Earlier this week I spoke to Green Cambridge president Quinton Zondervan about the work that the volunteer group is doing in the community. But even more interesting to me, as an organizer of Berklee’s sustainability group, was the chance to pick his brain about how he’s able to keep the group going in what little spare time he has. (Quinton is also CEO of biopharmaceutical company Excelimmune.)

Any advice on how to organize volunteer groups and keep people motivated?
It is really hard. You need a core group that’s willing and able to provide the basic infrastructure to keep an organization going. It’s not that much work, but somebody has to do it—somebody who’s willing to maintain the website, to make sure that the monthly meetings happen, that there’s an agenda and minutes are taken, just the basic administrative functions. If that’s running smoothly then you can help people who come in with specific projects. You find everybody’s niche, and then you need a couple generalists who make sure that everything hangs together. At some point you have to make that choice as a leader, that you’re going to focus on leading the whole thing and not so much on any one particular project. To keep any one project going, you have to find somebody to head that up. If it’s always you, then it can’t happen.

Some people are very issue specific. One lady was really interested in banning plastic bags, so we organized a few movie screenings of Bag It, which is all about plastic bags and what they do to our waste stream, and we’re working with city councilors on what kind of ordinance would make sense for Cambridge to try to reduce plastic bag usage. She doesn’t come to our monthly meetings, but we’re working with her on this specific project because she’s really interested in it. We’re just trying to be a resource for people.

Quinton Zondervan

Did you ask people to join who had particular skills or interests?
I found people who I’d been working with in different contexts, who I knew I could depend on and what their skills and strengths were, and asked them to join. You have to be flexible. It’s a volunteer organization, so you can’t force people to do things; you have to figure out what they’ll be willing to do and just support them, encourage them, and help them out to make sure it happens.

Did your entrepreneurial background prepare you to do this work?
I started out 20 years ago as a college student running on-campus environmental organizations, so in some ways it’s nothing new to me. It’s a long road of trial and error. The most important thing is to sustain it. That’s probably the hardest part, to keep yourself motivated and focused on this project and carrying it through. And then the next one. And the next one.

Do you find that talking about climate change is a good motivator?
If you’re asking about the general population, no it isn’t. It’s pretty widely accepted that climate change is happening and we have to do something about it, but talking to people directly about that problem is not necessarily going to motivate them to do something different. But having said that, that doesn’t mean we should shut up about it. It’s there, and we need to figure it out. But in terms of motivating people, I always try to find out where they’re coming from, what matters to them, and then how to connect to it. There are whole sections of our community who are really concerned about the health impacts of pollution. When you talk to them about that, you’re still dealing with climate change, but you don’t have to call it that. The fact that it may in some abstract way help climate change is kind of irrelevant to them. Ultimately, you don’t care what motivates them as long as they’re doing the right thing. We had people in our college group who loved running chainsaws. We’d get them out there to chop down invasive species. They didn’t care about environmental issues; they just wanted to chop stuff down with a chainsaw. You’ve just got to figure out what matters to them and how you can use that.

When I was meeting with college administration 20 years ago, I walked into the Office of the Comptroller, and I noticed all these pictures of coral reefs on the wall. This guy had the reputation of being conservative, no interest in environmental issues, but he loved to go scuba diving; he went to the Caribbean every year. And I said, we’re destroying all of that. He wrote funding for the recycling program into the college’s budget because I made that connection for him, and it’s still running to this day.

That’s what you hope will be the life cycle of these volunteer projects. You do this for free for a little while in order to get it started and show the benefit of it, and hopefully it’ll just become another workaday thing for the organization.
Absolutely. You have to put it into the infrastructure; otherwise it’s going to fall away. That was a big piece of learning for me—how to work with the government of whatever institution you’re working with: the college administration, the city, the condo board. You always have to do both. Recruit the volunteers, get the thing going, and then work with the governing entity to make it part of their daily operation.

Quinton Zondervan has only been president of Green Cambridge for a year, but he’s already revitalized a volunteer organization that was on the verge of collapse. He was gracious enough to talk to me about the work that the group does and how he pulls together volunteers with diverse interests (stay tuned for the latter later this week).

For more on Quinton’s background, check out Sam Seidel’s blog.

How did you get involved with Green Cambridge?
I’ve always known about them, but I’d never really participated. Then last year I found out they were going to go out of business, and I thought, that’s a waste. It is a 501(c)3 organization, and it’s pretty difficult to get tax exempt status. So I rounded up some friends who are environmental activists in Cambridge, who I’ve been working with for some time, and we proposed to the board that we take over the organization. About half of the board members stayed on, and the other half are new members.

