Margaret Weber, August 15th, 2024

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo: I'm Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo, it's August 15th, 2024, and I'm here with. Please say your name.

Margaret Weber: Margaret Weber M a r g a r e t W e b e r.

DLT: Thank you. And where do you live?

MW: Live in Northwest Detroit, in Rosedale Park. We've lived here since 1974.

DLT: And have you lived elsewhere in the Metro Detroit area?

MW: Between ‘72 and ‘74, we lived in what at that time was called East Detroit. And it now has a different name, but that's where we were. Prior to that, we're natives of Ohio, we're both native to Ohio, and we spent some interim years in other locales.

DLT: And how did you become involved in recycling advocacy?

MW: My father was an advocate for recycling years ago, decades ago, in our small, my hometown of Tiffin, Ohio. I wasn't really aware of it until I became active— I mean, aware of his advocacy. He was also an organic gardener. So I certainly grew up with a sense of being aware of the impact on the environment on the Earth and our reliability, I mean, our dependence upon the Earth and the resources of the Earth. My husband and I lived in Buffalo, New York for a couple of years and then lived three years in Canada. When we came to Michigan, especially when we got here in our home in Detroit, we were looking for a place to recycle, and at that time we had to go out to this place at Eight Mile and Evergreen Road, which was in the community of Southfield. I will say this as a little bit of background, which is relevant: that in the 80s, when the city was pondering and preparing to build the incinerator, I, in all honesty, did not have a position of opposition to it. It was probably busier, in the heart of raising family, etc. But I mean, I was aware, I remember having some conversations, but I wasn't fundamentally oposed to it. But in 1990, I was serving on the board of our community organization, our neighborhood organization, the Rosedale Park Improvement Association, and the president asked who would be interested in doing something to get recycling available or started in Detroit. And I said I'd be willing to be part of that. And, as often happens, he says, okay, you chair it, you lead the effort.

So about ten of us, twelve of us or so from the neighborhood met here in our home to prepare what we could do, see if we could create a drop-off site. Thinking of a once-a-month drop-off site and launch it in 1990, in April, which would be Earth Day. And there was a big celebration and awareness of Earth Day again that year. So, literally we did, and that was the beginning of a whole educational growth on my own part, and also the beginning of advocacy. First, we started with the whole approach that we were not just doing this one small drop-off center only for our own neighborhood. It was for anybody who wanted to come. And the experience of seeing and engaging with the people who came was very helpful and very educative because it certainly wasn't just members of our neighborhood. And as I said, over the years, you had old people, young people, people of color, white people, people in the neighborhood and people out of the neighborhood, people who were wealthy, or wealthier, people who had very limited resources. So what that said to us and what that told us is that the mythology that only people of a certain class or race would care about recycling was false. So, long story short, after a few years of— The other thing is that we were a very reliable project. So, over the years, I said, it could be 100 degrees or 0 degrees, if it was the third Saturday of the month between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., you could put your life retirement savings and everything, and be assured that Rosedale Recycles would be in the parking lot behind Christ the King Catholic Church at Evergreen and Pierson. And that was true. That was true for nearly twenty-five years. We never failed to be there. Rainstorm, ice storm, whatever. We were there for people as a resource for them to deposit their recyclables.

After a few years of doing this, we began to raise the question to the city, to DPW [Department of Public Works], could this, would the city be willing to do curbside recycling or increase recycling? Because after the building of the incinerator, the only recycling that took place was a drop off site at Chene-Ferry Market. It was open a couple times of the week. I never went there. And then there were also some other citizen-led efforts, one on the East Side and one actually in the same area where Recycle Here is now. So there were other efforts which were indicators, at least to us, that residents in the city of Detroit were interested in recycling. It certainly wasn't just us. So we began to pose the question to the city and the city's question, the city's response was— Well, one meeting I remember being told that the incinerator was the city's recycling project. But as we began to really understand the depth of the commitment, and also understand the whole financial ramifications of the city having built the incinerator, the city incurred a twenty-year debt bond. Which meant that it was a put-or-pay situation. If the city had decided they were going to start recycling because of the debt obligation, the city was still going to have to pay the debt bond for the incinerator, and so there would be no financial incentive at all to shift the whole program. Because they would have to default on the debt. We began to understand, after several years of advocacy to the city and the city council, that it was really fruitless until we came to the time when the debt was going to be nearing repayment. And that was, I believe, 2008, 2009, when the public debt would be completely repaid.

