Author Archives: Georgetown350

Texas Disposal Systems at Creedmoor

Posted on by
Reply

We went to Creedmoor. Verna Browning was kind enough to take us down and show us around the Texas Disposal Systems ranch.

It’s a site that Texas Disposal Systems operates under license as a landfill, but you can’t call it anything other than a ranch. And a dude ranch at that. It’s immaculate. And it has exotic wildlife roaming its vast acreage too.

Jimmy and Bobby Gregory, the brothers who founded and own TDS, take pride in having their showcase guest buildings downwind from the landfill area, and they should – the air there is purely sweet. That’s because they take most of the good stuff out of the trash before they bury it. The landfill is something like the last resort – and they never stop thinking about what else they can get out of that trash before it has to sit idle in the gorund.

Take a look at how we saw the facility.

Texas Disposal Systems at the Sustainability Expo 2010

Posted on by
Reply

Georgetown350 associate and social media consultant Sue Rostvold came up from Austin to shoot the Expo. She interviewed Verna Browning of Texas Disposal Systems.

Sue didn’t know TDS like we know them since we took the tour – she had no idea our local recycler and trash hauler was also the nation’s leader in sustainable landfill management. See how impressed she gets by the end of this second clip.

Rolling Stone’s Definitive Story of the Planet’s Ice

Posted on by
Reply

The September 30 issue of Rolling Stone contains what to me is the definitive story of the planet’s ice. The story, On Thin Ice, recounts the scientific understanding of the Arctic and Antarctic glacial ice sheets as it has evolved over the last few decades, and as it is rapidly coming to a real-time appreciation of the deadly state of play.

The subtitle of the article reads:

The world’s two great ice sheets are melting faster than anyone believed possible

Suddenly now, models and theories are being swept away by real evidence shown by the planet itself as all the ice begins to melt. It becomes clear just how long the process has been building. It becomes clear that when something as big as a glacier decides to show visible activity it has long been accelerating towards the speed of catastrophe.

From our Facebook entry when we posted this story last week:

no need to warm the whole planet, it’s enough to cause shifts in atmospheric currents – this causes shifts in ocean currents, and warmer ocean currents are claiming the ice from underneath. Beautiful, gripping story from Rolling Stone – nature is showing scientists how it really works – we are in the deadliest peril.
- http://www.facebook.com/georgetown350 (September 24)

And as I posted on my personal Facebook page moments later:

it’s been building for decades, now great glacial sheets are racing to the sea, one foot per hour. This is all moving so fast everyone is bewildered…I’m just dazed
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1716019532 (September 24)

You had best read the story for yourself. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, perhaps as befits what may turn into an epitaph for the ice – epitaph for us too maybe.

- By Ross Hunter

White House Endorses 350.org

Posted on by
Reply

Bill McKibben gave a painfully honest account of his trip to the White House to restore the Carter solar panels at TomDispatch last week.

I admire him for his truthfulness, and for the principle of truthfulness that he and his team had to fall back on after their apparent defeat. Instead of spinning the event as some kind of step forward, McKibben chose to be uncertain, and this opened up his understanding of how he really felt: he simply couldn’t stand to go against Obama, and widen the Enthusiasm Gap seven weeks from elections.

So we just put out a press release saying that we’d failed in our mission and walked away.

And now notice how this honesty has given him uncompromising, solid ground to continue forward on:

At least for now, but not forever, and really not for much longer.

I’ve been meaning to say that what happened there when Obama turned his back on the 350 movement was a validation that we are in the first stage of victory according to Mahatma Gandhi, who famously said:

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

They have not yet started to laugh at us. It will be a great step forward when they do. Onward.

September 11 – news of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party in Georgetown Texas

Posted on by
Reply

[It's the 30-Day Countdown Mission !! Here's the latest email we sent out on the mailing list today]

Hi Everybody

A countdown is in progress from yesterday when we started our 30-day countdown mission to get all the final details achieved for the Global Work Party on 10/10/10. It’s day 29 today, but you probably knew that right?

The event is looking really good – during the course of this week all the players unveiled their plans and the Expo has really taken on clear definition – I’ll tell you more as I gather all the notes from the team – but it’s going to be a great event, and it seems like the whole city is coming onboard.

Globally the number of locations signing up with 350.org is approaching the 2,000 mark last I looked, which is double a month ago – hard to say where we’ll be on the day but Georgetown will be part of that news for sure, so start feeling proud.

Continue reading →

TDS Wildlife Preserve at Creedmoor

Posted on by
Reply

Texas Disposal Systems could have run a dirty landfill but that’s not who they are. Instead at their Creedmoor site just south of Austin they’ve managed and cultivated their acreage using sustainable best practices – and they’ve also created an exotic wildlife preserve. We went to visit them, and we lingered with the giraffes.

We went down to Creedmoor, just south of Austin, to visit the Texas Disposal Systems headquarters and recycling site. We met Bobby and Jimmy Gregory, founders of TDS. The TDS operation blew our minds – we thought we were green, but these guys have been thinking outside the trash can for decades.

Everything to the Gregory brothers is a resource. We are throwing money away and burying it in the ground, but TDS is developing better ways every day to take those resources out of our trash before the little left over goes into the landfill.

We will have MUCH more to say about TDS – and they’ll be an exhibitor at the sustainability expo on October 10th – but if you’ve ever wondered why the company that picks up our trash every week has zebras and other exotic wildlife painted on its trucks, here’s the clue: they’re from real photographs of animals at their wildlife preserve.

Texas Disposal Systems Compost

Posted on by
Reply

Sue Rostvold at the Georgetown350 Sustainability Expo was asking Verna Browning about the the windrow composting method that Texas Disposal Systems uses with its composting operation. We did take videos of this when we went to visit the TDS Creedmoor site, but the local news channels have done a much better (or at least dramatic) job of explaining it. Watch:

Schools Make Compost in AISD

Posted on by
Reply

Composting? That’s something you learn at school – at least if you’re in the AISD.

Texas Disposal Systems, the company that made all this possible, is also our recycler here in Georgetown. Wouldn’t it be great if our own schools could learn from TDS how to do this too? How about “Schools Make Compost in GISD” for the next video?

Corruption Is Not Sustainable

Posted on by
Reply

A great article appears in Worldchanging today, Spotlighting the Shadow Economy, explaining why corruption is an issue that sustainable practices will have to tackle. The two things are mutually incompatible. And yet the environmental lobbies have not woken up to this fact.

Author John Elkington points out that sustainability experts focus on as many as a dozen different issues for change, but corruption is not one of them.

But whichever of their twelve priorities you choose to look at – be it shortages of clean water, climate change, poverty or economic instability – corruption is almost always a contributory factor. Think of carbon-intensive industries lobbying governments to stall climate-friendly regulations, dictators salting away billions in Swiss bank accounts…
- Spotlighting the Shadow Economy

As Elkington illustrates, we have only to think of the rotten state of the US Minerals Management Service and its corrupt regulation of the oil industry preceding the BP disaster to see the connections. Continue reading →