Summer is ending. For most, the vacation is in the rear view mirror and for many it’s ”back-to-school” time already. For voters in New Jersey and Virginia, the fall season will also mean a return to the polls come November 3rd.

All registered voters in both states have the privilege to elect a Governor in November,  and New Jersey voters will also cast votes for members of the General Assembly. This November is a prelude to next year when 37  states will hold not only gubernatorial elections but many local, state legislative and congressional races too.

In New Jersey, running for re-election is sitting Governor Jon Corzine (D), to be challenged by Chris Daggett (I), a former regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a nd Chris Christie (R), a former federal prosecutor.  At this time, Christie is leading in the polls.

In Virginia, Attorney General Bob McDonnell (R) and state Senator R. Creigh Deeds (D) face off.  The race is considered close.

To jumpstart the process, visit the election pages of the  New Jersey and Virginia state websites, as well as the League of Women Voters’ sites for New Jersey and Virginia.  Share this information with friends, family and colleagues.   

Are you familiar with the candidates?  Are you happy with the status quo?  Are you looking for change?  Are you registered to vote? (If not, SPI’s Political Action Center can help!) Will you vote?  I sure hope so!

Do your homework! If you live in Virginia or New Jersey, mark your calendars for November 3rd, and Get-Out-the-Vote!

It’s not a figment of our imagination: the decisions of government play an ever-increasing role in our lives. On a personal level, the annual April tax ritual (and May refund or lack thereof) is a sobering reminder of just how broad that role can be. Fulfilling a market need, of course, there’s an entire industry devoted to rendering personal financial advice. On the professional front, though, where do employees turn for reliable information about governmental policies that affect their companies’ — and, soon thereafter, their own — bottom lines?

The Business & Industry Political Action Committee – known as BIPAC – has commissioned extensive research on the issue, and the results are impressive (even for people who’ve seen enough polling data over the years to be hard to impress). Here’s what they found:

When employers included policy issue information in their company websites, more than 30% of employees accessed the information at least once per month. In terms of all-important credibility, employees rated the credibility of employer-provided information above all traditional media, as well as Internet sites, political parties and labor unions.

More significant – startling actually — is that more than half of all employees took action once they had the benefit of employer-provided policy/advocacy information. Some initiated communications with their elected officials, some donated to political causes and some did both.

Finally, employees overwhelmingly validated their employers’ involvement in advocating for policy decisions that were good for their companies. Specifically, over 40% said the activism their companies had shown was an important part of the employer role. An additional 40% said their employer should actually be doing more of it. Those who wanted less employer involvement: about 6%.

These numbers speak volumes, but the word has been slow to spread; what’s still low is the actual number of companies engaging employees about government policies.

One obstacle may be the availability of timely, concise information on the issues (check out the Public Policy section of SPI’s Web site to see how we do it). But a larger impediment can be professional boundaries. Some are legal, but some are just traditional.

In cases where the only obstacle to more communication is old habit, a company – and that means EVERYONE in a company — has too much at stake for an employer-employee dialogue to be off limits.

In order to have a person truly understand something, it is often better to show them rather than merely tell them — to let them experience it not just read or hear about it.

In this pivotal scene of the 1997 movie “Good Will Hunting,” therapist Sean McGuire (played by Robin Williams) lays out the difference between knowledge and experience to Will Hunting (a rebellious math genius, played by Matt Damon, who has used his photographic memory to read a ton of highly academic books):

SEAN
You’ve never been out of Boston.

WILL
Nope.

SEAN
So if I asked you about art, you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling… You’re an orphan right?

WILL
(nods quietly)

SEAN
Do you think I would presume to know the first thing about who you are because I read “Oliver Twist?”

[If you know the film, you realize I have severely edited Sean's lines. I recommend you watch or read the full scene!]

There’s a public policy lesson here that SPI tries to employ through its plant tour program — in which we work with SPI member companies to bring legislators and other government officials on-site to see facilities in operation and discuss issues with employees.

While it is often said that the best way to differentiate the House from the Senate is to consider the House as “policy specialists” and the Senate as “policy generalists,” I would argue that neither body can truly be labeled a “specialist.” There were 7,336 bills introduced in the House during the last session of Congress. It is difficult to comprehend how one member, even with a staff, could be so well-versed in every issue to be labeled a “specialist.”