So we did— In 2007, Councilwoman JoAnn Watson had an environmental justice task force and she took the question of the incinerator under the wing of that committee of the city council. And she formed a task force. That task force came up with a report. She asked us to do a report about what would be the alternatives and the benefits of a whole different approach to solid waste. And the group that was working on that, primarily, actually started to meet in our home. It’s kind of parallel to the founding of Rosedale Recycles. And we had representatives from a whole wide, broad swath of environmental and environmental justice organizations. One of the learnings that I had from back in the ‘90s, doing advocacy about recycling, was that the whole issue, the whole dialogue around the building of the incinerator was very successfully characterized as an issue of White, suburban environmentalists against a Black, urban mayor and community. And that was not a perfectly accurate description. But in the course of this time, when I was advocating and working with Councilwoman Maryann Mahaffey as well, it was the voices in that group, in a different subgroup of City Council, the strongest voices seemed to be from the suburbs.

So leaping ahead to 2004, when we were re-energizing the effort to to engage about the incinerator and solid waste, it was one of our goals, and my goal very personally, that this coalition that would be advocating to the city leadership could not, could not be anything other than diverse. So the groups that were in the new coalition, which originally we called The Coalition for a New Business Model for Solid Waste in Detroit, if you can believe that was the title. And we kept that title for about three years. We had Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice. We had the Ecology Center from Ann Arbor. We had Southwest Detroiters for Environmental Vision. We had Michigan Environmental Council, Rosedale Recycles, some community organizations, such as Greenacres Woodward Community Organization, Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance, a whole group of about twenty various and sundries. Eventually, we changed our name to Zero Waste Detroit, because that was really much more what we were about.

But the important thing was that we did very consistent advocacy to City Council and to the city administration. With every successive mayoral leadership, we met with either the mayor or with the mayor's deputy mayor, or the chief of whatever his administrative office would be. And then we were a pretty constant presence in front of City Council, and City Council knew who we were. They knew what our ask was. And so our ask was, okay, the city's debt is about ready to be completed. Do not reinvest in that incinerator, we need to find another option, and there's actually a real environmental as well as economic case to be built for intensive recycling. So our vision, of course, was it would be a complete rehaul, focused completely on recycling, primarily. And then, you know, then have additional conversations about how you manage the waste that you cannot recycle. Iincluded in our education, as well as the fundamental education about how do you recycle and what do you put in, etc., etc., was, clearly, the environmental justice aspect. And one of our strongest stories and advocates was Sandra Turner-Handy from the Michigan Environmental Council and her story about her daughter and her grandchildren going to—I cannot remember the name of the school that was right by the incinerator—and talking about how this child had asthma all the time she was at that school. And as soon as she left the school, graduated from the school, she no longer suffered from asthma. That was just a very concrete story.

But I'd say that the pathway—and this would be very much my own learning—the whole experience kind of approaching this issue, from what I would say, yes, was a very kind of traditional environmental issue. You don't waste resources, you recover them. You get the economic benefit. But the whole beginning of that led me to an understanding of environmental justice issues and the whole other ramifications of other issues. And of course, included in the whole issue, as you reuse resources, you're also having a decrease in the impact on climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gases. Because if you just take a look at the physical processes for doing something like paper, you use a lot less energy, a lot less water, a lot less chemicals, creating paper out of recycled fiber than you do if you start out with trees that you’ve just cut down and then you have to make it into pulp, etc., etc.. And the same thing with aluminum. With aluminum, there's something like a 97 or 95% reduction in energy use if you create an aluminum can out of the original ore, or if you take aluminum cans and recycle them into a new aluminum can. So some of the examples are much more dramatic than others. But it's kind of, like, a no-brainer. You know, you take something that you got and you reuse it, you expend less energy, less resources, less chemicals, and, in some cases, less finances. Not always, and especially if you're making a transition, it's not necessarily going to be economically cheaper, initially, until you get a system that's intense and is smooth-running.

