Community POWER: Partners on Waste
Education & Reduction
Solid Waste Management Coordinating Board
ROUND 12 FINAL SUMMARY REPORT
BUSINESS EDUCATION RAMSEY COUNTY
January 2014
Prepared by Laurie Gustafson, LG Consulting, LLC
Executive Summary
In 2012, as part of the Community POWER grant program, Ramsey County
designated funding for four business education grants. Projects lasted 12 months
from August 2012 to August 2013. The maximum grant amount was $12,000. All
four projects activities were extended for another grant year, which will end in
August 2014.
The goal of the grant projects was to educate businesses that are not currently
aware of waste reduction and recycling practices in the workplace by increasing
awareness of waste issues and engaging participants in waste reduction activities,
leading to long-term behavior change.
Through the four Round 12 Business Education Community POWER projects, 2,924
Ramsey County businesses of the metro area were engaged in active waste
reduction activities. These activities include things like attending a workshop, taking
part in a video or resource development, attending train-the-trainer sessions,
interacting at a booth, and receiving technical assistance.
An additional 22,838 businesses were reached with waste reduction messages
through the marketing and communication efforts of grantees. Most of these
messages included Rethink Recycling information and/or RethinkRecycling.com.
These messages were shared through newsletters, newspapers, email, radio ads,
websites, presentations, and community newspapers.
Project Summaries
Grand Avenue Business Association
The Recycling on Grand project made great progress to green Grand Avenue over
the past year with member businesses and also at Grand Old Day, an event that
attracts 250,000 people. They evaluated opportunities to increase recycling and
reduce waste during Grand Old Day. Using the results of the evaluation and working
with 170 businesses, the Grand Avenue Business Association created and
implemented a plan that resulted in increased recycling and reduced waste. One
result was the elimination of 750 cardboard event boxes. In addition, they added a
page to their website, which functioned as a toolkit for businesses with resources and
links.
Union Park District Council
Through the Union Park Composter Business Initiative, staff engaged nine
businesses, which as a result of touring the University of St. Thomas worm
composting operation, became interested in composting for the benefit of a
community garden. Additionally, 10 teachers attended a worm composting
demonstration. Seven businesses had Waste Wise Assessments. They hosted an
event that attracted 2,500 people with 40 event vendors, who received waste
reduction tips in an effort to make the event waste-free. They also provided
information in six e-newsletters, 12 editions of The Villager, and two postcards
mailed to 7,800 households.
White Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce
The staff at White Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce held four seminars that reached
a total of 46 businesses from the hospitality, manufacturing, large retail and food
service sectors. Out of the 46 businesses, 12 agreed to site visits from Waste Wise.
They also organized a Green Business Expo, which was held at Kellerman's Event
Center. The event attracted eight vendors and 72 attendees. Waste Wise staff
followed up with event attendees to schedule site visits. In addition, they held three
planning sessions leading up to the event. Individuals from the City of White Bear
Lake, Advanced Disposal and Ramsey County participated in the planning sessions.
Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
Despite some challenges, through trial and error and some evolving strategies, the
Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce staff has made a great start in efforts to
increase and promote sustainability integration among small businesses in the East
Metro. Through Project Think Green, staff added a new page to their website
promoting reducing, reusing and recycling to member businesses; they also
featured tips in weekly e-newsletters and created and promoted a series of web
videos promoting Chamber success stories, which reached about 1,500 businesses.
Reduce, reuse and recycle presentations were made at four monthly Chamber
meetings, reaching about 40 businesses.
Project Highlights: Business Taking Action to
Reduce Waste
One of the aspects of the project that we are most proud of is how well things went
with Grand Old Day. It was a big change to the event, as waste and recycling have
been done the same way for many years. The logistics took a lot of planning and
preparation, but we were happy and proud of the outcome. We heard wonderful
feedback from many stakeholder groups (businesses, residents, event attendees,
etc.). We were excited to be able to highlight the changes through a variety of
channels. In addition, we are very excited to expand on the efforts of the past year.
--Jenna Bowman, Program and Advocacy Manager, Grand Avenue Business
Association
The existing relationship with the community garden and the Midway Food Shelf
presented some opportunities for waste reduction. Through the 2012 growing
season, gardeners donated fresh vegetables to the food shelf. A natural step next
was to compost expired fruits and vegetables from the food shelf just a couple of
blocks away at the garden. It has been a great example of "closing the loop,”
especially as we are harvesting and donating food again this season.
