New Mission for SWRC in 2010

Life doesn't seem to get less busy. Not for individual people or for companies or for non-profit organizations. With so much activity, it's often difficult to find some time to step back and contemplate where we are all headed.

As SWRC approaches its 20th anniversary (in 2011), we thought some re-evaluation might be in order. Our board -- especially the governance committee -- our staff and our partners managed to set aside some time to look both backward and forward in a strategic planning process. We sincerely appreciate this gift of time from everyone who participated.

With valuable assistance from Synergy Solutions, we considered where we have come from and re-visited the question of who we are and what we do. SWRC has created a new mission statement:

As an advocate for community and environment, SWRC will lead in addressing the underlying causes of waste by identifying opportunities, creating connections and promoting solutions.

Within this mission are sub-messages:

• advocate for community and environment -- to us, this means that we operate with both the community's and the environment's interests in mind and that we seek the balance between these two priorities.
• the word lead mandates us to get ahead of things and to not wait for issues to land on our doorstep before we take them on.
• underlying causes of waste -- this speaks to the need for SWRC to go beyond recycling where we can and to work on ways to reduce waste and eliminate the forces that cause waste to be created.
• identifying opportunities, creating connections and promoting solutions -- these are the ways that we will achieve the first part of the mission. We should be able to categorize all of our actions into these three processes. A cursory look at our key activities shows that this is possible. We certainly do all three with our Waste Minimization Forum events -- identify opportunities for waste reduction, create connections between participants and presenters as well as among participants, and the presenters promote solutions for all of us to consider.

We do a lot of creating connections when people or businesses call with a specific item they want to recycle and we refer them to someone who might be able to help. The process of gathering information for our recycling database is all about identifying opportunities. Our Awards program promotes solutions. Our composting work is mostly about promoting solutions (and creating some connections...).

It's obvious that the mission has created some resonance for us. We hope to make it live for the next twenty years!

(Source: November 2010 WasteWatch)

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