So that pathway of starting out with a traditional environmental issue and then the learning process, particularly the learning process in a community such as Detroit, which is an environmental justice and injustice community. The other thing that was part of the whole learning process is, as we were advocating to the city of Detroit for curbside, citywide, all-residents-involved program, we learned that we were one of only a few cities in the country that did not have some sort of curbside recycling program, so we used that leverage as we were talking to city leaders. And it took a long time. You've probably heard this before. It started out as what they called the pilot program. They did some education, but it was really quite slight. Which in itself was a hazard, right? Because if you don't do education and it doesn't go right, then of course, you can make the case: well, Detroiters don't really want to recycle, and so this isn't going to work.

So we, in our advocacy to the city, which continued even after they started the pilot program, we continued to advocate: you need to do this across the city. And then as we got to that point where the city said, okay, we're going to make it available to everybody, but they all have to pay $25. And we said, no, you can't do that. $25 might not sound much, but you're, first of all, you're asking them to ask for it, and then you're asking them to pay $25? And then they said, okay, well, if they take a quiz then, or some sort of education, and we talked them down: okay, an online quiz, that ought to be it. But it was literally, like, you had to keep your focus on what it is you wanted. And I sometimes described it as a little bit like having a dog with a bone. You just kept at it and you kept at it and you kept at it. So. There's a lot more that can be done. I'm no longer doing the advocacy. I passed the baton a couple of years ago, about four years ago, because I had been a pretty public voice around recycling for thirty years, and I figured it was time to share the opportunity. And there were other people that could do it.

DLT: And you called Detroit an “environmental justice/injustice community.” What makes you say that?

MW: Well. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in the issue, but as I'm sure you understand, environmental injustice is when communities of color, or low-income communities, experience a disproportional impact from pollution or environmental hazards. Detroit, as a community that is primarily Black, and a community that has a lot of industrial pollution, some of it still not cleaned up, and has one of the highest asthma rates in the country— I mean, Detroit, in the state of Michigan, Detroit is clearly the epicenter of asthma. So it's very, very evident about that reality. Is that helpful?

DLT: Yeah, definitely.

MW: And I said, environmental justice/injustice. Because environmental justice is when you do not have that disparity. So if I'm fighting for environmental justice, I'm fighting or struggling, advocating, to alleviate that disparity and that disproportionate impact. So that's why I use both terms.

DLT: And would you say there's been a greater focus on environmental justice, over time, or has it always been an underlying form of advocacy?

MW: In the city of. Detroit? Is that your question?

DLT: Yeah.

MW: Or in general? Oh, well, the real— The Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice started—I don't know if it was in 1990? Donele Wilkins was one of the founders here. There was a whole, I think it was a National Council of Churches that had a national assembly, I think in the 80s, and I—forgive me, I don't have all those details—but it was in the late 80s, there was this national conference, and there was a statement with the environmental justice principles. Donele Wilkins took that work and that experience, and she founded, along with colleagues, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, which was a key group working to lift up the whole phenomenon and the reality of the disproportional impact. So if you're talking about things like air quality or where, you know, where are the dumps, or where does industry get to place, you know, a new polluting facility. So take an issue, currently, that several communities are struggling with. And I've been in a supportive role. Two that I'm very familiar with. One was a couple of years ago, a company wanted to build an asphalt plant, right, not far from our neighborhood here at 96 and Southfield, an asphalt plant, mixing plant. And of course, the stated rationale was, you know, we got a lot of extra infrastructure that's going to be built. We need, it would make sense to have this asphalt mixing plant right close to where all of this is going to be happening. You know, this is close to transportation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, we're looking at it from the perspective of, you've got, at least within a two-mile radius, five very viable neighborhoods. You’ve got history, the city of Detroit has a lot of asthma. The description of how this process was going to be did not alleviate concerns about air pollution. You also have the owners being not city residents, not from the city. And so it's a fair question to say, well, would you want this asphalt mixing plant in your backyard? You know, the disparity about where do you— Another one is a concrete plant that's just a couple of miles, actually, about a mile away from the proposed asphalt mixing plant. And the concrete crushing and mixing, they have huge piles of this exposed dust. The people in that community talk about their inability to open their windows in the summer, the impact on their breathing. This is today, okay? This is 2024 and 2023 and 2022. What is the reality that they're living? And so, when this company wants to have a permit to expand and the community raises up, look, we're predominantly a community of color. We've already been experiencing the negative impacts because of your uncovered hills and all of the dust on the road, etc., etc., etc..

