We toured Exploration Works as one of the three LEED certified buildings and within moments, we were touching EVERYTHING. Seriously, how do enter a science museum and not immediately turn into a child? We made fast friends with our fellow patrons (the toddlers) at the water pump station, built towering structures with magnetic blocks, and vaguely listened to the list of sustainable materials used in construction. All of that plus the caffeine left my brain buzzing with excitement for the rest of the afternoon. I felt like a kid again.

Throughout the conference, we continually came back to the idea of improving school buildings and providing students with creative opportunities to learn from and engage with green building and energy issues. Our keynote speaker and master of the Baloo impression, Lee Smit, shared stories of his work building an incredible student-led sustainability program for Douglas County School District that grew from 11 students to over 7,000 students in six years. Simply by empowering students of all ages to lead this program, schools starting seeing drastic changes in energy use and behavior from students and staff across the board. Compared to energy efficiency and conservation programs that are typically simplistic and unexciting, the numbers were staggering.
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The Sustainability Award winners recognized by USGBC highlighted projects that display the type of bold and innovative thinking that happens when people embrace that fearless ambition found in students like Claire Valases. Claire is an 8th grade student at Sacajawea Middle School in Bozeman who was recognized with the Community Champion Award for her efforts to fund the installation of solar panels as part of the new construction taking place at her middle school. She has already raised over $25,000 and has no intention of backing down. I have no doubt she will continue to do amazing things in the future! (Check out Claire’s incredible efforts here and donate to the cause!) ​

This may sound strange, but I have many childhood memories about waste. I remember picking up trash at campsites and on walks along the beach; my dad methodically separating recyclables in the bins under the kitchen sink; my grandma rinsing out plastic ziplock bags to be reused until they fell apart; my mom bringing her reusable grocery bags to the store before it was cool. We didn’t have a lot of money, so things were used and reused. Leftovers were a hot commodity. The underlying message was: nothing goes to waste. When I moved to Montana a few years ago, it was the first place I’d ever lived where there my recycling wasn’t automatically picked up along with my trash each week. Paying extra for recycling?! That seemed crazy – no wonder it wasn’t common.

It’s true, we’ve got our work cut out for us here. Montanans make more waste than the national average, at 7 lbs per person, per day, compared with 4.3 lbs. Another dubious distinction: Missoula’s recycling rate of 22% is well below the national average of 35%. I often talk to people who share my frustration about the lack of recycling options here in Missoula. But I’ve also come to learn that the problems with waste are much bigger than what happens to stuff when we dispose of it, either in the landfill or the recycling bin.  ​

Every pound of waste we recycle or throw away represents a shocking 71 pounds of waste that was created upstream (through raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and everything that happens before stuff gets to us)​

• Every year, Missoulians throw away recyclables valued at $5 Million!
• Construction and demolition materials and wasted food make up more than half of what ends up in the landfill
• Aluminum cans can be infinitely recycled and can achieve up to 95 percent energy savings compared to the energy used to create the material in the first place; in contrast, glass only saves between 10-20%.   
• The Missoula landfill only has 15 years left of capacity at the current rate of disposal
• Diverting 75% of our city’s waste could create 800 jobs (Home Resource is proof – last year, they employed 30 people who diverted 700 tons of construction/demolition waste. Think of the possibilities of scaling up!)
• The climate connection is real: reaching 90% waste reduction = taking 100,000 cars off the road annually! (This doesn’t even include the reduced emissions resulting from all the avoided upstream waste!)  

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Ultimately, we can’t recycle our way to Zero Waste – there’s a reason Reduce and Reuse are the first two Rs! Zero Waste is a lofty aim, but Missoula is making progress. In fact, one big goal within Climate Smart Missoula’s Zero Waste Bucket has already been checked off the list: in February 2016, our city council passed a Zero Waste Resolution, which committed our community to creating a Zero Waste Plan, a blueprint for reaching the ultimate goal of a 90% reduction in waste by 2050.