Shampoo And Ice Cream In A Metal Can? Meet ‘Loop,’ A New Way To Cut Down On Plastic Waste

March 05, 2019

• Jeremy Hobson

A new shopping platform called Loop — brought to life by Tom Szaky, the CEO of recycling firm TerraCycle — plans to offer reusable containers for some 300 household products in partnership with some of the world’s largest consumer brands.

“The general idea with Loop is that instead of the consumer owning their packages at the end when they’re empty, it’s always owned by the manufacturer. Instead of it going to waste or recycling, we simply pick it back up from the consumer, clean it and around it goes again — sort of like the way milk used to be delivered back in the 1950’s,” Szaky tells Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson.

Szaky says the vision behind Loop is “to solve waste at the root cause, which we think really is this idea of using something once or disposability.”

He says the circular shopping platform will —-

READ AND LEARN MORE HERE – https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03/05/loop-environment-recycling

Michigan Municipal League Issues Statement on Governor Whitmer’s Budget Proposal

Governor Whitmer and Dan Gilmartin

Below is a statement the Michigan Municipal League just released about Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s budget proposal announced today. It’s also posted on the League’s press release page here. The Governor also shared with us last night that she has accepted our invitation for her to speak at our Capital Conference on March 19. Details on that are forthcoming.

League statement on budget:  

http://blogs.mml.org/wp/inside208/2019/03/05/michigan-municipal-league-issues-statement-on-governor-whitmers-budget-proposal

Green New Deal saves rural America?

EDITOR’s NOTE: Mark Ludwig of Fennville, Democratic candidate for 80th District State Representative in 2018, is Rural Caucus Chair for the MI Democratic Party and Vice Chair of the Allegan Conservation District.

by Mark Ludwig

Farm commodity prices have been down for some years, depressed by a hyper-competitive global market, domestic overproduction and recently by a disastrous trade war with our best overseas customers.

Farm financial indicators are flirting with numbers not seen since the crisis of the 1980s. Wild weather driven by climate disruption is also hammering farmers with droughts, unfriendly temperatures and unprecedented rain events.  USDA backed crop insurance set records in Allegan County in 2018 with more than 7,000 acres of prevented planting claims, ground so wet it could not be planted.

Meanwhile in Washington D.C. … read more at the link below…

http://townbroadcast.com/?p=27533

1.7 Million Students Attend Schools With Police But No Counselors, New Data Show

Education Week’s blogs > Rules for Engagement

By Evie Blad on March 4, 2019

As policymakers call for more school police in response to safety concerns, a new analysis of federal data shows that many students don’t have access to other kinds of staff necessary for safety and support—staff like school nurses, social workers, and psychologists.

As a result of safety discussions that focus on shootings, rather than the broader range of safety concerns and student needs, “schools are under-resourced and students are over-criminalized,” says the report, released Monday by the ACLU. The analysis also found that disproportionately high arrest rates for students of color and students with disabilities are continuing, while there was a 17 percent growth in school-based referrals to law enforcement from 2013-14 to 2015-16.

READ AND LEARN MORE HERE –

https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rulesforengagement/2019/03/17_million_students_attend_schools_with_police_but_no_counselors_new_data_show.html?r=320524057

Carpenter-millwright training center open house set for April 29.

An open house for the new carpenters and millwrights training center on Reno Drive in Wayland will be held Monday, April 29. Councilman Abe Garcia told colleagues at the Wayland City Council meeting Monday evening that he recently was treated to a tour of the facility… read more here: http://townbroadcast.com/?p=27584

How they did it: Two journalists talk about their teen labor trafficking investigation

By Denise-Marie Ordway

Editor’s note: On March 12, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy will award the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting to a stellar investigative report that has had a direct impact on government, politics and policy at the national, state or local levels. Seven reporting teams have been chosen as finalists for the 2019 prize, which carries a $10,000 award for finalists and $25,000 for the winner. This year, for the first time, Journalist’s Resource is publishing a series of interviews with the finalists, in the interest of giving a behind-the-scenes explanation of the process, tools, and legwork it takes to create an important piece of investigative journalism. Journalist’s Resource is a project of the Shorenstein Center, but had no involvement with or influence on the judging process for the Goldsmith Prize finalists or winner. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW THEY DID IT HERE  –

https://journalistsresource.org/tip-sheets/reporting/investigative-journalism-human-trafficking-unaccompanied-minors

Teachers’ Strikes in Oakland and Los Angeles Change the Conversation about Charter Expansion

janresseger

Students and teachers were back at school yesterday in Oakland, California.  Oakland’s teachers ended their seven day strike on Sunday night by voting to ratify an agreement reached last Friday. Teachers are adamant that the fight for well-funded public schools must continue. Oakland’s strike is the latest in a yearlong wave of walkouts by teachers—a state-by-state cry for help from a profession of hard-working, dedicated public servants disgusted with despicable working conditions, lack of desperately needed services for their students, and, in Oakland’s case, pay so low that teachers cannot afford to live in the Bay Area, where the cost of living is skyrocketing.

After a long meeting where the agreement was ratified on Sunday afternoon, the president of the Oakland Education Association, Keith Brown expressed gratitude for what the strike achieved, at the same time explaining that it does not go far enough to address problems for Oakland’s schools…

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The Dying of the Light

Read more about this here…

via The Dying of the Light by Lamonte Fowler

Solving the Immigration Crisis

via Solving the Immigration Crisis

The recent news coverage of the crisis on our southern border has driven many Americans to tears, outrage, and action. The calls for a legislative solution to a decades-old problem are louder than ever, but the likelihood of a political…