TCE Blog
Melanie Scruggs, Houston Program Director
Houston has Mayoral and City Council elections coming up this November, and so far, there are no environmental groups endorsing candidates or raising money for local races. Unsurprisingly, the environment and climate change have taken a back seat in the public discourse, and voters have had little opportunity to contrast candidates’ positions on important issues like recycling. With upcoming candidate forums scheduled to discuss environmental issues, however, that will soon change.
Texas Campaign for the Environment does not endorse candidates and instead, we let our supporters know where to find information about who is running, what their public views on the environment are and general voting information. You can confirm that you are registered to vote (October 5th is the deadline to register for this upcoming election) here. Election Day is November 3rd.
We follow a local blog by Charles Kuffner, Off the Kuff, and his 2015 elections page. Kuffner has taken initiative to record interviews with candidates including a question about the “One Bin for All” boondoggle proposal. In case you missed it, in March of 2013, Mayor Parker announced she would spend a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to investigate the feasibility of abandoning our current two-bin recycling system (trash, recycling, plus a bag for yard waste) in order to experiment with a one-bin approach that is in the opposite direction recycling advocates like TCE, the National Recycling Coalition, environmentalists around the world and local environmental justice leaders agree major cities should be pursuing.
Despite the fact that in February of this year Houston finally completed the expansion of two-bin recycling to all neighborhoods, the debate of whether to eliminate it quietly continues, and the City of Houston is currently evaluating bids from at least one private company that wants a 20+ year contract to build a new facility called a dirty MRF (pronounced “murf”) where machines and people would sort through discards that we as citizens can and should recycle ourselves. Indications are that it is unlikely that such a contract will come up for a City Council vote, however, the proposal is still technically on the table.
So, candidates are faced with the question, do they support proven two and three-bin recycling in which major cities around the country, including Houston, are currently investing to maximize highest and best use of our discards on the path to zero waste? Or, is Houston willing to be an experiment for a company that claims to take individual responsibility out of the sustainability picture when it comes to recycling, and cannot point to a single facility anywhere that accomplishes their goal of 75%-95% recycling from a commingled trash stream?
Below are transcribed responses from Off the Kuff‘s interviews with candidates for two of the At-large City Council races. Houston has sixteen City Council members in total besides the Mayor, and five of them are elected city-wide. That means that in addition to voting for one council member that represents your district, numbered A-K, you get to vote for five council members “At-Large” to represent you and everyone in the city. The races for At-Large City Council positions #1 and #4 are two of the most contested races on the ballot since these are open seats, meaning the current council member is term limited and cannot seek re-election. Representing At-Large does not necessarily make these positions more important than district seats, but these officials do have a responsibility to represent everyone in the city, and they should certainly be strong proponents of policies that protect the environment. See what you think about their responses to Kuffner’s question, “Do you support ‘One Bin for All’ or should Houston continue what we are already doing?”
Lane Lewis, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I recycle a lot. I fill it up every 2 weeks and roll it out to the street. My understanding is that Mayor Parker is very dedicated to this one bin, one stream and I can tell you that I personally find it much more convenient than to have to sift and sort the way we used to. So, if it works and if it’s financially feasible, I’m for it.” Read full response
Chris Oliver, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1
“I like what we’re currently doing. I like putting out a green bin and a black bin. I think it’s a wonderful idea to do so. Now, this one bin for all concept, if it’s proven to be more efficient and more economically feasible I think we should take a look at that, but I currently like the way we’re doing it now. I think as a matter of convenience, it’s wonderful. I like the idea of my wife telling me, ‘don’t put your plastic water bottle in the trash, put it in the green bin.’ I like it. So I think it’s something we should hang on to personally.” Read full response
Tom McCasland, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I want to see our recycling rate go up. I think that’s something that everyone can agree on. I’ve talked with folks on both sides of this issue. It is not something that I feel like I have enough information on to say I am solidly for one side or the other. I’ll dig into the details. It needs to be economically feasible. We do need to worry about whether there’s a proven technology here especially when we’re spending taxpayer money. The one thing we can agree on is as a city, we need to be increasing our recycling rate.” Read full response
Jenifer Pool, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I am a proponent of single-stream [one bin]. I’ve seen some of the proposals. I’m a bit reticent about some of it because we are part of the process where you’re learning to make mistakes and to make things better. I would not be in favor of putting a lot of money – I’m talking about $100’s of millions of dollars – to a system that isn’t quite proven yet. That we will be the test case.” Read full response
