Taking Care in Business

Guest blog by Emily Kennerk of BITCHSTIX 

Whether I am at a networking event, calling for tech support or at the post office, it’s always a double take when they ask the company name. Wait, what did you say? Did I hear you correctly? Let’s just say I have done a lot of explaining over the past few years.

In 2015, BITCHSTIX was named and created from a small idea with a big mission: to support survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Bitch is a tough word. The etymology of the word simply began with the designation of a female dog. During the 20th century, the meaning of word evolved having several connotations; a pejorative term for both men and women, one of empowerment and even a term of endearment. We hear the word “bitch” and all of its’ forms in the media, from sitcoms, reality shows and yes, the Westminster Dog Show. So why is it still so shocking, questioned and sometimes offensive?

Over my years of being a human, teaching and a lot of listening, I have begun to understand the immense power of shame and it’s ability to silence and oppress masterfully. As much as the word “bitch” has been neutralized, it is still a popular shame name, and we all know that feeling of shame. Maybe it’s not the word that needs to change, but our personal relationship to shame. What if we change our relationship to navigating shame, rather than letting it silence us?

It is said that the importance of naming something is to make it real and identifiable, as well as having the ability to be something that can be discussed.

BITCHSTIX: the name always starts a conversation. Be Courageous. Speak Up.

To learn more about Emily Kennerk and BITCHSTIX, listen to Episode 91.

Guest blog by Tom Hanley of Nine13sports

What happens when everything stops?

That was the question I mulled over in my head on Friday, March 20 before the Nine13sports office closed for an extended 2-week spring break and programming was suspended indefinitely as the COVID-19 pandemic turned our world completely upside down. The future was bleak and the number of questions I had greatly outweighed the number of answers I could give my team about what direction the organization was headed.

That question prompted additional questions, including, but not limited to: What can we do to assist the COVID-19 relief efforts? How do we keep staff employed and engaged while still earning full salaries? What can we do to repurpose our fleet of vehicles to provide fast responses to organizations who need help meeting their service needs through organizational and logistical support?

These questions and the subsequent answers to them were going to pose a challenge, however, I knew sitting around and waiting for answers was not an option. As I learned a long time ago, opportunities to make an impact do not just fall into your lap. We had to be proactive, seek out opportunities and reach out to current and prospective partners looking for ways to help with the remarkable efforts undertaken by entities on the front lines who were taking care of our most vulnerable neighbors. I never imagined we would rewrite our entire operations model in five days, but that was what was needed for the team at Nine13sports to support our fellow Hoosiers. We are now distributing 150,000-200,000 pounds of food per week throughout the community – alongside Gleaners and Second Helpings – and all our staff has remained employed without any furloughs.

Our mission has always been to help make the communities we work in stronger. Amid all the uncertainty and panic, that is our pledge to the community that will forever be deep-rooted in the fabric of our organization. When anyone needs a helping hand, the furtherance of a purpose or someone to step up in dire times, the Nine13sports team will be there. I always knew that I could count on our team to be resilient in times of hardship, and now our fellow residents know that they can count on us as well. Whether it be through using the bicycle as an educational tool or providing logistical support for food distribution, we will always find a way to roll up our sleeves to do anything that helps support this incredible city and its residents that have given us so much since our inception in 2012. We have validated to ourselves that we will be a staple in the city of years to come and will represent our city with pride and devotion and serve its residents no matter what hurdles are in front of us.

To learn more about Tom Hanley and Nine13sports, listen to Episode 90.

Guest blog by Allyson Mitchell of Indiana Recycling Coalition 

Planet Earth is a beautiful, diverse, resilient, and amazing place to live; especially when you compare it to the other 7 giant rocks rotating around our sun. But it’s also finite; an indisputable fact that we humans don’t always seem to accept, or at least, abide by.

Since the dawn of the environmental movement in the US – kicked off by the Clean Air Act and subsequent inaugural  Earth Day 50 years ago – we’ve been leaning hard on recycling as the solution to our increasingly-wasteful habits of consumption.

But here’s the thing. Recycling was not, is not, and never can be our silver bullet for sustainable materials management. And we’ve only just begun to really accept this.

Sounds like a pretty ironic thing – for someone who works for an organization with the word “recycling” in its name – to say, doesn’t it? Yeah, I know. I’m working on that; more on that in
the postscript.

The truth is, recycling is a very useful tool and it does many good things. It captures the value of the materials that have been mined or harvested, processed and refined, formed and used, collected and sorted. It saves energy. It diverts materials from landfills and incinerators. And it makes us feel good.

But here’s the truth about recycling that gets overlooked, avoided or downplayed: it is only ONE tool that MUST be used in coordination with MANY other tools in order to be effective. It must be part of a comprehensive integrated waste management plan – a portfolio of tools and strategies – in order to provide the full potential of economic, environmental, and social benefits.

But, why can’t we just lean harder on recycling? Educate more people, slap that chasing arrows symbol on more things, and put out some more blue bins? Well, for starters, not all things we consume and use are recyclable. In fact, the vast majority of things we produce today are not recyclable – for a plethora of reasons I’m happy to explain over a hard cider. And then there’s the recyclables that don’t even get collected, or worse – get collected but are contaminated such that they cannot be recycled. And don’t even get me started on how few things are even designed to be recycled.

Well geez Allyson, that was uplifting!

Now, before you start assuming I’m a real downer at cocktail parties, I have some good news to share. There’s a lot of momentum across this planet right now to embrace the circular economy. No, that’s not a fancy term for a dizzying amusement park ride or IndyCar’s foray into cryptocurrency. It’s a concept that reimagines our relationship to materials and builds economic, natural, and social capital.

The linear ‘Take – Make – Dispose’ system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed and can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle. – Dame Ellen MacArthur

When you step back and really think about it from the perspective of materials management, humans don’t really need to OWN the molecules that make up our stuff; we just need to use them for some time. And then we can pass them along to be used again, whether in the same form or in a new form; whatever is the highest and best use for those molecules in that place, at that time.

If this is your first time hearing the term, the circular economy might sound like a pretty radical or unproven idea. But examples of it are already all around you. That office printer your company leases? Those carshare and bike-share programs popping up in major cities? That AirBnB you stayed in on your vacation? That’s the circular economy. Oh, and perhaps the best example of all: nature. Biomimicry, explained by Janine Benyus in a video here, is design innovation inspired by nature.

Planet Earth is pretty amazing, huh? Let’s learn from it, invest in the transition to a circular economy, and protect it – in all its beauty, diversity, and resilience. And keep recycling, too.

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Ok, so back to that whole ‘recycling’ in our name thing. If the circular economy is so great and recycling is so 1995, why do I work for an organization focused on recycling? The Indiana Recycling Coalition has been around since 1989, and was formed to educate Hoosiers about recycling and expand their access to it. That was, and still is, a very worthwhile mission. But as we envision a more prosperous future for our finite planet, our country, our state and local communities, we must recognize the limitations of recycling in a meaningful way. For us, this means expanding our focus to pursue the circular economy and its portfolio of tools and strategies – of which recycling is included within. We’re in the process of making that pivot, and changing our name will be part of that pivot. Stay tuned!

To learn more about Allyson Mitchell and IRC, listen to Episode 89.