June 2017 Sustainability Lab @ T-Rex Agenda
- Published on Thursday June 22nd, 2017
3:30-4:45 Session A: Working session on Reducing our Waste
A zero waste society is environmentally restorative, economically productive, and socially just. While we may be a long way off from becoming an economy and society that produces no waste, we are committed to taking achievable steps to reducing our waste. At the 2017 Regional Sustainability Summit, a working group of dedicated experts drafted a regional goal of reducing the tonnage of material going to landfills from the St. Louis wasteshed by 30% by 2030 over a 2015 baseline.
Join this session for a follow up discussion on this regional goal and what we can do as residents, businesses, and local governments to achieve it.
3:30-4:45 Session B: Working session on Reducing our Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Greenhouse gases are any of the gases whose absorption of solar radiation is responsible for the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and the fluorocarbons. World leaders from around the world agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2º Celsius. The impacts of not reaching this goal will be devastating, especially for the poor and most vulnerable.
The United States agreed to contribute to this goal by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2025 and 80% by 2050 over a 2005 baseline. Join this session for a discussion on how we can adopt and achieve this same goal for the St. Louis region.
5:15-6:30 Session A: Working session on Sustainability Communications
This will be a working session on creating strategies to better communicate the story of OneSTL, and sustainability in general, to the region. We will discuss how to better utilize social media; cross-marketing events and news with organizations that have similar goals; developing the brand recognition of OneSTL; documenting and writing stories about people working on sustainability in the region; and strategizing how to educate people about and get buy-in for the regional goals.
5:15-6:30 Session B: Learning session on Road to Tomorrow
Our guest speaker for the month of June is Tom Blair, Missouri Department of Transportation’s Assistant District Engineer responsible for Operations. Tom will be speaking about Road to Tomorrow.
The Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission announced its intention to make Interstate 70 across the mid-section of Missouri available to the nation and the world as the laboratory to construct the next generation of highways. Called “Road to Tomorrow,” the MHTC has issued a call for private industry, entrepreneurs and innovators to bring their products and ideas to the birthplace of the interstate highway and join with MoDOT in a collaboration to build the first section of the highway of the future.