Amanda Edwards, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “I think we need to be sure that we’re using a policy that’s the most effective in terms of accomplishing the goal of making sure people are recycling. I think we have to look at the number of people that would be recycling with the existing program versus if you have a one bin. If you have an increase in terms of people who are willing to recycle which is part of the objective, I think we need to look at that closely because again there are always detractors who prefer one method over another and certainly you have to weigh those.” Read full response
Matt Murphy, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “Well, you know, if I trusted the city government to live up to the promises that it has not lived up to in the past, then I would say that it would be a great idea. It’s something that we should investigate and see if it’s something that’s viable and that could work for our system. What I do trust is when I go out to my green bin and my black bin, that the green bin fills up so much faster than my black bin does, and I’m a citizen, and so in reality I trust the citizens to know what’s recyclable, what’s not and that’s being done.” Read full response
Laurie Robinson, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “Considering I am a regulatory compliance person I like efficiencies and effectiveness. I think we need to understand the contract we get with the new supplier that’s providing this technology. We need to make sure it works. So I would like to see under the contract is a performance period to see if the technology actually really works and give the city the opportunity to get out of this technology if it doesn’t really work.” Read full response
Jonathan Hansen, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “I don’t have a very strong opinion on the issue. My betting principles would be what is the most sufficient? That’s really all I can say. What is the most efficient? What is the problem? What is the most efficient solution to this problem? That’s what we should pursue.” Read full response
What candidates should be saying
One of the major problems with the Bloomberg proposal from the very beginning was that it locked the City into evaluating a pair of false alternatives while failing to consider the proven three-bin solution that most major cities in the U.S., including cities in Texas, are currently pursuing. In fact, the City of Houston has already been investing for years in a three-bin system by expanding separate recycling and yard waste collection. Now that more citizens have access to these curbside programs, we are well on our way to a Zero Waste solution similar to what San Antonio, Dallas and Austin are implementing now. By keeping discards separated, a three-bin solution ensures high quality materials can be recycled into the economy.
In a matter of months, the City of San Antonio is going to be completing its three-bin curbside program for 346,000 households that includes a trash bin in sizes small, medium or large, a large recycling bin and a large compost bin for food scraps and organic waste. San Antonio’s pay rate structure for this solid waste program incentivizes recycling and composting. Their three-bin approach is part of a pathway to zero waste plan passed in 2013 with the goal of diverting 60% diversion of waste from landfills by 2025.
Candidates for City Council should reject the notion that Houston has only two options: we can maintain the status quo or we can try this other ‘one-bin’ thing. This is a false choice. Instead, we need to be looking at technologies like three-bins that work and that have broad public support in the environmental and recycling community. We also need to look at the big picture, considering the waste problem and its solutions holistically, and not just in single-family homes, either.
Here are questions that candidates should be discussing:
What would the benefits be, in terms of diverting waste from landfills, enhancing quality of life and creating jobs in sustainable industries, for a three-bin solid waste program that offers the recycling program we have now in addition to new food-waste collection services? What would that cost and how would we pay for it? If San Antonio can do it, so can Houston.
How are we going to measure and improve recycling rates for the 40% of Houston residents who live in apartments and have private trash services, but rarely have convenient opportunities or incentives to recycle? Austin has passed a universal recycling ordinance to require recycling city-wide; meanwhile San Antonio has expanded its recycling services to cover multi-family. We could implement similar programs, including using existing tax incentives provided to apartment landowners to create recycling incentives as well.
Other cities in Texas have passed long-term plans to reduce waste, to support state government policies aimed at waste reduction, and to grow local economies in reuse and re-manufacture, including composting. Now that Houston has a general plan that may one day include a sustainability plan, shouldn’t the city have a long-term solid waste or Zero Waste Plan, as other cities in Texas and around the world are implementing? A zero waste plan would set a goal of achieving 90% of waste diverted from landfills and incinerators in coming decades through recycling, composting, education, waste reduction efforts. It would establish a framework for working with the Texas legislature to promote recycling policies and tighter landfill rules so we can grow this important part of our green economy.
