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From Shale to Plastic

October Sustainability Spotlight, Tuesday, Oct 13, 2026

(Source:  Alexandra Kanik | Ohio Valley ReSource)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89287884335?pwd=a66n9DRguEpnYlCnxAN9ssYqbhPqov.1

Plastic, especially in single-use items, is often seen mainly as a waste and litter issue.  But many of its environmental and public health impacts start earlier in the plastic lifecycle, during fossil fuel extraction, refining and polymer manufacturing.

Join us at our October Sustainability Spotlight as we explore the often-overlooked upstream impacts of plastic.  We’ll trace the journey from extracting natural gas from shale formations to processing fossil-fuel-derived chemicals into plastic feedstocks and manufacturing everyday products such as plastic straws.

We’ll also examine how the infrastructure that supports plastic production can negatively affect communities near natural gas extraction sites and petrochemical facilities.  The key takeaway is clear:  reducing plastic pollution means doing much more than managing waste after it is created. It also requires recognizing plastic’s strong ties to the fossil fuel economy and the burdens that production places on nearby communities through air, water, and soil.

Our speaker, Larisa Mednis, serves as the Clean Air Council’s Southwest Pennsylvania Advocacy Coordinator.  She leads regional efforts to reduce fossil fuel dependence and support the transition to clean energy.  Her work focuses on environmental monitoring, watchdog activities, public policy

advocacy, and community organizing around the impacts of Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, about 40 minutes north of Pittsburgh.

Opened in 2022, this Shell facility turns ethane from natural gas into ethylene and polyethylene, key materials used to make plastic products.  As a major petrochemical facility in Western Pennsylvania, it highlights the link between expanded natural gas production, petrochemical growth, and plastics manufacturing—especially single-use products and packaging that the fossil fuel industry sees as a major growth market.

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 Renewable Energy for Tucson’s Future

SUSTAINABILITY SPOTLIGHT

A panel discussion
Tuesday, September 8, 6:00-7:15 pm
https://youtu.be/cUzS-hhOJOMpwd=fHH7wdbbiaiwrtmcthjhwDWbcPJDBv.1

Long-term drought, rising temperatures, air and water pollution, and increasing electric bills. The need to increase our energy productivity and decarbonize our economy has never been more apparent than now, but how do we get started?  This panel discussion will bring together a variety of viewpoints about what we can start doing today in Tucson for a more sustainable energy and economic future, from household and small business retrofitting to the proposed Distributed Capacity Procurement plan for the city.
 
Moderated by Stuart Moody, training coordinator for Sustainable Tucson.  Invited panelists are Michael Catanzaro, City of Tucson’s Energy Manager, and Neil Saunders, Renewable Development Manager for TEP. 
 
Jason Laros, former energy manager for Tucson and now co-principal of Resilience Developers, will serve as discussant.

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Mitigating Air Pollution and Climate Change: System-wide Alternatives to Fossil Fuel

August 11, 2026  •  6:00

https://youtu.be/uaR80-FUcOA

Join us for conversation with three thought leaders in the field of energy productivity and a healthier atmosphere.

Natalie Shepp is the Climate and Community Engagement Manager with the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality (PDEQ).

She will discuss the impacts on air and climate pollution from our local energy generation, and the opportunities and challenges associated with meeting climate goals related to this sector.

Albert Kaufman works with Quiet Cean PDX (QCPDX), a grassroots nonprofit in Portland, Oregon.  His skills in marketing have served not only QCPDX but also healthcare professionals, restaurants, photographers, and other small businesses.

He will describe how QCPDX has expanded their reach and made significant impact in Portland and beyond.

Sam Cloud is the Arizona Clean Energy Organizer for Greenlight America, working with rural communities, local leaders, and partner organizations to support responsibly sited renewable energy projects across the state.

She will touch on how utility-scale solar, wind, and energy storage can reduce fossil-fuel generation, climate pollution, and harmful air emissions.
 