So the whole question, it's not a dead question, and it's not an old question, and it's not just about historical, old, industrial lots. It's still a current issue. You have to raise the question about, what kind of protections are you putting in place for the community? Are you looking at every aspect? And are you looking at the whole question of cumulative impacts? And cumulative impacts is one of the key things in environmental justice. Because most of the time, industries and plants are regulated on an individual basis. So not asked to measure their pollution in conjunction with the pollution to the plant next door. But the people who are living in the area experience the cumulative impact. And so that's a tricky question, but it's a reality, and it's a reality of what environmental justice issues are, is, you know, if I'm sitting here and there's a plant here and a plant there and a plant there, it's very different than if I'm just sitting there with one plant next to it. And the regulations do not really attend to cumulative impacts. So that's why advocacy, and people saying to the city Board of Zoning Appeals, and talking about the concrete crusher where, you know, we already have this lived reality we can't take anymore. It's bad for our health, we can't go outside, etc., etc..

DLT: And from your observations and experience, has climate change advocacy increased over time as well?

MW: Definitely. I haven't been, probably, considered a climate advocate, per se. But one of the things that was interesting in the whole journey about whether the city was going to end the incineration, tear down the incinerator, etc. in—I don't remember what year the city announced it was going to end incineration or close down the incinerator, but it was early in the Duggan administration, his first term. And the city had appointed a coordinator for sustainability, Joel Howrani Heeres. And he and I met, just to talk about the incinerator, these issues, etc. And he shared with me that he and the mayor went to a climate conference in Chicago, and one of the topics was waste. And from his perspective, from Joel's perspective, that was a little bit of a turning point for the mayor in the mayor's perspective about whether or not to continue incinerating. Because the other shift that happened after the city decided not to own the incinerator, the incinerator got bought by an equity, excuse me, by a private equity firm. And the company that bought it, which was called Detroit Renewable Power or Detroit Renewable Energy—and of course, it had all these sub-companies—was part of a whole private equity firm. It really did not have a history in operating the incinerator.

So one of the approaches that we used as advocates was to engage with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. That was its name before it was EGLE [Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy]. And, you know, we got people in the community to report every time they smelled odor from the incinerator. So we had regular meetings with DEQ. We were so strong on it that DEQ even came to a consent judgment with the company. And we knew, just from what we knew, that this was a losing operation for that company. They were not making money on that incinerator. They sold the services of burning trash much cheaper to the suburbs than what the city was paying. Once the city's debt was over, we didn't have to pay the same outrageous monthly fee for using the incinerator, because the debt was done. So we got to so-called compete. So we knew this was a losing operation. And then we kept helping the community report these error situations, etc. and report the violations. So, it was a losing operation. And finally, when Detroit Renewable Power announced that they were going to close, they even included a financial aspect to their rationale. And so we're kind of like sitting there and saying: well, we you know, we told you so, [Laughs] I mean. But it took— It's just persistence, persistence, persistence. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that we were at this at the city’s desk or at their doorsteps for well over ten years on this issue.

DLT: And can you spell that name you mentioned? Was it Joel Howrani?

MW: Let me look. The last part of his last name is H e e r e s. Oh, okay. Howrani H o w r a n i.