It would be more than a tragic mistake to abandon the progress that has been made in finally expanding curbside recycling to all neighborhoods only to waste tax dollars into a system that recycling advocates agree would fail to meet its expectations. Let’s thank Mayor Parker for expanding recycling during her term, and let’s press forward with responsible solutions to conserve resources and keep our city clean and healthy for all.
Lane Lewis, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I recycle a lot. I fill it up every 2 weeks and roll it out to the street. My understanding is that Mayor Parker is very dedicated to this one bin, one stream and I can tell you that I personally find it much more convenient than to have to sift and sort the way we used to. So, if it works and if it’s financially feasible, I’m for it.”
Chris Oliver, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1
“I like what we’re currently doing. I like putting out a green bin and a black bin. I think it’s a wonderful idea to do so. Now, this one bin for all concept, if it’s proven to be more efficient and more economically feasible I think we should take a look at that, but I currently like the way we’re doing it now. I think as a matter of convenience, it’s wonderful. I like the idea of my wife telling me, ‘don’t put your plastic water bottle in the trash, put it in the green bin.’ I like it. So I think it’s something we should hang on to personally.”
Tom McCasland, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I want to see our recycling rate go up. I think that’s something that everyone can agree on. I’ve talked with folks on both sides of this issue. It is not something that I feel like I have enough information on to say I am solidly for one side or the other. I’ll dig into the details. It needs to be economically feasible. We do need to worry about whether there’s a proven technology here especially when we’re spending taxpayer money. The one thing we can agree on is as a city, we need to be increasing our recycling rate. I’m glad for the significant steps forward this current administration has made on this. It’s worth asking the questions you’re asking. I’ll certainly be paying attention to the details there. I don’t know enough and have read in the paper but have yet to see enough information that would convince me that a single-stream [one bin] recycling plan is the right plan for the city.”
Jenifer Pool, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1 “I am a proponent of single-stream [one bin]. I’ve seen some of the proposals. I’m a bit reticent about some of it because we are part of the process where you’re learning to make mistakes and to make things better. I would not be in favor of putting a lot of money – I’m talking about $100’s of millions of dollars – to a system that isn’t quite proven yet. That we will be the test case. Now, Houston’s been the test case on a lot of stuff and we’ve proven our ability to be creative and make things work. That’s part of the beauty and power of our city. We make things happen. I think single-stream will work – we can’t keep filling in holes in the ground. We can’t keep building mountains of trash. Long-term it’s not sustainable. I could envision one day in the distant future people going back to our landfills and harvesting what was in there by mining it. We need to do that now. We need to be recycling as much as possible. But I’m a believer that people have the freedom of their own choice, and as we see not everyone is going to choose to recycle. Not everyone is going to take the time to sort out the different products in the current recycling system. That being the case we need to find a way of reclaiming what can be reclaimed from the recycling and from the single-stream [one-bin] and I think that’s the best way to go. I think we should take it a little slower. We’ve got proposals out there. As a city that’s got to be here for a while, we can take smaller steps, the idea that we go from what we’ve been doing to a single-stream recycling where everything goes in as recycle, I think we’re going to run the risk of having garbage on our streets because a plant broke down, or we’ve got mountains of trash waiting to be recycled at plants that aren’t operating. One of my clients is in that business. They’re expanding their location to do so. So I’ve been really close to the issue and I’m not talking about this in a void. It’s important to know from the standpoint of that person who’s going to do the recycling, the company that’s going to do it, what they deem is the reality. Everybody wants a contract everybody wants to make money from the government but I think we need to be real careful about how we move forward.”
Amanda Edwards, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “I think we need to be sure that we’re using a policy that’s the most effective in terms of accomplishing the goal of making sure people are recycling. I think we have to look at the number of people that would be recycling with the existing program versus if you have a one bin. If you have an increase in terms of people who are willing to recycle which is part of the objective, I think we need to look at that closely because again there are always detractors who prefer one method over another and certainly you have to weigh those. But ultimately the goal is what is most effective, in terms of getting people to actually participate in recycling. I think it’s important for us to respect our environment. It’s a critical need. But looking at whether that’s the most effective way of doing it is to me the primary determinant on whether or not we should alter our program or go with the existing program.”
