I talked people into going thru the trash to audit our recycling program
In 1988 I was writing air quality regulations when the Exxon Valdez catastrophe occurred. I wrote Exxon a letter returning my credit card and earnestly telling them to double-hull their tankers. Their reply boiled down to: we don’t need your money. I was furious but I did something pretty interesting with my anger. I turned it into a one-woman environmental campaign.
I bargained my way to being allowed to use 10% of my time in “ancillary projects.” I set up an agency-wide recycling program and hung Environmental Awareness bulletin boards in the copy rooms. These displayed things like samples of carpet made from recycled plastic and details of how styrofoam kills wildlife by blocking their gullets and starving them to death. To this day I have a horror of packing peanuts. I set up a recycling program. I organized beach cleanups and negotiated administrative leave for volunteers to travel to the coast.
That took some doing: the guy I was dealing with didn’t see how the staff from an air pollution agency should be involved with water pollution. I’m sure my eyes were spinning in their sockets, but I managed to calmly explain that really, it’s all one planet. I agreed to make everyone sign in before they cleaned the beach to verify they earned their four hours of travel time.
One thing that had always terrified me was public speaking. I’d do anything to avoid it, even if it was to a very small group. As a student put it, I’d start shaking harder than a bow-legged penguin. I was as nervous as a criminal in a courthouse.
Suddenly I was speaking fearlessly to many groups of people. I called meetings to organize my outreach projects. I spoke to the Texas Hospital Administration about regulating their incinerators (my “non-ancillary” job). I made my first Board presentation, showing them the results of the award-winning Texas Tree Challenge education program. One of the Board members asked me if I’d worked at the Agency long and I replied 12 years. He looked bemused and asked, “Where’ve you been?” I said it was a long story and let it go at that.
I’d finally created the job of my dreams and talked them into paying me for doing it. I had a series of supervisors as they moved my position around to suit the latest reorganizational change, and they all just let me do what I told them needed to be done. I had a small, enthusiastic staff. I learned to love road blocks because I had so much fun working around them. It was great. For three years I met new people (many are still friends), created new programs, looked forward to going to work every day. Then they laid me off.
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