Certainly, SPI has plenty of face-to-face meetings with lawmakers and their staffs, and we leave behind policy briefs that educate about plastics’ contributions to the economy and society or our view of a key issue or bill. But would the member of Congress be better served by an issue one-pager or by actually experiencing it firsthand by visiting a plant?

So, build some good will (hunting?) with your elected officials with an SPI-coordinated plant tour. If you are interested in inviting a lawmaker to your facility, just let us know. Send us an e-mail and we’ll take care of the rest.

Arlington County (Va.) may be the smallest self-governing county in the United States (just under 26 square miles), but as of April 1, Arlington will be leading the way when it comes to recycling plastics. Most people know of Arlington due to its iconic landmarks including the Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery and the U.S Marine Corp Memorial (commonly referred to as the Iwo Jima Memorial). However, beginning on April 1, Arlington is setting a new landmark by becoming one of the relatively few counties in the United States to provide curbside collection of all plastic containers (regardless of its resin identification code), aerosol cans, plastic bags, rigid plastics, aluminum foil and trays, milk and juice cartons, books and cardboard boxes. Each resident will receive a new wheeled recycling cart (plastic, of course) and will no longer be required to separate out the commingled material from paper products.

In short, no-one in Arlington will have an excuse anymore for not recycling their plastics! On the contrary, Arlington residents will now be able to recycle virtually everything at the curb: recycling using a recycling cart, electronics waste collection by request, white goods (major appliances)/metal collection by request, brush collection by request, spring yard waste collection, leaf vacuum collection, leaf bio-bag collection, Christmas tree collection, car battery collection, regular refuse collection using a trash cart and bulky trash collection.

As a result of these efforts, Arlington reported a recycling rate of 40.3 percent in 2007 (well above the 37 perccent recycling rate target that the county set just three years ago for 2014). With this latest recycling initiative, Arlington is well on track to exceed the goal for 2024 of 47 percent. Congratulations, Arlington!

What is your state or county doing to increase recycling?

I’m not from Philadelphia – I was born in Trenton, NJ – but I spent most of my formative years in the City of Brotherly Love. I went to a great Jesuit high School, St. Joseph’s Prep, and then onto Drexel University. I have many great memories of the city; but honestly, in those days, it wasn’t the cleanest place I’d ever been. Fast forward to this week.

On January 6, Mayor Michael Nutter announced that he was making good on a campaign promise to have single stream recycling pick up in every Philadelphia neighborhood on a weekly basis. In the Mayor’s open letter to the people of Philadelphia he writes:

From Monday, January 5th, we will collect all recyclables from the curbside, every week, as Philadelphia becomes the largest city on the East Coast to have weekly, single stream recycling. This is one more step forward in our quest to become the greenest city in the United States… You told us that it was inconvenient to have to separate all of your recyclables – glass, plastic, paper – into multiple bins. You told us that it was inconvenient to have recycling collection on a different day to trash collection. We listened, and we made the changes.

Judging from this Philadelphia Inquirer article, the Mayor’s news was applauded by recycling advocates:

Recycling advocates were jubilant, praising Mayor Nutter not only for following through on his campaign promise to increase recycling, but also for doing so in the face of plummeting prices for commodities… Maurice Sampson II, chair of RecycleNOW Philadelphia and a frequent critic of the city’s recycling efforts, said he was happy with the expanded program. “I’ve never seen a streets department so charged. [Deputy Streets Commissioner] Carlton Williams is becoming my hero.”

Bravo Mayor Nutter!

Why is this important? Well, as Mayor Nutter notes in his letter, the program is designed to remove obstacles to recycling. People complained that sorting was too difficult – single stream eliminates that concern. People complained that having bi-weekly pickup on a different day than their regular trash pickup made it difficult to remember when recycle pickup would occur – this program eliminates that also. Recycling needs to be a part of our daily life. If the great city of Philadelphia can take this step to make it easier and more convenient for its citizens, I suspect that there are a lot of other cities, towns and local municipalities that can do the same.

How about yours? What is your city doing to help make recycling easier?