Matt Murphy, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “Well, you know, if I trusted the city government to live up to the promises that it has not lived up to in the past, then I would say that it would be a great idea. It’s something that we should investigate and see if it’s something that’s viable and that could work for our system. What I do trust is when I go out to my green bin and my black bin, that the green bin fills up so much faster than my black bin does, and I’m a citizen, and so in reality I trust the citizens to know what’s recyclable, what’s not and that’s being done. That’s ultimately where I think the trust should lead. In that situation, that’s what I’m going to keep doing and so far that’s been very successful in the City of Houston. Now that’s fully implemented, and all of us have the bins, it took us several years even after it was installed to for us to get the bins. Now, like I said, my green bin fills up so much faster and I ultimately think when it comes down to it, we need to evaluate all the sources both publicly and privately. We could probably reduce our sanitation services just by looking at private issues, like Waste Management. I think Waste Management could probably do something cheaper than us if we give them the option to bid on it and figure out the situation and find those private ways to reduce our spending when it comes to waste management.”
Laurie Robinson, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “Considering I am a regulatory compliance person I like efficiencies and effectiveness. I think we need to understand the contract we get with the new supplier that’s providing this technology. We need to make sure it works. So I would like to see under the contract is a performance period to see if the technology actually really works and give the city the opportunity to get out of this technology if it doesn’t really work. Or give them time to fix the technology, that’s the first thing. I wouldn’t like to see a process that works right now, the two-bin solution, be stricken down and have a new technology that doesn’t work put in place and then nothing works. So I would like to have a pilot program or beta test to make sure that it actually works before we make the decision to switch over. But, I believe in recycling and I just had to put the garbage bin back into the garage and put the recycling bin back in the garage before I got here!”
Jonathan Hansen, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4 “I don’t have a very strong opinion on the issue. My betting principles would be what is the most sufficient? That’s really all I can say. What is the most efficient? What is the problem? What is the most efficient solution to this problem? That’s what we should pursue.”
If you’ve had one of our canvassers at your door or on the phone lately, you already know that we are putting lots of effort into campaigns to have retailers phase toxic chemicals out of the consumer products they sell. Our supporters have already written thousands of letters to Walgreens, Best Buy and Family Dollar, and many have signed the national Change.org petition on Family Dollar – which now boasts over 150,000 signatures nationwide. If you’ve added your voice to this effort, thank you!
This strategy of putting direct consumer pressure on retailers is delivering results. We are part of the national Mind the Store campaign that has convinced Walmart and Target to commit to developing safer chemicals policies. Just a few months ago, Home Depot and Lowe’s committed to removing the class of toxic chemicals known as phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) out of vinyl flooring – and to substitute safer materials, not chemicals that are just as bad or worse or where there is too little information to know. Phthalates are one of the “Hazardous 100” chemicals that we are currently pressuring Walgreens to phase out by adopting a safer chemicals policy this year as well.
toxic flame retardants
We are no stranger to this issue. When we challenged the electronics industry to start recycling, we also raised the concern of toxic flame retardant chemicals that the computer and TV manufacturers used in their plastics. We recruited a new mother in Texas to submit a breast milk sample for a national study. Unfortunately, every sample of mother’s milk in that study tested positive for the toxic fire retardants found in electronics. (It’s still important to breastfeed for all the health benefits.) Other studies have found these chemicals in the blood of umbilical cords. Toxic flame retardants have become known as the asbestos of our time.
Thanks to strong public pressure, these chemicals have been phased out of many computers. Best Buy has removed toxic flame retardants from their own brand of TVs (Insignia). Now we are urging Best Buy to get toxic flame retardants out of all the other brands of TVs they sell.
These toxic flame retardants are also found in furniture. Mind the Store has succeeded in persuading Ashley Furniture and Macy’s to require that the upholstered furniture they sell does not use toxic flame retardant chemicals. Now we’re putting pressure on Pier 1 Imports to make similar commitment for all the furniture it sells.
[UPDATE: After we held a demonstration at their Fort Worth headquarters and delivered hundreds of letters to CEO Alex Smith, Pier 1 has publicly announced its commitment to phase out toxic flame retardants in its furniture! Read more about our victory here.]
targeted toxicity
We are also working closely with environmental justice allies in the Campaign for Healthier Solutions coalition who are leading the effort to pressure the major discount store chains to protect their customers from toxic chemicals. A recent study found that 81% of the products tested at dollar stores contained at least one hazardous chemical above levels of concern. In many communities, there are very few (if any) alternatives for residents to purchase everyday products. But ALL families deserve safer products on store shelves – especially those who can least afford to pay top dollar for specialty products. You can read more about this campaign here.