DLT: Okay, thank you.

MW: He now works for Public Sector Consultants. [Laughs] And Public Sector Consultants is working with Great Lakes Water Quality, Great Lakes Water Authority about the whole issue of a process to change solid waste from the sewage system to fuel or energy. It's called, it's a hydrothermal liquefaction process, and they've had many meetings with people from the community. And they say it's a project— It's like a research project and it's not anything in operation yet, but the idea being that taking the solid waste from the sewage system, which is currently about 25% incinerated, and using this liquefaction project process to create some fuel. And a lot of people sitting around the table have multiple concerns because we're not sure about, we're not even sure about the energy exchange piece. And we're also not, we're not convinced yet about— One of the things I'm very much concerned about is, what kind of investment, if this would become full-scale, would be required. And if they would learn that this really isn't the best, how much would they be, how difficult would it be to change? And that's out of the experience with the incinerator. The incinerator was such a huge investment, with this twenty-year debt. So you can understand, realistically, that for the city to change its mind, while it's still holding that public debt, was a difficult economic decision.

We had some in our group who thought that they could possibly do it, and some who even created some figures, but not an easy thing. Because first of all, you would have to have the wholehearted commitment that this is actually what you're going to do, or you were going to totally shift gears, etc. So a question I have about any new experiment like this is: how massive this project is, and how difficult would it be to shift gears in the middle of it, if you would realize that this really is not the best thing? And I know they're hard decisions. The current system on what they're doing with sewage solids isn't necessarily optimal, but I'm old enough that I get a little skeptical, if anything seems kind of too magic and too wonderful, you know. Especially if it’s— Quite frankly, especially if it's either electronic [Laughs]— I mean, some of the oldest systems, if you look historically, some of the oldest systems for dealing with sewage and sewage waste were long-term. You know, whether it's constant re-exposure of waste to sun and the whole natural process of detoxification, all of those things, they take a lot of space and they also take a lot of time. So anything that comes across as a little bit too magic, I get a little skeptical. And then if you make it into a massive thing, then I get even more skeptical. And I think caution is really, really important.

DLT: And living in Detroit, have you personally been affected by climate change?

MW: Well, I think we all are experiencing— First of all, we know that weather is variable over decades, etc. so I can remember living in this house, I don't know if it was in the 90s or the 80s, when one summer we had thirty days in the 90s. That we considered very hot. But we notice some things in our garden. My husband's a birdwatcher, and he does recording. He goes over to Eliza Howell Park on the west side of the city. And for well over ten years, he's kept records of what birds are there, when they come, or etc., etc.. So he's observed some changes. And I'm— My paid job— All this work I did for Zero Waste Detroit on the issue of recycling has been volunteer. So on my part, there's been no employment involved whatsoever. But on a professional side, I've been an advocate for institutional investors as shareholders to corporations. And so, in that realm, we started advocating to the corporate world, in particular the automotive companies, about climate change. And sitting around the table in the 60s, etc., etc. So, in that process, I learned a whole lot about the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and all of that. And knowing that that's collective wisdom and knowledge from thousands of scientists, well, if you have thousands of scientists globally who are studying temperatures—and not just what's the temperature today, but the mean temperatures and the average temperatures—the data is there. And so for me or anybody, quite frankly, to sit here and say that the earth isn’t warming would be a very arrogant thing to say. Because the data shows what is happening globally, and the data that's comprehensive. So the climate can still be, the Earth can be warming even if next January, we're sitting in our conversation and it's ten degrees below zero, that does not mean that the climate globally is not increasing either, that it's not changing.

DLT: Can you talk a little bit more about working as a shareholder advocate and working with corporations on climate change and these other environmental issues?

