Elgin Watchman

Anonymous Municipal Employee Takes Us Behind The Scenes On A Reusable Shopping Bag Program

• The Watchman • Season 1 • Episode 15

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* * * SPECIAL EDITION PODCAST * * *
The proposed Single Use Plastic Bag Fee ordinance appears to be picking up steam in Elgin , Illinois. 

  • Two members of the city council contacted Tia & Erik after The Elgin Watchman launched its anonymous straw poll of those elected officials. Both agreed to interviews!
  • The executive director of the Environmental Defenders of McHenry County (aka the person who wrote the Single Use Plastic Bag Ordinance for Woodstock, IL) agreed to an interview.
  • A city staff person from a different municipality -- who wanted to remain anonymous -- agreed to speak with The Elgin Watchman podcast about his experience with implementation of a reusable shopping bag program that he helped implement.

We will publish one podcast per day leading up to the Elgin Sustainability Commission meeting on Tuesday, August 9th at 6pm at the Centre of Elgin in downtown Elgin inside the ballroom (or possibly one of the conference rooms next to the ballroom). Why? Because rumor has it that the commission will be taking a vote on whether to recommend the city council consider this proposed ordinance, which the commission has been working on for the last four years.

Today's podcast features a former employee from a different municipality who wanted to remain anonymous.  A few years ago, he worked for a municipality who implemented a reusable shopping bag giveaway program in advance of implementing their community's Single Use Plastic Bag Fee ordinance. He shares his experiences.

(Note: On Friday, The Elgin Watchman published an interview with councilwoman Tish Powell. Saturday's special edition podcast featured an interview with city councilman Corey Dixon. CLICK HEREfor Tish Powell, and CLICK HERE for Corey Dixon.)

A special THANK YOU to "Tom"for agreeing to come on the podcast to discuss what went into a different municipality's efforts to do what the Sustainability Commission is proposing for Elgin, IL.   We hope you enjoy this level of transparency and share this podcast with friends and family who you think will enjoy it, too.

For more information, please visit our website, LIKE our Facebook page, and subscribe to our podcast using one of the many RSS Readers on our Buzzsprout podcast platform.

Wally The Watchman:

Welcome to the Elgin watchman Podcast coming to you from Elgin, Illinois, the historic home of the now defunct Elgin Watch Company. The Elgin watchman podcast is a monthly show focused on environmental sustainability issues in our city and throughout the Fox Valley. And now, your hosts, Eric Anderson and Tiago

Erik Anderson:

Hello everyone and welcome again to the Elgin watchmen podcast hosted by yours truly Erik Anderson and my wicked smart partner Tia Augason. We're broadcasting today from the always elegant and tasteful Elgin watchmen Sound Studios nestled deep in the basement of the Batcave on the east side of the Fox River, right here in Elgin, Illinois. Today, today is Sunday, August 7, and this is the third. Yes, you heard that right. The third special edition of the Elgin watchman podcast, focusing on the proposed single use plastic bag fee ordinance that has been incubating at the Elgin sustainability Commission and its waste work group for the last four years.

John Zawada:

Eric, I hate to break it to you, but Tia isn't here with you today.

Erik Anderson:

All right, right, right, right. I guess I forgot to mention that, didn't I? Thanks. For the reminder, John, I'm guessing that I'm experiencing a little denial here and even a smidge of to withdrawal today. However, I'm being rude. This is your first time on the podcast. And I haven't even introduced you, Mia culpa. And I'm so sorry, John. And I apologize to everybody out there in the listening audience, too. So let me rectify this oversight. John, meet everybody. And everyone. Meet John. As many of you out there have heard me offhandedly mentioned over the last number of podcast episodes. I am a happily married man. And John is my loving and supporting husband of how many years? I always mess this up. Can I get a little helping hand for my for the love of my life? Please?

John Zawada:

Yes, dear. I love cleaning up your messes and supporting you. That's what I live for. But this is easy math. We first met in June of 2003. Before civil unions and marriage equality were illegal. We committed ourselves to the rest of our lives to each other in front of family and friends in June of 2006. We applied for a civil union from the courts in June of 2011. And we converted that civil union to an actual state recognized marriage in February of 2015. So three plus five plus another five and add it all to 11. Well carry the two. We've been together for 19 years, and we celebrate too big to zero in 10 short months.

Erik Anderson:

And that's why you are the accountant and I'm the nonprofit consultant by day and podcaster by nights. I love you my dear. And I don't know what I do without just speaking of Thanks for standing in for Tia today. Where is my podcasting girlfriend? John, do you have any idea? Well,

John Zawada:

as I keep trying to explain to you she ran away.