Texans know that we cannot always rely on the federal or state government to protect us. Big chemical companies have armies of lobbyists at the U.S. and State Capitols. So we are organizing direct consumer pressure, at the grassroots level, in the second most populous state in the country. We are demanding that retailers tell their suppliers to make safer products available. This is a proven, effective strategy to safeguard the health and well-being of our families.
Austin American-Statesman Op-Ed Robin Schneider, Executive Director, Texas Campaign for the Environment
The news is out: Austin’s recycling rates have stalled. Despite education initiatives by the city, our diversion rate has stayed at about 40 percent for years. Something different has to be done — and some of us are wondering if now is the time to start requiring recycling.
If you read Andra Lim’s article on this problem you know that my organization — Texas Campaign for the Environment — is in favor of such a requirement, but there is an important word Andra used right before she quoted me: “Ultimately.” It means “in the last place,” and right now we stand with all of the zero-waste supporters quoted by Andra in saying that Austin has some options we should pursue before making a recycling requirement our top priority.
Imposing mandatory recycling on Austin today would be, in some ways, unfair. Many are confused about recycling. We have been taught to throw waste away, and that we should put it on the curb where it will disappear, never to bother us again. In truth, it gets trucked to someone else’s community — where it becomes their problem — but the easiest way to get responsible people to make such an irresponsible decision is to tell them not to think about it.
Successful recycling, on the other hand, happens when residents know what recycling actually is — the marketing of our discards as commodities — and how the facilities here do their part. This makes sense of all the rules associated with the blue cart, but our educational efforts are still just chipping away at the massive edifice of a waste culture that has taught us to be willfully ignorant about where our discards go.
In the past, new programs have increased recycling the most, not education. When Austin went from dual-stream recycling to single-stream, our recycling rate shot from 30 percent to 36 percent in a matter of months — and it didn’t take much longer to get to our current 40 percent.
We hope to see a big jump with the introduction of curbside composting citywide. This third bin will let Austin residents divert materials they have mostly been trashing to this point: food scraps, food soiled paper, greasy pizza boxes, and other valuable organic material. We expect that this will move our diversion rate over 50 percent and get us back on track towards our zero-waste goals.
This is a good reason to roll out this program as quickly as possible — by 2018 or sooner, not 2020, as Austin Resource Recovery is currently suggesting. These new programs, of course, require education efforts, and the city’s pilot program for organics collection provides a great example of what works best. It’s something familiar to Texas Campaign for the Environment: door-to-door canvassing. In the city’s pilot program the neighborhoods where Austin Resource Recovery went door-to-door to explain the carts had the highest participation rates. A cute jingle or cool-looking flier is useful, but nothing works like direct human interaction right where people live. Austin needs to invest in this for both our upcoming organics program and for recycling.
In the end, that word “ultimately” not only shows us where recycling mandates belong, but also should remind us of the ultimate big picture we are facing here. Recycling, composting and other diversion programs are not just nice things; they are necessary for the health of our community. As we are starting to see with rare earth metals, you can only extract materials from one place to be buried again in a landfill somewhere else for so long; sooner or later you run out of resources. We will all have to recycle sooner or later; thankfully, Austin Resource Recovery has taken the initiative to conserve our resources and reduce our dependence on landfills before a crisis forces our hand.
Ultimately, recycling is already necessary for our safety, prosperity, and health, but with some continued leadership, it may not have to be required for a little longer.
Schneider is the Executive Director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment & TCE Fund.
The new website you’re looking at is the product of a year’s worth of work from the selfless souls who dedicated their time, energy and expertise toward this project. Although we did much of this ourselves, we do owe a HUGE debt of gratitude to the web design and development professionals who contributed their valuable work at “non-profit” rates – without them, it just doesn’t happen. This is the story of how our website has evolved over time and how the current version came to be.
In the beginning
2001 – a website odyssey
Here’s what the TCE website looked like in 2001. Simple, right? It’s interesting to see how website trends have essentially come full-circle back to this kind of clean, simple layout because so many people view them on mobile phones now. With some brighter colors and better pictures, this could almost work today – if we only had one office and we only worked on clean air issues. But as a statewide group working on several campaigns at once, we need room for more content and information.