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Electrification: Everything You Wanted to Know, But Didn’t Know Who to Ask

July 21 @ 6:00

Join us for the July Sustainability Spotlight on Electrification. Our speaker, Gordon Nuttall, a coach with GoElectricAZ, will share an overview of the opportunities for electrifying our homes and the benefits of doing so. He will explore the following issues:

  • Learn how you can make your home more energy efficient!
  • Find practical ways to save energy without spending much.
  • Explore installing a heat pump for efficient heating and cooling, or one for efficient water heating.
  • Learn about backup battery systems in case the power goes out.
  • Learn about technologies and available programs to help with costs.

There will be ample time for Q&A, and you can leave with an action plan

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Early Arizona Politics and the Central Arizona Project

Tuesday, June 9
6:00-7:15 pm

Decisions made long ago structure the contemporary debates among the Colorado Basin states today.  This presentation explores early politics internal to Arizona to explain some of our current situation. Despite benefiting from early federal investments in dam building and “reclamation,” between 1923 and 1944, business interests in the state of Arizona opposed approval of the 1922 Colorado Compact governing use of the Colorado River and saw California as their enemy.

Concerns about the adequacy of flows began even before the Compact, but became a most unwelcome discussion in the 1940s when the state’s leaders acquiesced to the federal government’s terms in order to fund plans for the Central Arizona Project.  

Knowing early history helps explain why our state took so long to receive and utilize its full share of Colorado River water, and why users of the Central Arizona Project are so vulnerable to shortages on the river.  This presentation will conclude with some information about Arizona’s recent strategies for dealing with shortages.

SPEAKER

Julia Fonseca is a hydrologist, now consulting as Madrean Resources. While at Pima County Regional Flood Control District, she was the project manager for various recharge feasibility studies in the Tucson area, which culminated in the Lower Santa Cruz Replenishment

Project for CAP recharge and the Marana High Plains effluent recharge project. Later, she helped to develop County programs for riparian protection and restoration, and compliance with the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.  She is currently writing a book about George Edson Philip Smith, Tucson’s first home-grown hydrologist.

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Free Speech, Right Speech, and the Protection of Our Planet

Tuesday, May 12, 6:00 pm

It would be hard to identify an issue more pressing than the preservation of our precious planet. To complicate things, there is a gnawing sense that we are running out of time and the task is now impossible. The First Amendment gives us wide berth to advocate for the survival of life on Earth. But is anger-fueled or sensational speech skillful and effective? What do our spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, have to say about “right speech”? And how might its tenets be employed to help us protect the planet — and keep our sanity? This talk by David Bodney aims to shed some light on these issues.

Our Speaker:
David J. Bodney serves as Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP, where he practices media and constitutional law, and teaches media law as a Professor of Practice at the College of Law

at UA. A graduate of Yale College (B.A., ’76) and the University of Virginia (J.D./M.A., Foreign Affairs, ’79), he served as a legislative aide to Sen. John V. Tunney (D – CA) and began his legal practice at Brown & Bain (now Perkins Coie) in Phoenix.

He served as editor and general counsel to New Times (1990-92), spent 22 years developing an international media law practice at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, and founded the Media and Entertainment Law Group at Ballard Spahr in 2014. David was drawn to Arizona in substantial part to practice Indian law, and he has represented one tribe on a wide array of issues, including natural resources and water law, for over 30 years, a relationship that began through his partnership at Steptoe with Bruce Babbitt. His professional bio can be found at www.ballardspahr.com. In 2020, David moved to Tucson, where he continues to practice and teach—a move that has allowed him to deepen his 50-year practice of Zen Buddhism through Upaya Tucson, an affiliate of the Upaya Zen Center of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Sustainable, Affordable Building: Ancient & Modern Designs for Living in the Sonoran Desert

Tuesday, April 14, 2026, 6:00-7:10 pm

Many of the solutions for climate and habitat resilience are hiding in plain sight.  Come to this month’s Sustainability Spotlight to learn about building design principles that help urban and rural communities to weather extreme temperatures and dryness more effectively and, ultimately, at lower cost than “building as usual.”

Our speaker, Bob Vint, has a decades-long career in architecture and is an active teacher in the classroom and in the field (vintarchitects.net). His latest field project involved an ‘Alternative Spring Break’ with his U of A architecture students to Agua Prieta, Sonora, where they helped to build a home for a local family, in partnership with the Rancho Feliz Charitable Organization (ranchofeliz.com). Working alongside local builders and community members, students completed the rough framing for a ‘Highly-Johansen House,’ an economical, insulated shelter named in honor of two key Rancho Feliz volunteers & supporters. Students and faculty volunteers stayed at ‘La Hacienda Feliz’ volunteer dormitory, for which Vint donated the design in 2020-2021. This community-engaged learning model connects design education with real-world impact and is a model that may have real-world applications in a variety of endeavors.