Quinton Zondervan

What sorts of projects do you have in the works?
Right now we’re actively engaged in two projects and planning a few others.

I’ve partnered with the city on talking with small businesses about commercial recycling. Businesses are required to recycle if more than 15% of their waste stream is recyclable, but there’s no clear sense of how much compliance is out there, and the city doesn’t have the resources to figure it out. So we’re getting trained by Randi Mail at the Department of Public Works on what the regulations are and the resources that are available to businesses to help them recycle. And then we go in to talk with them to see if there’s anything blocking them from recycling and maybe help figure out some solutions. Generally we’re just looking for how to enable the small businesses to more effectively recycle their waste stream. There’s a hearing in the city council this week on whether the city can pick up from small businesses. We can understand that big businesses make their own arrangements, but just a little mom and pop shop or restaurant, just throw them in with the residents, and you’ll get better compliance that way. But obviously that’s going to cost the city money, so that’s the trade off.

The other project that we’ve been doing is partnering with the DPW on their rain barrel program. They resell rain barrels to residents, and we volunteer to help people install them. Some people are really motivated to do the right thing, then after they’ve bought the barrel they’re like, now what? So it’s helpful to know that they can call somebody.

Right now we’re also working on two major initiatives that we’re actually combining. Originally the plan was to do some advertising promoting renewable energy in the City of Cambridge. We settled on the concept design where we had wind turbines on one side and a coal-burning power plant on the other side, with the words “you choose.” But that’s just a preliminary concept design, and the idea is to take that to an actual media company who would use that to understand what we want to communicate.

The winning concept

And then starting earlier this summer we embarked on an exploration to see if we could put up a community solar garden. The idea is that a lot of people can’t put solar panels on their houses, because it may not be facing the right way, they might not own the house they live in, and so on, but with virtual net metering you could actually have a solar installation somewhere else and still get full credit for it on your electric bill.

We would figure out the location, rent that spot, and have solar panels installed on it, and people who wanted to participate would sign a power purchase agreement, a long-term contract to buy the power from that installation. So a third-party company installs the solar panels and sells the power for the next 20 years at a fixed cost to the participants, generally less than half of current NStar utility rates. So it’s kind of a no brainer, but the tricky part is in the collective aspect of it. We’ll gather up the people who want to participate, prenegotiate the contract, and help figure out where to locate this thing. Ultimately it’s owned and operated by a third party. They get all the tax credits, but they pass that on to their customers, which is why the rates are lower.

Solar’s really taking off in Massachusetts, but they’re all focused on individual homes, and they’re picking and choosing. I’ve had two evaluations done on my house and been turned down both times, because my roof doesn’t face the south. Less than 20% of homes in Cambridge are going to be able to put solar on their roofs ultimately. The way they’re facing, the age of the roof, structural issues, shading from nearby buildings and trees, there’s all kind of issues that end up weeding you out, so the chances of getting solar on your roof are actually not that great. So we’ve decided to try to combine these two things, to figure out how to have this community solar project and then run our ad campaign to attract customers for it.

Do you feel like businesses are aware of recycling resources that are available to them?
There’s a state program that’s really not well known where they will consult with a small business for free to help them recycle their waste. And lots of times people are not aware of the fact that all the waste haulers that provide service in Cambridge have to provide recycling pickup.

Are there larger state activities that you participate in?
As an MCAN chapter, we go to MCAN meetings; there’s a lot of communication and a network. The solar garden idea came from an MCAN seminar that they held on this topic. But in terms of our daily activity, we’re very focused on Cambridge, working with the city council, working with DPW, and doing local volunteer activities. On the state level, we participate more as advocates and keep our Cambridge constituency informed as stuff goes through the legislature.

How do you work with local government?
We have very good relationships with the city government. [Mayor] Henrietta Davis; Minka vanBeauzekom, who just became head of the environment committee of the city council; and Sam Seidel, who used to be on the city council, are all members of our organization. So we have direct communication with the city council and direct communication with DPW, and we can facilitate those conversations for people who may not be so familiar with the process.

