One Book, One Peninsula: Garbology Days

I had one of the coolest and and most rewarding experiences an author can have this weekend: an entire community read Garbology, then invited me to speak and lead discussions about our trashy ways (and the way back from them). Los Angeles' Palos Verdes Peninsula had chosen Garbology as its One Book, One City (or in this case, One Book, One Peninsula) community read, and they didn't hold back.

The venues for our trash talk included two high schools, the Marymount California University campus, the newly renovated Palos Verdes Art Center, and the rooftop of the Palos Verdes Library with seating for 500. And however much my book may have inspired or served as a catalyst , the Peninsula communities ended up inspiring me far more. These folks are writing their own Garbology story, going beyond reading and talking. They are making real and original changes in education and community, from bans on foam plastic to convenient and clean alternatives to the endless waste of plastic bottled water.

Left: Sophomore Michaelanne Butler worked to ban foam plastic at Marymount U. Right: Sustainability Officer Kathleen Talbot and the reusable water bottle fountain

The Peninsula is a sprawling region long dedicated to the preservation of open space and habitat (following a successful campaign in the 1970s to stave off wildland-leveling construction of thousands of condos). That may be why the tidal wave of waste we generate, its impact on coastlines and ocean habitats, and ways in which more sustainable choices can benefit both the environment and the economy -- some of Garbology's main themes -- generated such enthusiasm here.

One of the simplest ideas that came out of a discussion of our 102-trash legacy, the plasticization of our oceans, and the fate of L.A.'s Garbage Mountain revolved around simple incentives to encourage less wasteful choices. At Marymount's campus, a thousand students were going through 1,800 foam plastic carryout containers every week, an immense plastic refuse pile. Now students can choose a compostable clamshell for a quarter, or put a deposit down on a reusable container that gets fully refunded at the end of the school year. And the campus is now foam free.

At Peninsula High School, one young woman proposed an even simpler incentive to persuade kids to recycle more: reward them with a free cookie. At first people laughed, but she was serious: In a world where we subsidize such wasteful products as junk mail with billions of dollars, is a cookie too much to ask? I call that original thinking -- the sort of thinking that accomplishes things by showing how even big problems respond to commonsense and simple solutions.

Posing with the Gar-Ball trash art project

Do Green Schools Work?

After decades of making ecology central to curriculum, campus, and culture, America's greenest universities are starting to ask a seemingly simple question: Is it working?

My latest article for Sierra Magazine examines how colleges with strong focuses on the environment are trying to measure the footprint of a green education.

Photo from Sierra and courtesy of Dan Hamerman/Green Mountain College

The Garbology Response

The response to Garbology has been overwhelming. Communities and campuses are using the book for discussion, debate and all manner of digging into our dirty love affair with trash. Best of all, people are going beyond the printed (or digital) page to hunt down senseless waste in their own daily lives, to create fantastic trashy events and web resources, and to come up with their own unique solutions to our 102-ton legacy.

BTW, 102 tons is the average amount of trash each American is on track to make in his or her lifetime. That means if you piled all your trash on the front lawn, you'd find that each person in the average American household generates 1.3 tons of trash a year. That's twice what the average person threw out in 1960, which makes today's Americans the most wasteful people on the planet, with grave consequences for nature and the economy.

It is not a pretty picture, but my goal in writing Garbology was not merely to throw light on the often invisible waste embedded in our consumer society, but also to show the individuals, cities and businesses that are finding a way back from our disposable economy, and who are discovering that waste is the one big social and environmental problem that everyone can do something about. That's exactly what the communities embracing Garbology are doing in a big way right now.

Here's a sampling: Palos Verdes and the One Book, One Peninsula program in Los Angles County are sponsoring a series of events, contests, displays, fairs and discussions about trash, recycling and the reuse economy. A trash art piece, Gar-Bal, has been making the rounds to get the discussions rolling, most recently at the the Rolling Hills Estates branch of the Malaga Bank. The Book Frog Book Store is also joining in.

Marymount University, meanwhile, is making Garbology its campus read, is staging an event around the theme of Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and has come up with its own readers guide and discussion points. Cal State Northridge has also made Garbology is freshman read and making waste its convocation theme in September and its Sustainability Day in October.

I'll be at Cal State Northridge on September 12. On September 27, I'll be joining the Garbology discussion at Palos Verdes High School, Peninsula High School and Marymount University, followed by a discussion at the Palos Verdes Public Library on September 28.

Nature: Destroying What We Love

Invisible Nature by UC Santa Cruz's Kenneth Worthy examines the fascinating question of why we continually make environmentally destructive choices (gas guzzling cars, disposable goods, toxic products) even when we truly care about nature and the environment. In this thought-provoking but ultimately frustrating book, which I review in the August 1 issue of Nature (preview only for non-subscribers), Worthy points to the psychology of dissociation and modern man's disconnection from nature as the culprits.

The author puts an environmental spin on the controversial 1960s experiments of Stanley Milgram of Yale University, who sought to understand the "destructive obedience" of soldiers in Nazi death camps. Milgram’s subjects were asked to administer a series of increasingly powerful electrical shocks to students to punish wrong answers and encourage learning, with a lab director -- the "authority figure" -- urging them on. The test subjects could hear (but not see) their victims in an adjacent room grunt with pain and, later, scream in agony. Yet 80 percent of the test subjects continued administering shocks past the point of pleas to be released (which were feigned – these were actors pretending to be shocked). The numbers drop if the victims and shockers are put in the same room. Milgram's verdict: People will do terrible things they would never do on their own if the damage remains out of sight and if a trusted authority figure assures them it's the right thing to do.

Invisible Nature argues that  the same psychology lays behind our everyday environmentally destructive choice: the consequences of waste and pollution remain out of view of most consumers, and an array of authorities urges us on in our choices, from politicians to business leaders to pervasive advertising and marketing messages.

Worthy's analysis brings to mind a perfect example of this sort of behavior that I used in my own book, Garbology -- a quote from J. Gordon Lippincott, the father of corporate branding. In 1947 Lippincott summed up the core philosophy of modern consumerism as a wasteful, resource-hogging, nature-destroying force that nonetheless must be sustained at all costs:

Our willingness to part with something before it is completely worn out is a phenomenon noticeable in no other society in history… It is soundly based on our economy of abundance. It must be further nurtured even through it runs contrary to one of the oldest inbred laws of humanity, the law of thrift.

We've been living that way ever since. Now there's some dissociation for you -- and one of the most environmentally destructive philosophies in history.

My Next Book: A Man and His Mountain

I just got the cover and catalog copy for my upcoming book (and first biography), A Man and His Mountain: The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became America's Greatest Wine Entrepreneur, and had to share. I think it might be the most gorgeous cover yet of any of my books.

Publication is October 22, but cover creation is the stage when a book finally feels real (and basically done - phew!). I loved working on this book, and getting to spend time on Alexander Mountain with Jess Jackson. He was a remarkable guy with a remarkable story. He's the only ex-lumberjack turned Berkeley cop turned lawyer turned winemaker to land on the Forbes 400 list -- and he put chardonnay on America's tables and won the Preakness Stakes Triple Crown race while he was at it.

Communities Read Garbology

I love the One Book, One City phenomenon, which brings a town (or campus or other sort of group) together to read, enjoy and discuss a single book. It's a fantastic way to foster both literacy and a sense of community through the power of storytelling.

My first experience with the One Book world was through contributing my essay, "The Last Little Beach Town," to the My California project, for which 27 writers (among them Michael Chabon, Thomas Steinbeck, Carolyn See and Aimee Liu) wrote essays describing our most treasured California places and experiences. All proceeds from the book support literacy programs for students, and the combination of a good read and good works pushed My California onto the bestseller list. Such cities as Santa Barbara, Long Beach, Sacramento and Whittier selected My California as their One Book read, and our roving troupe of writers attended events and community discussions around the state, where readers shared with us their own stories and insights. It was an amazing experience.

Which is why I'm so pleased that Garbology has been selected as a One Book choice for every incoming freshman this fall at California State University Northridge. Students participating in the Marymount College One Campus, One Book program also will be reading Garbology, along with the residents of Palos Verdes, California, in their One Book, One Peninsula program. And just this past week I learned that my alma mater, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has chosen Garbology as its campus common reading at the start of the new school year.

I am looking forward to joining these One Book gatherings. It's always gratifying when people show interest in my books, of course, but more importantly, these are opportunities to start community-wide conversations about our nation's over-consumption, disposable economy, and incredibly wasteful ways. We Americans produce more trash per capita than any other people on the planet. Trash is the biggest thing we make and our number one export, with each American on track to produce a staggering 102 tons of garbage in a lifetime.

P.S. The updated paperback version of Garbology is out this spring, just in time for Earth Day.