A year later, our website became a little more visually oriented, but still fairly rudimentary. It remained essentially a collection of links with no real menu or navigation in place.
2002 – work in progress
This is how our website looked when I first started as a canvasser with TCE. When I would meet people at the door who asked whether we had a website they could visit to check out the organization, I wasn’t always excited to tell them about it – the printed materials I had on my clipboard were always more up-to-date and complete. And this is how it stayed for several more years.
2005 – TCE 2.0
TCE 2.0
The first major overhaul finally came in 2005, and while it was a difficult process, the resulting TCE website was as giant improvement. A very talented professional designer, Paul Whitener, helped us re-imagine our logo and lay out the new home page. We had room for more articles and information about several campaigns – we had a new office in DFW as well. It was something we could be proud to show off and happy to direct our supporters to.
This was also when I became more responsible for maintaining the TCE website, posting new articles and making any changes needed. Slowly but surely, I started learning the basics of HTML and other website coding tools. I have no formal training in this area and to this day I am a total amateur, but at least I can handle some simple tasks to keep things running.
2014 – still kickin’
The problem was, this is how our website looked for TEN YEARS – which in internet time may as well be a century. What was once new and fun soon became old-fashioned and counter-productive. We thought and talked about doing another overhaul several time, but we always seemed to busy working on our environmental campaigns to dedicate so much time for a project like this.
We did add a few new touches over time, and we may have kept on “living with it” if not for the iPhone revolution. Today most people view emails and websites on their mobile phones, which this website was never designed to handle. There was no getting around it – we needed to build something new from the ground up.
Where to start….
The first major decision we made was to move our website into WordPress. This is a straightforward, user-friendly Content Management System (CMS) that millions of people and organizations use every day, and its possibilities for customization are endless. This system would allow us to create whatever kind of website we wanted for TCE.
But that level of “blank slate” choice actually got us into trouble immediately. We spent far too much time having TCE staff members toy around with WordPress, attempting to come up with an initial design for the new website. Bad plan.
Jeff’s first draft
When it became clear this was going nowhere fast, the next idea was to have our resident graphics expert – Jeff Jacoby, Austin Staff Director – take a stab at creating a new home page using the same Adobe design software he uses to create our Annual Report each year. Here’s what he came up with. Very nice, yes? This became the foundation to start the project in earnest.
While Jeff has quite the eye and talent for aesthetics, he also has a full-time job in running the Austin canvassing office. He couldn’t do all the graphic design for the entire website. So he reached out to a former TCE field manager and current website design professional, Josh Vincent, to see if he would be willing to help. This turned out to be a huge turning point – Josh took the initial mock-up Jeff had created and quickly churned out a set of beautiful, use-able designs for all the pieces of the website. And he charged us so much less than market value that we basically owe him for life. After a few rounds of feedback and adjustments, here’s what Josh finalized for the new home page. Look familiar?
Final draft from Josh
Under the hood
The last step would be to find a website developer who could write the code to turn this design into a functioning website. Fortunately we didn’t have to go far – Paul Whitener once again agreed to take us on and tackle this project for a low non-profit rate. Over the course of the next few months, Paul customized our WordPress account to turn this vision into a real website. That’s what you’re looking at now.
And in case you’re wondering, I have been primarily responsible for adding the bulk of the content, articles, text and pictures, along with TCE program staff members Melanie Scruggs and Andrew Dobbs. Of course, our fearless leader Robin Schneider acts as the editor in chief as well.
Glad to be done
This entire process certainly included hand-wringing, hair-pulling and face-palming, but the frustrations were well worth it. It’s satisfying to see the final product working so well. We hope you use it over and over to contact your elected officials, petition companies to prevent pollution, learn more about the environmental issues we work on and stay up-to-date as a TCE member. Please don’t hesitate to give us your feedback and ideas as well. The “contact us” links are there for a reason!
Lane Lewis, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1
Tom McCasland, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1
Jenifer Pool, Candidate for City Council At-Large #1
Amanda Edwards, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4
Matt Murphy, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4
Laurie Robinson, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4
Jonathan Hansen, Candidate for City Council At-Large #4
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