of profits into new, compatible cooperatives; and the reinvesting of profits into social responsibility projects for the health and general well being of the workers, their families and their communities. The Mondragon system includes enough checks and balance to allow for dissension, growth, and personal independence, with each worker in equal control of their destiny. Fifty years of success proves that this system can work for us.
The Mendocino Association of Recyclers has seen the Mondragon system as a way of making our decisions. We have also become a project of the Rural Institute, which is a 501(3)c non-profit organization dedicated for the last 17 years to promoting community self sufficiency. For those of you who are not familiar with Rural Institute you may be familiar with some of it's projects; Plowshares, the Ukiah after school day care program, various watershed associations and re-forestation projects, a program for the hearing impaired to name a few. We joined as a way to facilitate receiving grants given only to non-profits.
Our Ownmarketing Study/ Business Plan Is Needed
Our first step in making the vision become a reality is to come up with a marketing study and business plan. This is essential for understanding the source of feedstock, costs involved in all aspects of setting up a manufacturing plant, and a projected pro-forma of the business itself for the future application to lending and grant agencies.
The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors gave us a 5-0 vote to apply via the Community Development Commission (local HUD) for a planning and technical assistance Community Development Block Grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (state HUD), which administrates funds from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (fed HUD). These grants are only available to city and county governments, and must be used to retain or create jobs for low income persons. This grant was written by Roy Tindle of CDC, and by Mendocino association of Recyclers.
I am pleased to say the state awarded us the maximum amount of $30,000.00 a few weeks ago.
The grant specifically outlines all the information we will need to have a completed marketing study/business plan for a manufacturing business using recycled feedstock in Mendocino County, We will hire experts to do this study. We must personally come up with $1800.00 as the matching part of this grant. (Usually the government agency receiving the grant puts up the money but as we all know our county is broke.) What we get for our $1800.00 investment isÉ as a citizens advisory committee we decide which expert will be hired for the 30K and provide direction to the expert. Since the grant is public funds, the results of the marketing study/business plan belongs to not only us but the general public as well.
The process from the vision to jobs will be a long one. My guess is 2 to 5 years. Many decisions, hoops to jump through, and obstacles to over-come will be part of the vision to reality metamorphosis. We are long on commitment and enthusiasm, and like everyone else, short on money. But we believe the basic concept is not only economically sound, but a real answer to not only some of our solid waste problems, and not only satisfying the state AB 939 mandate, but a practical answer to the employment crisis in this county. A side benefit of our successful grant application is the various state agencies banging at our door to hear more and contribute to our vision.
One of the elements crucial to the success of this project, and having total local control of the end results, is manuscripts listed in the bibliography below so we can communicate with a similar foundation. We will be calling community meetings to exchange ideas and information and hopefully include you in this vision. For info, call Roanne at 961-1953.
1. Recycling Entrepreneurship: Creating Local Markets for Recycled materials. Available from the MEC. Cost $35.00
2. We Build The Road As We Travel, by Roy Morrison , New Society Publishers, 4527 Springfield Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19143 or PO Box 582 Santa Cruz, CA 95061. $16.95 plus $1.75 shipping.
3. Making Mondragon by William Foote White, New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14851 Cost Unknown.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited