Crafting Just Reuse Policy
How do just transition principles apply to policymaking? As part of Upstream’s series on reuse and a just transition, Brian Loma of GreenLatinos Colorado and Upstream’s Sydney Harris joined the Indisposable Podcast to explore this question. Their conversation ranges from community stakeholder involvement; to capacity, budget, and messaging challenges; to modeling the values of reuse, and more. They share some excellent tips on messaging and education and close with an invitation to think of policy as a way to create multigenerational wealth and health in our communities.
Listen into this rich conversation in the podcast link above, or review a recap of some of their central takeaways here.
Reflections on Just Transition
Material extraction undeniably exposes frontline communities to health risks. In Colorado where Brian focuses his advocacy, water resources are particularly scarce and are further jeopardized by fracking and oil extraction. He highlights this as just one of the many reasons it is essential for corporations to transition from dirty practices and for policies to be inclusive of frontline communities.
While Sydney wholeheartedly agrees that we need policies that protect frontline communities and transition the economy away from extractive and exploitative practices, she also points out that the policy development process itself must be inclusive. When faced with the resource divide between corporate lobbyists and community members, it is all too easy for policymaking to present daunting inequities, but efforts to encourage citizen participation are all the more essential in order to bridge that gap.
Best Practices for Equitable Policymaking
GreenLatinos has been working to slowly integrate their Environmental Justice Task Force’s recommendations for developing more equitable policymaking systems—starting, most essentially, with language justice. “If we don’t start the process by making it available in the languages of the communities that are impacted,” says Brian Loma, “we can’t ask them to participate in the rulemaking.” He also emphasizes the importance of providing childcare services during meetings and of scheduling these meetings at times when working families can attend.
Policymaking meetings and community convenings should also model the values of the bills they are working to pass or implement: it is all too common to encounter single-use plastic foodware at gatherings focused on reducing or eliminating single-use. Community meetings present an opportunity to support local businesses and encourage them to adopt sustainable practices, like catering with reusable foodware, if they do not already do so.
Ultimately, Sydney points out, the time it takes to gather community stakeholders and get them up to speed on the process and complexities of policy can create a barrier in a fast-moving legislative landscape. While it is more equitable to have community members themselves at the table, in practical terms, the responsibility often ends up falling to organizations with staff members paid to engage with policy. Ideally, these organizations employ staff from the communities they represent, but if nothing else they need to be sure to give voice to the concerns of those most affected by the policy at hand.
“A just transition requires not only dedication from the corporations and industries to transition out of these dirty practices, putting the workers into a situation where their job skills could be used in a more beneficial way—but also dedication in the implementation of these policies and procedures. And a large aspect lies in the final consumer and education of our whole society around why we are doing these things and why their individual participation is so important.”
Challenges in Policy Implementation
Policy work is time-consuming. Brian Loma, for example, estimates he’s put a low estimate of 250 hours into Colorado’s EPR for packaging bill this year. A lot of research and work, not to mention long meetings, need to go into truly understanding the problems, gaps, and situations that may affect frontline communities.
Once the community understands the risks of certain proposals—for example, the toxic chemical recycling practices that were at risk of being allowed under Colorado’s EPR law—they come up against corporate interests who want to undermine their advocacy efforts. Corporations, both Sydney and Brian point out, often portray an extreme narrative around the danger posed to their bottom line if they are required to follow certain regulations. Backroom deals and lack of transparency tend to be the norm. Both speakers emphasize the need for education and engagement to counter industry narratives and ensure equitable policy implementation.
Education and Advocacy in Policymaking
Community education is required on two fronts in order to ensure that stakeholders have a full voice in the process. Firstly, they need to be aware of and understand the impact of single-use waste and the downfalls and false solutions posed by most recycling in its current state. Understanding the problem is one thing—understanding how policy works and how it can be used to fix the problem is an even more complex educational challenge. Public engagement, however, is key to just policy formation, and so encouraging public engagement in the process also must come with a strong focus on the “how” and “why” of policy.
Closing Reflections and Takeaways
Despite the challenges, inclusive policymaking pays off in the opportunity it provides for creating generational wealth through responsible reuse, recycling, and waste management practices. Public advocacy and engagement shapes policies that ensure equitable outcomes, and it does work. Brian points to the spread of EPR for packaging laws as an example: “When you're like, does it really matter if I sign an online petition to have 100,000 people tell a company that they need to make a change? Well, yeah, because that's why EPR is working already, right? We are already seeing better packaging.”
Collective efforts like these are required to achieve a just transition. In a time when citizen literacy and civics curricula are waning, it is all the more important for people to get involved in advocacy and policy-making processes to drive change towards a sustainable, equitable future.
“Believe it or not, the advocacy you do as a regular person living in your community does matter. Yes, it feels very overwhelming, especially as we’re talking about backdoor dealings that industry can do. But the only counter to that is your own advocacy. Elected officials actually do care when you reach out to them. I know because I talk to them all the time, and they’re getting hammered with comments, they’re reading your stuff, and the more you engage, the more of a chance we have of passing better policies…. We get very cynical. Certainly I get cynical as well. But it matters. The reason there’s advisory councils in the first place is that people were uncomfortable. The reason there’s packaging EPR in the first place is people were uncomfortable with the news about our recycling at the time. It really does change the trajectory. And so you can’t give up, even though it’s a ton of work, and sometimes we all just want to go be couch slugs.”
