This Fall, San Franciscans could be slapped with a fine for co-mingling cucumber ends, melon rinds and assorted organic waste with other refuse.

On Tuesday, Mayor  Gavin Newsom's proposal for "the most comprehensive mandatory composting and recycling law in the country" passed.  This mandate is one step closer to realizing the city's goal of cutting  greenhouse gas emissions and sending no waste to landfills or incinerators by 2020.

San Francisco currently diverts 72 percent of its waste.  Diverting recyclables and compostables from landfills would boost the city's rate to 90 percent.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports, "The rationale behind the move is clear. Material like food scraps and plant clippings that go into landfills take up costly space and decompose to form methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide."

So today's  email, subject line "My Supreme Court nominee," from President  Obama may not have been as playful and comprehensive as "Lost" in 8:15, but the multimedia ,e-nnouncement, with eight bonus Organizing videos plus links to Facebook, Twitter and Digg, is all about bringing new people up to speed -- and into the Organizing for America fold.  Even if you missed the first season and its exciting cliffhanger November 4.

With GM set to close 1,100 or more dealerships today, a day after Chrysler announced plans to close 789 of its own car dealerships across the U.S., communities big and (mostly) small will be reeling from the loss of a local business. For many communities, this loss is just the latest in a string of losses, as the recession has taken its toll on the economy.

While there's no telling what's in store for each individual dealership...how might communities  deal with the loss proactively?   Read more. 

"As the global economy has grown, our ability to make complex products with complex supply chains has outpaced our ability to comprehend the consequences — for ourselves and the planet... But what if we could seamlessly calculate the full lifetime effect of our actions on the earth and on our bodies? Not just carbon footprints but social and biological footprints as well? What if we could think ecologically? That's what psychologist Daniel Goleman describes in his forthcoming book, Ecological Intelligence. Using a young science called industrial ecology, businesses and green activists alike are beginning to compile the environmental and biological impact of our every decision — and delivering that information to consumers in a user-friendly way."

Ecological Intelligence is 1 of 10 Trends featured in TIME magazines's "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now" issue.  The other nine trends:

Peter Senge and colleagues detail in The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World  three competencies that separate leading organizations from the rest: 

From the SocialEdge Blog:  "IBM Global's 2006 report (pdf version here) : Business model innovation: the new route to competitive advantage " includes a striking graph illustrating the finding of IBM's financial analysts that "companies that put more emphasis on business model innovation experienced significantly better operating margin growth (over a five-year period) than their peers." And business model innovation is something that lies at the very heart of social entrepreneurship."

Of particular interest to us as we are working on a project to help solve the global e-waste problem, are descriptions by authors John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan of three styles of business model used by leading social entrepreneurs:

This Seth Godin post makes the wonderful distinction between process and content.  As we prepare to publicly reorient the purpose and market position of Small Planet Partners around values -- now manifesting, though  a mere murmur to the subconscious for far too long, I hope to convey process strengths in the work-in-progress that follows.  Please share your candid first impressions, reactions and suggestions to this preview:

Fresh off an Obama Organizing Fellowship in the swing state of Missouri, I am (working...quickly! :-) ) to raise funds to produce a documentary film -- FROM DENVER TO NOVEMBER -- about the netroots, its impact on Presidential politics and the potential for a brand new model of social change under an Obama administration.

Evidence -- plus my own intuition / experience -- suggest an Obama administration can deliver a new model of social change: a parallel path coordinating top-down governmental change with unprecedented community action, efficiently enabled by web technology, social media, and where both citizen activists and citizen journalists play vital roles.

This Saturday, May 10, 2008, the world will come together through film.

You and your friends are invited to a free public screening we've organized on the Plaza  in Kansas City.  Stop by for a few minutes or take in more of the show at Unity Temple, 707 West 4th Street between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. 

In a world where people are often divided by borders, differences and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that -- to help people see the world through someone else's eyes -- through the power of film.

When Bill Clinton ran for President, he brought Hillary into the equation. Bill's appeal: a "two for one." What's not to like about benefitting from the experience and commitment of two accomplished public servants?

So what might Obama bring to the White House?

How about a critical-mass manifestation of George H.W. Bush's "a thousand points of light"?

It's the perfect storm:

• a candidate with a community organizing background;
• expert use of the Internet to efficiently connect and mobilize the masses; and
• a huge and growing database of Obama activists, most of whom have flagged those issues -- Economy, Education, War, etc. -- that personally matter most.

Never before have we had the means and national motive to engage individuals en masse, after an election to contribute to solving social and environmental challenges.