MW: Sure. That's another piece of long work. But I would say— So I'll share a couple of stories. One is in the 90s, one of my— And this is about Ford Motor. So, I remember sitting at a table with executives, there's several of us shareholder advocates and then also several executives from Ford Motor. And we were asking them to endorse the CERES principles. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they were a set of principles about the environment and about public reporting. So, basically, asking corporations to adopt these principles and to report how they were doing on them. These came out in the early ‘90s. And the rationale being is, if you look at something and then report on it, if you commit to reporting on something, you have to look at something and you become more aware of it, okay? So if I never look at how much energy we're using as a company, or I never look at how much energy is in the first tier of suppliers, etc. Then I don't know, and I can't even have any ability to address the issue. So a real clear and first level would be, well, what's the emission of your companies? You know, what's your fuel average of the vehicles that you're putting out there to the public? And what are you doing, as a company selling a product, to even help your customers relate to this issue? Or what’s your miles per gallon? Blah, blah, blah.

Well, in general the response at those meetings was: we sell what people like. Now, mind you, they didn't seem to take much ownership on what they pushed in their advertisements. But, you know, we're totally kind of— We're totally not to blame for what we sell because we're only trying to please the customer, etc. So that mindset, that overall was the response that we had. Needless to say, we weren't very successful. But toward the end of whatever year it was that Bill Ford took on and became the CEO, that thing changed. He met with us. He cared. Ultimately, Ford Motor endorsed the CERES principle. Ultimately, Ford Motor became interested in improving fuel efficiency. Now, I'm not sanctifying anybody. I'm talking about a long journey. You now have Ford Motor, with its investment in the city of Detroit, about sustainability in terms of transportation. And so looking at things a whole different way, or at least more comprehensively. So that whole change was amazing. Was it fast? No, and I— So we met with Ford Motor at least once a year, maybe twice a year, talking with them about two major issues. One was climate change, and the climate change related in their first tier of suppliers and also their second tier as well as their own products. And the other thing was worker rights in their supply chain. I remember after one of our conversations—and I think it was one of the corporate people saying, you do realize that this is like a tugboat trying to change a cargo ship? That's what this kind of work was. The issues that we were raising, the change that we were really asking within the company. And that's true. That's really true.

So, change is very, very slow. Because as shareholders, as we were speaking to the companies, we were clear we were not in any way asking the companies to fail. We were owning the shares because we wanted the companies to see, because our respective retirements and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah depended upon the profits. So we wanted success, but we saw a clear, looking down the road, along the path, that climate is going to impact these companies if companies didn't do anything at all. So it's a long-term vision, and bringing a whole different perspective to executives. Some of those relationships— We worked, I worked for the Adrian Dominican Sisters. And also for— Well, primarily for the Adrian Dominican sisters and also for the Basilian Fathers of Toronto. But we worked with other members through a whole national coalition called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. So, we have members of religious orders and churches, etc. from across the nation, who all were institutional shareholders, collectively using our voices to raise these issues, to corporate executives, to a range of companies. And there were many other issues, too. But long, long, committed, slow, change. And in some cases, you see some change.

DLT: And you mentioned earlier that you had kind of passed the baton of advocacy. What do you think is the future of environmental advocacy?

MW: Well, I trust it's not going away. And actually, in the advocacy that I mentioned about the concrete plant and the asphalt mixing plant, I've been heartened that those primary leaders have not been the same old, same old people. Some of the same old, same old people have been there as support and lending our voices to the Board of Zoning Appeals. So whether it's people who have been long-term neighborhood advocates, or whether it's people from the Sierra Club, or people from the Planning Commission, or people like myself, we add our voices and we put ourselves there as much as we can. But the real— Particularly on this concrete plant, the president of the Schoolcraft Improvement Association, he's the one who's keeping his nose to the grind. And, you know, he's got the bone now. And he and his community and the residents in that neighborhood are taking the leadership of making sure that they're there, whether it's before the Board of Zoning Appeals, or whether it's a Wayne County jury looking at whether or not this company should be, whether there's a case for them, for all of the permit violations, etc., etc. So it takes a real persistence. Environmental advocacy isn't going to end. I think there's too many issues. I think what we don't— I wouldn't pretend to know—