We've also demonstrated a willingness and enthusiasm of businesses and their
employees to compost when it is directly related to a tangible community benefit,
such as a community garden. Employees were very thankful to see that coffee
grounds were not going to waste. They were generally inquisitive, providing the
space to share information about organics recycling. More surprising, business
patrons were also very interested and supportive of the program. Impromptu
discussion about gardening was common. This softer approach to "training" seemed
effective and is promising given what we found in our last compost program,
Composting – A Resident Initiative, also funded by a Community POWER grant in
2011. As a result of that program, we learned that people who are exposed to
composting are more likely to try residential composting later. In the end we
diverted over 10,000 pounds of organic waste from landfills from October 2012 to
the present.
The potential to use the community garden as a training and education site is also
very exciting. This year, eight students from the High School of Recording Arts
learned about composting and helped maintain compost operations at the garden.
Next year these students plan to start their own garden and composting operations.
--Rebekah Smith, (former) Project Manager, Union Park District Council
Our Green Expo. I thought we did an excellent job in 2013 and expect bigger strides
next year. I enjoyed working on this project and it will become a mainstay for the
White Bear Lake community moving forward. I had excellent response for the
vendors and can't wait to get started on the 2014 Green Expo!
--Tom Snell, Executive Director, White Bear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
I believe the online highlight videos are the best innovation in our project because
they create a win-win, and are highly reusable. They reinforce the good practices of
the businesses that we showcased because it is good publicly for them. They also
provide good examples for other businesses to follow. Already other businesses are
asking how they can make a similar video, and we are excited to make more.
--James McClean, Director of Public Affairs, Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
Ways Waste Reduction Messages Are Shared
Grand Avenue Business Association
We have shared information about our work during this grant cycle with a variety of
groups. Information has been included in our newsletters (print and electronic).
Information was also included in the Grand Old Day press releases. We have also
shared the information with Community POWER staff. We would be happy to share
this information with any other interested groups.
Union Park District Council
District Council staff reached about 50 stakeholders such as Ramsey County,
Concordia University and the University of St. Thomas and Eureka Recycling, which
get our e-newsletter where there is information about the program. We had planned
to make a more formal presentation to District Councils, but did not get a chance to
do this due to staff changes.
In addition, we shared information with Merriam Station Community Garden (70
gardeners) and businesses and their employees that have been working with the
garden to compost waste. Thank you cards to businesses and employees for working
with the community garden to compost. Postings on garden Facebook page and the
Facebook pages of businesses about composting efforts that are helping the garden
build soil.
White Bear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
Shared with 110 businesses through the City of White Bear Lake, which cosponsored our Green Expo and furnished staff to help with the planning process.
They posted this event on their website and personally contacted the businesses in
downtown White Bear Lake. And, we reached an additional 275 businesses through
Century College, which promoted the Green Expo to a targeted group of businesses
and is potentially interested in hosting this event in 2014.
Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
We shared our grant proposal with the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce
along with information about the Community POWER Program. We encouraged them
to conduct a similar project in Hennepin County.
How Projects Will Be Sustained
Grand Avenue Business Association
The activities will continue in the next round of the grant cycle. We will continue
promotion the F.R.O.G. Recognition Program and seek to get more businesses
involved. We are already planning on ways to increase recycling and reduce more
waste at Grand Old Day 2014.
Union Park District Council
Merriam Station Community Garden has 70 gardeners with at least five people who
are actively working with businesses to compost. This work will continue
independent of UPDC. In addition, information about composting remains on the
UPDC website and on the garden website. For the Community POWER grant that was
extended for the 2013-2014 round, UPDC will hire someone to implement the grant.
White Bear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
We will continue to hold the Green Expo after the grant expires.
Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
We will be participating in another year of the grant program.
Lessons Learned and Challenges
Grand Avenue Business Association
The biggest challenge that we encountered with this project was the scope of our
project. We could have definitely just focused on Grand Old Day this past year, as
the changes that were made to the waste reduction and recycling efforts were large.
The Community POWER staff was great and was able to answer questions and
provide resources as needed.