BOB VINT is a native Tucsonan who has practiced as a licensed architect in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Massachusetts.  He has served as preservation architect for the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Pima County, the most significant historic building in Arizona, as well as for the pre-historic Native American Cliff Dwellings of the

Sierra Ancha in the Tonto National Forest (dating to 1290, built of stone with mud mortar – a preservation study carried out for the U.S. Forest Service.)  Additional projects of note include Linda Ronstadt’s Tucson residence, the main entrance of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and more recently, the expansion of The Loft Cinema.

Vint is the principal co-author of a book on affordable housing in the Southwest published by the US Department of Housing & Urban Development, Southwest Housing Traditions: Design, Materials, Performance (2005 huduser.org ).  Since 2011, he has been a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture. His courses include the History & Theory of Urban Design, and Arid Region Urbanism featuring field trips throughout the Southwest.

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The Gifts of Trees

Tuesday, March 10
6:00-7:15 pm
I am the bread of kindness and the flower of beauty.  
Ye who pass by, listen to my prayer: Harm me not.
– Ancient prayer, in Portuguese forest preservations
 
On a hot summer’s day, trees can cool the air, and the ground beneath them, as much as 9-13 degrees.  Trees give many more such gifts to us every day.  Join us for a conversation with Adam Farrell-Wortman, Horticultural Director at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and arborist Nazareth Taraz, who will paint a picture of the amazing gifts of trees to humans and to habitat, and describe how we can best serve the trees in our desert community.

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Our Sustainable Transportation Future:  What Will It Look Like?

Tuesday, February 10, 6:00 pm

We are fast approaching a special election to decide on RTA Next.  People on all sides of the dual-proposition initiative have compelling points to make about our current transportation system in Tucson and Pima County. 
 
The challenge is not so much about moving people faster, it’s about reducing the distance people must travel.  Visionaries in and out of planning departments are reframing mobility around convenience, safety, and neighborhood-scale access rather than continued roadway expansion.
 
Consider:  84% of all trips in the Metro area are by car; Tucson drivers log over 8 billion miles annually.  This is travel we cannot afford to maintain, given that most city and county roads are in poor condition with a $2–3 billion repair backlog.
 
Local plans (Move Tucson, RTA 2045, Pima County) share emerging themes: prioritize safety, equity, and multimodal options; design from the sidewalk inward; and recognize that widening roads cannot solve congestion.  All seem to agree that ultimately our financial constraints and the urgency of carbon drawdown require a shift from auto-dependence to greener forms of mobility.
 
Join us for an animated discussion of how RTA Next might fit into, and/or postpone, the sustainable future of mobility in southern Arizona.
 
Our panel will include Logan Havens, board member of the Living Streets Alliance, leaders in the Complete Streets Initiative passed by Mayor & Council in February 2019 and advisors to the City’s climate action plan.

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The Environment in 2026: At the State Capital and Beyond

January 6, 2026  •  6:00


Join us on Zoom, Tuesday, January 6, at 6:00 pm for our Sustainability Spotlight, “The Environment in 2026: At the State Capital and Beyond.” We expect that the coming year will bring challenges to many important aspects of local and state life, especially looking at environment, health, and related concerns. The program will look ahead at what can be expected in coming months from state (and some national) legislative and administrative actions, with a focus on what will have particular impact on Tucson and Southern AZ – and what we can do.
 
Our panel now includes State Senator Priya Sundareshan (LD 18), Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, and Kirsten Engel, Chief, Environmental Protection Unit of the AZ Attorney General’s Office.   They will preview the policies, places, and programs that Arizonans will need to protect and promote.  Their complementary perspectives will give us a full picture of what we can and should do – as individuals and as an organization – to support an agenda of environmental protection and justice as we work for a sustainable future.  
 
Following our guests’ comments, we expect a lively question & answer session, with a shared conversation on how to maintain and restore momentum on this work.