I’m at the age where I have great-grandchildren, two great-grandchildren. And so when I think of these issues, my concern is what's the world going to be like for those two toddlers? And not just on the environment but on many things. You know, what are the pressures? Because the pressures are going to be there and, you know, the pressures about food, the pressures about what's a livable environment, the pressures about how you even— The disparity issues: that’s a question that’s going to be there, is who can afford to keep themselves comfortable, and who can't. Just enormous questions, and I try— I don't want to be, I don't want to have a negative viewpoint for the future, because I wouldn't want to have that sense that that's the only future for my great-grandkids. But I think it might end up being very, very challenging. I would say the heartening thing is that when you say something like climate change or global warming, it's pretty hard to find somebody who is totally ignorant of it. They might be a denier of it, but not totally ignorant in the sense of I never heard of that, what are you talking about? People have heard of it. So it's now out there in the ether. You'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not know anything or even heard of it. Those who are deniers, I wouldn't pretend to know where they're coming from, other than— I wouldn't, I wouldn’t know.

DLT: And was there anything else you wanted to discuss that none of my questions so far have brought up for you?

MW: I can't think of anything right now. [Laughs] Chances are there might be something after we're done talking. But I hope that what I've had to say has been somewhat helpful. Added to whatever it is that is the goal of your project. I'm assuming it's sort of the collective voice on these issues for the city of Detroit. But I guess I'm not crystal clear.

DLT: Absolutely. And you've been wonderful today.

MW: Thank you. So the most important thing, shall I say, in terms of the recycling thing, a lesson I learned, is don't ever underestimate the value of a question. Because it was a question, the gentleman who is president of our neighborhood association, when he said, who wants to do something about recycling? Out of that question, him asking that question in his newsletter, in his column in the monthly newsletter, led to Rosedale Recycles forming—which was a twenty-five-year project which was a mainstay of the whole project of Zero Waste Detroit. That was a significant impact. So never underestimate that. And the other thing is, even little things are important. And today, I'm not in front of the council anymore. A lot of people who probably— I mean, I used to be pretty well known, and I’m probably not anymore, and that's okay. But when I go walking over to the local park, Stoepel Park, which the city's invested a lot of money in and it's very beautiful. But I've been making the effort to pick up litter when I'm there. I don't pick up everything, but I pick up bottles and stuff, and so I just incorporate those steps in my three-mile walk.

And, I know that sometimes people see me and I figure, okay, if maybe they pick up something the next time, that's fine. And I'm inspired by a neighbor who lives in, who did live a couple of blocks away from us, and he used to go over and walk his dogs over to Eliza Howell. And he shared with my husband and me that when he first started taking the dogs over there, there was so much trash. He would take a garbage bag in the morning and fill it up with trash, and then he’d go back in the afternoon and take another garbage bag, and he would fill it up. And he was doing this consistently. And eventually it got to where there was not nearly as much trash, just by people witnessing. And Mr. Nunlee is no longer with us. He passed from ALS. But to me, that's an inspiration. He, you know, he saw one thing that he could do that was a positive thing. Was it changing the world? Ostensibly, no. But in some ways it probably did. Because he inspired other people to a certain extent. And I would never suggest that anybody should limit themselves to only small things, but I think we should never discount the impact of small things. Because, kind of like they say, you're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution.

DLT: And can you please spell the name of your neighbor?

MW: Gene. His name was Gene G e n e Nunlee N u n l e e. Yes. He is now deceased.

DLT: Thank you. And any final thoughts before I end the recording?

MW: No, I think I'm all right. Thank you for the opportunity. I hope it's been helpful.

DLT: It has been. Thank you so much for your time.

8/15/24 Addendum by email:

MW: One thing I realize that I didn't say: people are more aware and knowledgeable than one might assume....I used to hear a lot that “with limited incomes/poverty, people don't have time to care about things like recycling”...or to that effect. But when I spoke at community meetings, awareness of environmental issues was there....and the lesson for me was this: just because someone doesn't spend significant time working on EJ or environmental issues does not at all mean that they are not aware. We should not assume ignorance, but rather consider meetings/presentations as an opportunity for people to share their experiences and what they know, and perhaps become more engaged.