Overall we were very pleased with the outcomes and progress that was made over
the past year. We know that we would not have been able to make this progress
without the Community POWER grant. The biggest lesson that was learned was that
we needed to really narrow our focus on what could be done with the budget and
time that we had. While we were able to accomplish tasks and goals in each area
that was outlined, Grand Old Day took a lot of time, energy and funding. However, it
also created a great amount of awareness and change. We learned a lot this past
year and are already planning waste reduction and recycling efforts for Grand Old
Day 2014. Again, this could not have happened without the assistance of the grant.
Union Park District Council
Getting businesses to compost on-site as we had first envisioned had limited
success. Instead, we were more successful in getting a conversation started about
composting in general and giving businesses easier access points such as working
with a community garden or getting a Waste Wise assessment. We tried to recover
from some glitches in our planned activities by leveraging an opportunity to
communicate with businesses that participated in a large zero-waste music event
that attracted about 2500 people. We were moderately successful with this. Had we
had the chance to do it over again, we would have featured the event as a primary
activity in the grant. UPDC is likely to build on the event next year, so there should
be another opportunity to do it better at that time.
Our attempt to have a large waste-free event was moderately successful. We had
problems with contamination of compost and recycling due to non-compostable
spoons being introduced into the waste stream by volunteers who grabbed the wrong
box (that shouldn't have been on site in the first place) or vendors who did not get
adequate and timely instructions about how we were going to achieve our goal of
having a waste-free event. We composted approximately three full bags of material
and recycled another three bags of bottles and cans, etc. We threw away about five
bags of garbage, including two bags of compost that were too contaminated to
remedy given limited resources. As a result we learned that:
1. For event planning, person dedicated primarily to waste prevention is needed for
maximum results.
2. While we knew that composting at events will require having volunteers at every
trash/compost/recycle station and while we did have enough volunteers to handle
things adequately, these volunteers did not understand the importance of their role
and saw it as just "standing around." So, to feel useful, they might wander off to
help elsewhere, which caused compost contamination problems. Solutions to
consider:
 Develop a cadre of "zero-waste" volunteers who would be prepared to help
with community events in general. This could potentially become a train-thetrainer program.
 Produce a training video for volunteers on "trash duty." This would help
alleviate the problem of event organizers being spread too thin as more
urgent priorities shadow zero-waste goals.
3. Businesses attending zero-waste events need more instructions more often. It
would be nice if they could get this information from people other than the event
organizers.
 Develop literature to give to businesses and food vendors who will attend
events ahead of time. Eureka Recycling apparently has a proprietary list of
"do's and don'ts". Having another publicly available list of this sort would
have likely helped us communicate more effectively with businesses, resulting
in less waste and compost contamination at the event.
 A short zero-waste video aimed at event vendors.
 Offer year-round training to business about how to participate in a zero-waste
event and certify them.
4. Personal relationships were more effective in reaching businesses than newspaper
ads.
White Bear Lake Area Chamber of Commerce
I am not a social media expert. However, we now have someone on staff that will
provide the expertise and training to catapult our marketing efforts. No more
breakfast seminars. Timing is better to have these sessions in the afternoon,
particularly for businesses in the hospitality industry. Purchasing non-member email
lists are ineffective and expensive. Next year, I will build events around strong cosponsored relationships.
We could use more consistent information about tax savings, and individual stories
about businesses and saving money through waste reduction efforts. And, I would
like a well-designed printed piece that our Chamber name can be added to and used
in our marketing efforts. Helpful to have Ramsey County's assistance in promoting
the Green Expo to County businesses through website or email distribution.
Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce
Convincing busy people to pay attention and think creatively about sustainability
initiatives was probably the biggest challenge. Business-specific tips, examples, and
case studies (particularly those that highlight cost savings and efficiency) are very
helpful. The Rethink Recycling and the business recycling web pages had many good
resources. Even more would be better. A number links on the Rethink Recycling
webpage were broken or outdated. If all of the links were reviewed and updated, it
would be helpful in the future.
Almost everything takes longer than expected. Plan for plenty of time to reach key
milestones in your project and still include some buffer time in your plan.
It can be difficult to attract people from the business community to a recycling
specific event, especially if it is not directly related to that person’s role in the
company. We had more success with incorporating recycling related topics into
already existing events where recycling and other sustainability resources are an
added benefit rather than the main attraction.