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Letter from the executive director

I’m writing this letter on a brisk autumn day in Washington, DC, where we have just relocated our office a few blocks from Dupont Circle. It’s nice to be back in my hometown again!

We’ve undergone other changes at CRI including losing a valued staff member, Kyle Paulson, our research associate and director of administration. Kyle had an opportunity to make a career change that would enable him to use his law degree. He will be doing landowner easement, acquisition/negotiations, community relations, and permitting process work at Clipper Windpower, Inc., a rapidly growing wind energy technology company (www.clipperwind.com.)

Kyle leaves a big void in our organization and he will be difficult to replace. I know that all of you who have gotten to know him over the past 4 years join us in wishing him well in his new career.

It’s been a challenging year, financially, for CRI. But despite reductions in staff workweeks and other cutbacks, we continued to provide needed technical assistance to activists and policymakers in more than a dozen states; testified at three state legislative hearings; made presentations at six state and national conferences; generated more than three dozen news articles and opinion pieces; published one issue of our newsletter; maintained our two websites (www.container-recycling.org and www.bottlebill.org); and, served as an industry watchdog.

We are pleased to be getting our newsletter out again, for the first time since fall of 2004. We hope to be able to publish at least two issues in 2006. Many thanks to the many state activists and government officials who submitted articles for this issue.

I’d like to share some good news with you. We received a two-year grant from the Educational Foundation of America to launch our “2020 Vision: Setting our Sites on Zero Beverage Container Waste” Campaign in 2006. You’ll be hearing more about the campaign in the months to come. In the meantime, there are two important steps you can take to support Zero Beverage Container Waste. First, get your organization, business or local government to pass a resolution endorsing a goal of reducing beverage container waste by 25% by 2008, and achieving zero beverage container waste by 2020 . Secondly, you can support the campaign with a contribution, using the enclosed “business reply envelope.”

As always, we welcome your feedback on our newsletter.

Pat Franklin
pfranklin@container-recycling.org

P.S. As many of you know, the recycling community lost two valuable leaders earlier this year: Michele Raymond, founder of Raymond Communications and Mary Appelhof, a well-known vermicomposting specialist and author of “Worms Eat My Garbage.” I had the pleasure of knowing and working with both of these women over the past 15 years. Their energy, enthusiasm and insights leave a huge void in the recycling movement.

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