Erik Anderson:

I know but I don't think I understand what that really means.

John Zawada:

She needs a break from you and your insanity. Eric's kind of like when I get in the car and drive to Michigan a few times a summer to spend alone time at our friend's summer cottage in Saginaw Bay.

Erik Anderson:

Oh, right. Right right. I get it. She recently started a new job. Her husband also underwent some pretty serious surgery what you're saying is that she needs a break Roger that 10 Four good buddy. I now understand at all You're impossible

John Zawada:

I love you but you're impossible. Can you get just get this show on the road so I can get back to my garden and canning all the vegetables that need harvesting today?

Erik Anderson:

Yes, of course. You know how much I love your pickles John.

John Zawada:

Oh, stop it Eric unlike tea I'm not going to let you get away with that vulgar stuff on this podcast now giddy up or I'm walking out

Erik Anderson:

cheese here's a touchy get started. I guess that I should have mentioned your you also can delicious salsa and relish in sauerkraut and peppers, a number of different peppers jalapeno. I think there's medium hots in there. Oh, you're growing tomatoes for the Elgin food pantry if if they don't die that is but hey, wait a minute not enough about you John. Today I want to share with our loyal listening audience a telephone interview with someone who used to work in the government sector. He has experience with implementing a city program that actually distributed free reusable shopping bags in advance of his municipality implementing their own single use plastic bag fee. Are you ready John?

John Zawada:

Whatever please roll that tape

Erik Anderson:

all right, I'm here today with my friend Tom. And I'm I'm really happy to have Tom on the podcast today but we're gonna not share Tom's last name or the name of them use municipality he wants to work for a long time ago because I'm not for any nefarious reasons. But you know, it's been a long time. And Tom asked for a little anonymity, because he didn't want people to think that we were he was speaking for his old place of work. And there's a lot of great professionals who work at that city, who've done a lot of work, both when Tom was there, as well as subsequently, since then, on that communities, reusable shopping bag program, and he doesn't want anybody to think that he's stealing your thunder, or taking credit that he shouldn't. And so in order to get him on today's show, and answer a few questions about the program, to his recollection, we promised that we wouldn't share his last name nor the municipality that he worked in. So this municipality could be in the territory of Guam. Or maybe, maybe overseas and Hawaii, or it could be, you know, right down the street in you know, sore throat, Montana, we don't know. But regardless, we really appreciate Tom coming on today to talk about his work again, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away in a community that we will not name on implementing as part of a team, a reusable bag program, which was part of their communities single use plastic bag fee ordinance, efforts to kind of get single use bags out of their community. So welcome, Tom. And I'm going to ask you, is there anything that I said in that lead up and introduction that needs a little correcting?

Tom Anonymous:

No, only I wish that you had kind of told me about municipal jobs and far off tropical places. Nearby when I've never struggled, but thanks for the high ticket, the know everything else was right on point. Thank

Erik Anderson:

you. Yep, you're quite welcome. Quite welcome. Well, let me not mince words, and just jump right into it when the municipality that you worked for which shall remain nameless, kinda like Voldemort in like Harry Potter, right? The municipality that shall not be named when you worked for them, and helped implement its single use plastic bag fee. As part of a team, that team decided to also implement a reusable bag program, and it was a giveaway program. What am I getting wrong? And why did they decide to implement a reusable bag program as part of that? Plastic bag fee initiative?

Tom Anonymous:

No, that's a great question. There's a good, good some good background behind that. The purpose of issuing a reusable bag and one bag went to every household was to raise awareness of the issue, you know, the detrimental effects of single use plastic bags on the environment, public infrastructure like sewage treatment plants, and fields, you know, where there's livestock grazing, so the issue came up, let's try to get these out of the out of the stream a little bit, and promote the use of reusable bags by giving a bag away to every household. The other component of that was that bags, were going to go into retailers who would sell them and help make them available. And then there was a fee component that came in later. But the giveaway program was really to raise awareness, explain the need of getting rid of single use plastic bags to the stakeholders, and to promote the use of reusable bags, by giving them to people use right away.

Erik Anderson:

Okay, great. Now, I know this is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But understanding that it was a while ago, what did a program like that kind of cost to implement? And specifically, I'm talking about giving away 1000s of reusable, non plastic but reusable shopping bags? Do you have any recollections? Or can you put us in the neighborhood of what those costs might look like?

