This holiday season, while kids across Tennessee are unwrapping toys (probably with too much packaging), we've been playing with LEGOs ourselves. And it's for a good cause.
We teamed up with Eastern Tennessee State University students Kevin Fulmer and Chris Mahi to create a stop-motion LEGO video that explains our Waste to Jobs legislation through the eyes of a third-grader. Because if we can't explain our state's waste problem simply enough for a kid to understand, how can we expect busy voters and legislators to grasp it?
The Beauty of Building Blocks
Here's why LEGOs are perfect for this story: they can be broken apart and rebuilt over and over again. Just like aluminum, glass, and plastic can. Yet here in Tennessee – ranked 48th in the nation for recycling – we're literally burying these valuable building blocks in landfills while Tennessee businesses are begging for them.
Even a third-grader gets this simple fact: it's silly to pay money to bury stuff that other people want to buy.
The Plot Twist
Here's what doesn't make sense: Major brands have funding ready right now to help states build recycling infrastructure through Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – a fancy term for a simple idea: the companies that make the packaging help pay to recover it. They're already doing this in other states and countries. But Tennessee? We're leaving that money on the table while taxpayers foot the bill for landfills.
Why We Need a New Approach
Since the early 1990s, Tennessee has tried to fund recycling using grants paid for by the fees (tipping taxes) from dumping stuff in landfills. That's right – our recycling efforts rely on us burying tons of useful materials. It's completely backwards.
The Tennessee Waste to Jobs Act would fix this broken system by creating a way to accept and use the funding that companies have set aside. No additional taxes – it's about opening the door to business investment that creates jobs and actually saves taxpayer money.
The Real Present Under the Tree
This holiday season, while Tennessee families deal with mountains of packaging waste, we could be unwrapping a different kind of gift: an economic opportunity that turns our trash into Tennessee jobs.
Watch the video and share it with everyone you know – especially if they have kids who love LEGOs. Because sometimes it takes a third-grader's perspective to see just how simple the solution really is.
Watch "Brick By Brick: How to fund a circular economy in Tennessee." Special thanks to ETSU students Kevin Fulmer and Chris Mahi and on-screen talent, Isabella for bringing this vision to life, piece by piece.