We worked with the city for years on the resident parking fee, which was finally increased from $8 to $20 a year last year. It’s going up to $25 in January, and all of those funds are going into the city’s efforts to reduce vehicle miles traveled, to increase bicycling. Like the new bike share program that’s being installed right now—that’s coming out of those funds. They said that people were going to be rioting in the streets, and we said, “No, we’ll show up at city council and say we want this fee increase.” And sure enough, almost nobody objected to it. In fact, Tim Toomey was the only one who voted against it, and he put in an amendment that people could pay extra, and he reported back to us that he was surprised that people did. Just 25 bucks a year and you can park your car anywhere it says resident parking only—that’s nothing if you can afford to operate a car. And that money is going straight to making your city better.

How can people get involved in Green Cambridge’s activities?
We need more people who are willing and able to go talk with businesses about their recycling; that requires a training with Randi Mail before you can be certified to do that. We do some volunteer work with the Friends of Alewife Reservation. We have an active Facebook page; it’s a great place to see what we’re up to. We keep an up-to-date calendar on our website, so you can find out about our events and other organizations’ events, as well. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter. And, of course, we meet once a month, and the meetings are open to anyone in Cambridge who wants to come.

Mosquitos with first West Nile and now EEE have been found in Massachusetts, leading to some serious pesticide spraying. Does anyone know more about the effects of sumithrin and ­piperonyl butoxide?

• Spraying for EEE will be repeated – Boston Globe. State officials say they are taking pesticide worries seriously by using sumithrin, combined with ­piperonyl butoxide to activate it (also known as Anvil 10+10). “They say the combination breaks down very rapidly when ­exposed to sunlight and has very low toxicity to humans and animals.”
• Study Finds More of Earth Is Hotter and Says Global Warming Is at Work – New York Times. The  head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York looks at the pattern of more extreme heat planet-wide.
• Profits on Carbon Credits Drive Output of a Harmful Gas – New York Times. Gas manufacturers are gaming the U.N. carbon credit system like Olympic badminton athletes.
• Wide Differences Found in Buildings’ Power Use – New York Times. Some of New York’s largest buildings use “up to five times as much electricity, natural gas, heating oil and steam as others of comparable size or purpose.” (Thanks, Sharon!)
• Starting an Energy Efficiency Program in Your Town – Energy Circle. The Claremont Home Energy Retrofit Project educated town officials, contractors and homeowners about the benefits of home performance improvements.
• Plants Reduce Pollution 8X More Than Previously Thought – The Good Human. I’ve always suspected that my cat was trying to kill me by destroying all my houseplants.
• Meal Kits Fit for a Chef – Local in Season. I’m such a lazy cook that this is exciting! I’m trying out all four this week.
• The Evolution of Kale – Locavore in the City. I love kale, but I don’t use it very versatilely. I haven’t even made delicious baked kale chips yet!
• A Ridiculously Happy Visit – Suburban Snow White. Farm Sanctuary sounds wonderful. It reminds me of the trip we took to the Best Friends sanctuary.

That’s all for now. If you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way.

Here’s an update to our previous posts on reading library ebooks on the Kindle, from my resident tech expert, Jason.

The last time we talked about struggling to get library books onto the Kindle was two years ago, and things have changed a lot over that time. Here’s an update to show you how we’re doing it now. (When we need to, of course. The BPL has now updated their rather backward ebook lending system to include Kindle versions of some books.)

1. Download the latest version of Calibre. We’ve mentioned it before, but it’s so great that we’ll mention it again. Calibre is an ebook management tool that allows you to organize your collection, convert to different formats, and upload to devices—all in one application. If you haven’t used it before, give it a try. And, if you like it, donate. The tool is totally open source and totally free to use, but the clever folks behind Calibre still deserve support for their operating costs.
2. Download and unzip the latest version of decryption tools from Apprentice Alf’s blog. (He/she has done a great job of outlining exactly how to use the tools, and you’re welcome to read through that information if you’re technically inclined or want to be able to decrypt anything under the sun. We’re going to focus on the things we think are most important: Abobe ePub and Amazon Kindle.)
3. Start Calibre and select “Preferences”, then “Plugins”, then “Load plugin from file”.
4. Now you’ll be prompted to select a file. Go to the folder where you saved and unzipped the tools and find the Calibre_plugins directory. There will be five zip files inside. Select the one labeled “ineptpub”. Then repeat step 3 and select the file that begins with “K4Mobi”.

Normally if I come across an interesting event, I’ll add it to the list in the right nav bar. (Check it out; it’s right there.) But this one is too good not to mention in a post. Who doesn’t have tons of old cookbooks and utensils that they bought with the best intentions but ended up only using once? Well, if you’re in the Boston area, bring them to the Union Square Farmers Market next Saturday and trade them for new cookbooks and utensils that you’ll use only once… er, I mean, over and over again!