Tom Anonymous:

I've got some general recollections on that. First up is the intangible there were countless hours, probably a couple, two and a half years, while I was there of just volunteer time between commissions and liaisons from the from the municipality trying to work together to come up with the plan and the program and how this was gonna go through. The cost initially, I think was in the lower multiple of $10,000 ranges. So it was 10. And$50,000, I think was the cost. And that ended out some low number of between 10 and 20,000 bags, if I recall, correctly, both for the giveaway portion, and then the retail portion.

Erik Anderson:

Fantastic. Now, I've done a little bit of clicking around on the website for, you know, Guatemala, or wherever we're talking about, it looks like after the initial distribution, the city enlisted the help of local businesses to distribute those bags and it sounds like they were selling them. And more recently, it sounds like they're getting to the end of their stock. And I think there was a giveaway as part of an Earth Day in the last few years. That's what I've been able to pieced together from just clicking around randomly online. But as you think back to the merchants, that you guys were talking about partnering with to distribute these bags and sell them his bags was, is there any feedback that you might remember? And you might be able to claw back in your memory feedback that you got from merchants about your reuse reusable bag program? And if so, what was that feedback? And how was any of that incorporated into your program? What can you share from from just memory?

Tom Anonymous:

Well, and that's a good question. I think something for another municipality to consider if they're looking at that model was that one of the biggest obstacles we ran into was that the large retailers are talking the national corporate chain tight, they're, in most cases, they're not able to make decisions like this on their own. And it's hard to get to the decision maker at the corporate level that can Greenlight that. So there were some challenges trying to get the retailer component brought into place just because of that, where the local manager would say, Yeah, I'd love to do it. This sounds great. I'm all for it. That's a great idea. But I got a boss or three above me that need to make that final decision. So that was some of the feedback that we got from the retailers in that regard.

Erik Anderson:

So if I'm hearing you correctly, make sure that you allocate enough time to work your way through the corporate org chart.

Tom Anonymous:

Exactly. That's a big, big component.

Erik Anderson:

Again, this was a long time ago, I I appreciate that. Are we talking like months? Are we talking to weeks? Are we talking years?

Tom Anonymous:

We worked on that program for two years while I was there, maybe even a little bit longer. And it was still going on? So that distribution, your reference on Earth Day that was done months after I left, so it was going on for probably a better part of three years or so. Gotcha. And I don't know that the approval process through the big chain corporate entities was ever obtained. So that was something that was still likely going on.

Erik Anderson:

Okay. Okay. Was there any pushback? I mean, do you remember any kind of hiccups or, you know, objections? Or was it just a matter of I can't make that decision? Let me see who I could put you in touch with? And it was, it was a timing issue.

Tom Anonymous:

I would say there's, there's two facets to that. And the first part it was, let me see how I can get this run up the corporate ladder. And, you know, obviously, some difficulties there at the same time. You know, we're talking to retailers, and they're saying, Yeah, but I've got my own bag sitting right there on the shelf. Why do I need to double stock, you know, the items and things like that. And that kind of brought into the revenue side of things. So revenue sharing component between the city for more benevolent purposes with environmental issues, and revenue stream towards the retailer. So there was a little bit of the Why do I need to play already, that kind of thing. And then there were aspects of, I would have a hard time getting an approval to go through with this, even though I think it's a great idea.

Erik Anderson:

I never even thought of that. So let's say I'm Walmart, right? And I have a Walmart reusable bag, bang, right there at the cash register that I am selling. Yeah, it just dawned on me. Were you sharing the bet? Was the revenue sharing with the bat, you know, single use bags sales? Or did you just give them the bags and say, charge what you will? And you can keep it? Or did you give it to them? And say we want you to give these away for free? I'm not sure I know the logistics there.

Tom Anonymous:

Yeah, and that's a good point. I don't recall that when I'm told that the fee for using single use was a sure portion. Right. I don't recall exactly what they were looking to do as far as the retail side of the of the reusable bag that the municipality had created.

Erik Anderson:

Okay, great. I will definitely call Tahiti tomorrow and ask to see if I could talk to one of their staff members and kind of get to the bottom of that. So you certainly have worked in a lot of colorful places.

Tom Anonymous:

And I don't have to go for it.

Erik Anderson:

Yeah, totally. Okay. Do you have any idea if the reusable bag program was well received by residents? And did you guys have any way of measuring like success? To your recollection?

Tom Anonymous:

Yeah, I don't know that we had gotten to the point where we were looking to measure stuff while I was there. Pretty much near the end of my run, we were still working on getting bags distributed to all the homes. People I think, like the concept of cutting down on the single use from the environmental impact the the environmental concerns as far as the resources, thank you for that we're being used to single use plastic bags use a lot of depletable resources. So they liked the idea on that. I think there was some pushback or some negative thoughts as far as that Having a fee for a single use bag. So there was, there was positives and negatives on both sides of the issue. People were kind of going back and forth.

Erik Anderson:

And I think I actually forgot to ask earlier. What were any of the logistics issues that you, you know, challenges maybe that you had to overcome in distributing these reusable bags to residents? And how did you do that? Actually? Was it just asking them to come down to City Hall? Or did you have you know, distribute them with trash, trash pickup day, or were their teenagers home from college for the summer, hanging them up people's doorknobs?

Tom Anonymous:

I wish it I wish it had been as simple as any one of those Oh, no, we did not have a distribution list. We did not have a list of addresses in the town. So I had to get a list from the finance department. And I had to adjust the spreadsheet and make sure that all the addresses kind of lined up, and then plug them into geographic areas, bringing them down to a manageable size, and plotting them out. And then we had a big Saturday morning, and it was cold as I remember and damp and rainy. Everybody show up at the school. And here you go, here's your number of boxes and everything was lined out, you're in group four, a and you need to underneath the two bags. And here you go. And just getting all that information pulled together was the biggest challenge getting enough volunteers. And then through a printing error. We didn't have all the sheets, and we had people coming back. Okay, I'm done. And I got this much left. And then there were volunteers coming in. Piecemeal onesie. twosies for weeks after, hey, I got two hours, give me a couple of boxes. I'll go do what I can and tracking their progress and ticking off the list. Okay, these addresses received back now they're done. And then some people were coming in and going to see all going I haven't received one yet. I'd really like to have one. City Hall was distribute one and send me an email at this address. And okay, I took it off. So it was there was a lot of a lot of logistics involved in that, but then went on to all the houses it worked out. Well.

Erik Anderson:

And I'm sure you said this earlier. But refresh my memory how many households? Generally speaking, were there? I mean, it was 10,000. Sounds

Tom Anonymous:

like yeah, a little over 10,000, I believe.

Erik Anderson:

Wow. Okay. Okay, fantastic. And you were actually tracking each household that got their one, allocated rebag

Tom Anonymous:

created the list?

Erik Anderson:

Oh, my gosh,

Tom Anonymous:

the whole time, you know, over the weeks that they were being distributed? So very, very time consuming?

Erik Anderson:

I bet it was, can you think of easier ways to do it? I mean, if you're gonna go back in your time machine and kind of re engineer that process? How would you have done it differently? Have you ever thought about that, and when you're up late at night, counting sheep?

Tom Anonymous:

I would think there could be a few different ways. Obviously, if you only want to do one bag per house, you know, it's hard to have, like an open house or be at a table at a community event that can be somewhat difficult. But one way would be like, if you're interested in having a bag, come on down to City Hall, give us your address, and we've got a list here and we can just take care of it that way. That would be one way to just have people come in and self serve, so to speak, have them come in rather than try to put this huge army of people out there with different in varying levels of awareness and skill sets to try to distribute things. So having them come in on their own, if they were interested might be one option.

Erik Anderson:

Do you foresee any kind of ability to collaborate with whoever the waste hauler is? I mean, here in Elgin, its waste management or now they're calling themselves WM, because they want to be cool. I mean, I mean, isn't there some way to maybe partner with them? I mean, they literally see most households. I mean, I guess multifamily residential homes would be a pain in the butt, but they would cover a lot. Is there any opportunity there or is that just a nonstarter?

Tom Anonymous:

Well, I'm not a waste hauler. I don't run a company. I didn't sleep in the Holiday Inn Express last night. Because experts but right from what little I know of that business, you know, they're seeing hundreds of houses every day, and to have that stock in a truck so to speak. Hang on, hang on, hang on the tote, the refuse totes at each stop would add a lot of time to their routes and the routines that you could have other people go out in pickup trucks and that but now you're devoting staff or hiring staff to kind of reroute a route a second time. So there's there's challenges with just about any methods you would use. It's just a matter of what's what's the least painful.

Erik Anderson:

Gotcha. I guess that's it plan plan scene would be we ask our city council members to like strap on their safety vests and start distributing.

Tom Anonymous:

That's realistic. Like

Erik Anderson:

that's right. There you go. We have an election coming up and they knock on a lot of doors. Maybe you're out

Tom Anonymous:

of a bag? Yeah.

Erik Anderson:

Yeah. All right. Okay. Exit question here would be. If you had any other advice for municipalities and municipalities looking to implement a reusable shopping bag program, what would that advice be?

Tom Anonymous:

The biggest thing I can see is get people involved and get people aware, government tends to happen in a vacuum, because people are busy. And even though we publish agendas, we publish minutes so that people in essence really don't necessarily follow along, as much as they all may want to. So having public meetings and making that obvious what's going on, you could have ABC commission meeting every month, and you're publishing the agenda. But people aren't generally necessarily aware of that. But if you have focused meetings, and you're explain to people why we're looking to do this, what we want to do get that feedback, move forward with that, and not just relying on was published agendas and minutes to get the word out. That's something that would really be something strong to consider. And then also, when you have people that are on board with the program, that yeah, this is fantastic. We need to do this. I want to see this in my community. deputizing get them out there. I'm going door to door, saying By the way, I'm I'm John Doe, and you know, the city, the municipality, the village, is looking to implement this. What do you think? Where are you at on us? And how can we gather your input? So get the troops out? There would be another way to spread the word more than just relying on people on self awareness and research?

Erik Anderson:

Yeah, that's great advice. Just a few quick follow ups to what you just said. How many volunteers do you think you need for our community Elgin size in order to operationalize distribution of reusable shopping bags? Are we talking about 50? Are we talking about 100? Are we talking about 250? Or we're talking 1000? I mean, what would you guess?

Tom Anonymous:

I would think to get it done in a timely manner so that it's not dragging out where people are like, Oh, my gosh, you're still doing this and get burnt out from the volunteers. A city the size of Elgin over 100,000 is gonna need several 1000, maybe even close to 10,000 volunteers will be a guest. There's a lot of

Erik Anderson:

all right, yeah. Okay.

Tom Anonymous:

Wow. That's a lot of people who want to come in on their own coming to City Hall. So, you know, it's a multifaceted approach. That may work. All right.

Erik Anderson:

All right. Fair enough. I asked. You said, you told me. The other follow up question I had. Well, while you were sharing some really great advice for free, which we really appreciate here in Elgin is you I see a lot of our commissioners appointed to the sustainability Commission, as well as city council members and city staff talking about the first thing you talked about, which was trying to get the word out there trying to engage the citizens, you can't just count on people go into the city website and downloading meeting minutes, or you can't count on the newspaper to publish a story about about this and who reads newspapers anymore? I mean, do you have any suggestions on how to better engage the community in an issue like this in the 21st century? What have you seen other communities do and if you can go back in a time machine what would you do differently

Tom Anonymous:

if physical bills are still being mailed out for water use water Moses earlier,

Erik Anderson:

I just got one of myself so yes, they are.

Tom Anonymous:

So you got that something slipped into there so that you're not relying on somebody to read the header at the top of the bill or flip it over the backside but another piece of paper brightly covered, colored and attraction getting that they see it and go okay, let me read this real quick. That will be one way making sure that avenues such as yours podcasts or radio shows, WR Mn is still bringing staff in to talk occasionally. That can be something where you're they're reaching their audience.

Erik Anderson:

I didn't realize people from like, Cuba knew about W rm and Elgin cheese. Tom, you certainly know a lot of buttons down. Your research?

Tom Anonymous:

Yeah, I can grab radio stations from all over now.

Erik Anderson:

Nice. Uh huh. So getting the word out doing it electronically. And I think you'd said the water bill distribution would be great ideas. Any other thoughts on that?

Tom Anonymous:

Last thing I had, would be if the reverse 911 type of system was still in place or in place, or if there's a constant contact I have an email list that could go out to people that subscribe to that. I know I would get text alerts from area A area B area see where there was a traffic concern. Don't drive on this road. There's been an accident. Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's something that can go out to a by the way. Your municipality is looking at this initiative. Here's a way to learn more about it.

Erik Anderson:

Okay. Yeah, I know that we have a 311 system. And I think people use it. I've used it from time to time, and they're great. I love our 311 team. And we used to have like a citywide newsletter and used to get mailed. But apparently that was too expensive. So then they paid college kids to once a quarter drop it on people's doorsteps. And then I think they just went completely electronic. And so it's E newsletter. And now it's a part of the 311 site. And I don't know, I don't know how many people see that. But to your point, it would need to be pushed notification. You shouldn't just rely on people randomly deciding, hey, I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning. I'm going to go visit the city site. It's put not pull, right, yeah. Okay. Great advice. Thank you very much. I want to thank you for your time, I know we're coming up on a hard stop here. And I just wanted to say that, you know, for somebody who, you know, worked in a community that you know, cared enough about addressing a really serious problem, which is single use plastic bags, and they got really creative and implemented a fee. And then they got really creative around equity issues and said, Let's just give away some bags to residents. So that, you know, people who want to avoid the fee can avoid the fee and not have to buy bags in order to avoid the fee. A community that was that innovative, and that thoughtful hats off to you. And I appreciate that you worked as part of a larger team, but thank you for, you know, kind of going the extra effort in helping that community do their small part in helping solve the plastic problem that we have on this planet, not just in the state or just in this country, but on this planet? So thank you.

Tom Anonymous:

You're welcome. And you're very correct, that the plastic is a problem everywhere on every corner of the planet. So hopefully more communities get involved and we can do what we can to start remediating that issues. And thank you for your thank you for your interest.

Erik Anderson:

Yeah, absolutely. We're trying to do our best right here in Elgin and we'll see if the commission and the council can, can get it done. So thank you for your time. If we have additional questions in the future, can we give you a call and and you know, continue to like fog your voice or change your alias?

Tom Anonymous:

But can we contact you? Absolutely. I'll try to put them in the umbrella drink. We'll make the day of it.

Erik Anderson:

Fantastic. Okay. Thank you very much for your time, Tom, you have a great day. So do you like the interview, John?

John Zawada:

Yeah, sure. I found it interesting. As I'm asked to do, let me bottom line it for you. First, it sounds like implementing a reusable shopping bag program might be a good idea before the city of Elgin fully implements any single use plastic bag fee ordinance. At least that's what Tom's municipality did. But sounds kind of smart in my opinion. Second, handing out reusable bags won't solve anything or cushion the economic impact of a single use plastic bag fee ordinance if the commission doesn't invest in serious public education, focused on not forgetting the reusable shopping bags in the back of people's car, which is exactly the same problem you and I currently struggle with Eric, I know, I know. Third distribution of reusable shopping bags and a city the size of Elgin is going to be a huge undertaking. And before you ask me to volunteer for another of your nonprofit community projects like this one, I suggest sustainability commission, go talk to the Friends of the Fox River. I hear they have an army of volunteers who know how to do stuff like this.

Erik Anderson:

You know, I love you, my dear. But I'm not sure you sound like a supporter of the proposed single use plastic bag fee ordinance or any efforts to distribute maybe free reusable shopping bags that are being talked about all around town.

John Zawada:

Of course I am and stop putting words in my mouth there. The idea of microplastics being found in drinking water supplies, and even in human blood is concerning regardless of anyone's political affiliation. And as an accountant and tax professional, I know that the only way to affect change and human behavior is through economics. If people see things as free, they're likely just like those flimsy plastic grocery bags, there isn't any motivation to stop using them. However, once you put a price on accepting those bags during the checkout process, it will change many people's thinking and more importantly, their behavior. This is a simple idea that anyone who took econ 101 knows,

Erik Anderson:

as always, John, thank you. Thank you for bottom lining it for me. It's one of your superpowers. And another reason I love you, in addition to of course, your canned pickles. Yeah. Thanks,

John Zawada:

sir. I need to get back to my garden. By the way, please make sure you have marked your calendar that my next trip to Michigan has already scheduled for September 2.

Erik Anderson:

So noted, John. And on that note, I want to thank you for standing in for tea today. I also owe my friend Tom. A ton of gratitude for doing that interview with me. And of course, I'm always thankful to our dear, dear listening audience for tuning in. Now, Tomorrow is Monday, August 8, and the Elgin watchmen will drop one more Our Special Edition podcast featuring an interview with the executive director of the environmental defenders of McHenry County. That organization and the executive director was an integral part of the villager Woodstock's efforts to adopt a single use plastic bag fee ordinance a number of years ago. Now, that's that that last special edition podcast will carry us right up to Tuesday, August 9, which is the day that the Elgin sustainability commission is meeting at 6pm at the Edward shok center of Elgin to recommend I guess, to the Elgin city council, whether or not they should consider a similar ordinance. I hope to see many of you at Tuesday's meeting. And until that time, I encourage all of you out there to find ways to get involved, be engaged, and always keep watch.