Page 22 RAIN Oct./Nov. 1983 costly approach has a poor operating record in the U.S., but continues to be the primary plan in many communities. The absence of federal direction on solid waste issues has aggravated the waste management problem. Aftey some initial monitoring of recycling activities in the mid- 1970s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency completely pulled out of the field. The general lack of leadership from the public sector dims an otherwise bright future for recycling. The Proposition 13 mentality limits the ability of local, state, and federal agencies to develop recycling as a municipal service similar to present garbage practices and to integrate recycling into the nation's resource management policies. From the private sector, future gains can be expected in recycling. Scarcer energy and natural resources will encourage manufacturers to look to recycling for raw materials. And the successes in recycling in the past decade should assure industries that, given continued improvements, an adequate amount of high-quality secondary materials can be supplied. The growing interest in recycling from major corporations and from waste hauling firms—two entities relatively uninvolved in the past—indicates a broad base of support to build on advances already made. Citizen involvement and the idealism of Earth Day are still evident in the many voluntary recycling programs operating around the country. Such efforts will continue to play a vital role, but recycling will also continue to expand as a mainstream business activity. The challenge still ahead will be the merging of the business profit motive with the citizen imperative to firmly establish recycling as a standard solid waste technique. Judy Roumpfand Jerry Powell publish Resource Recycling, a bimonthly journal of recycling, re-use, and waste reduction (P.O. Box 10540, Portland, OR 97210; 5031227-1319). Judy Roumpfwas previously a recycling specialist with the California Office of Appropriate Technology. Jerry Powell formerly managed Portland Recycling Team, an organization serving Portland, Oregon, since 1970. Bioregional Planning by Michael Helm The truth is, we are still at the very beginning of developing a bioregional budget... we need to know what an inch of topsoil or an acre-foot of water are worth. Bioregionalism is not so much a fixed ideology as a diverse set of evolving watershed notions informed by a sense of place. If there is a cardinal principle involved in bioregional planning, it resides in a steadfast appreciation of the importance of diversity. Politically this means that bioregionalism can never be a centrally directed movement. It is grassroots by definition. Only those who inhabit and are informed by the places where they live are in a position to discover what is appropriate to them. Our teachers are the full range of animal, mineral, and botanical presences with which we daily come in contact. Taken together these elements make up the community upon which any bioregional planning must be based. Our challenge is to help evolve a work-a-play awareness that celebrates, maintains, and restores the planet's natural provision and diversity. This is probably the work of several lifetimes, so we will need all the attention, patience, persistence, help, and humor we can muster. Along the way, we can be sustained as much by the skills of an Appalachian hillbilly as by the leap of a Pacific salmon, and as much by the wisdom of a Native American elder as by the data of a New Age scientist. Even more, we must guard against the arrogance that can naturally stem from enthusiasm. We are all far more ignorant than wise. The past 10 years, it seems to me, have primarily been ones of self-education and experimentation. We have slowly been learning how to create a new balance without unleashing a logjam that would sweep us all away. Like a child tentatively learning to walk, we have had to learn that our food and water have a deeper connection than the local Safeway or our water taps. We have had to discover what is naturally produced where we live, as well as what has been culturally superimposed. The truth is, we are still at the very beginning of developing an alternative economics, a bioregional budget, for understanding what is produced in our watersheds and what it truly costs us to live where we do in sustainable terms. Before we can plan both bioregionally and intelligently, we need to know such things as what an inch of topsoil, an acre-foot of water, a slab of concrete are worth. What do they really cost? In my work with Planet Drum Foundation, it has become clear that there is a rich underground sprouting throughout the land. People are establishing native seed banks, pioneering in reforestation and fisheries enhancement, creating urban community gardens and alternative health practices, recycling urban "wastes,'.' and inventing more place-related technologies. As an adjunct to this there has been a veritable bloom of bioregionally informed publications. Among these have been such journals as Coyote out of Tucson, RAIN out of Portland, Heartland out of Chicago, Upriver IDownriver and Siskiyou Country out of northern California, Katuah out of the Carolinas, Ozarkia, numerous food co-op and rural publications, and, of course. Planet Drum's
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz