Institute For Local Self Reliance

Institute for Local Self-Reliance - Washington, DC
2425 18th Street - NW
Washington - DC 20009-2096
Phone: 202-232-4108; Fax: 202-332-0463

Institute for Local Self-Reliance - Minneapolis, MN
1313 Fifth Street SE
Minneapolis - MN 55414-1546
Phone: 612-379-3815; Fax: 612-379-3920

Home Page http://www.ilsr.org/
info@ilsr.org

The Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) is a small organization with a remarkable track record for breaking new ground in promoting sustainable communities. In 1978 RAIN magazine described ILSR as an organization that "puts hard numbers on soft dreams". In 1993 United States Senator Paul Wellstone called ILSR "one of this country's leading practical thinkers in the area of sustainable economic development".Every year since its founding ILSR has researched the feasibility of communities generating a significant amount of wealth from local resources and has worked with the increasing numbers of communities interested in moving in that direction. In our initial years we focused on our surrounding Washington, D.C. neighborhood, Adams Morgan. Our urban townhouse became a working model of our ideas, with rooftop hydroponic gardens and solar collectors and a commercial basement sprout operation and composting toilet. We researched the income flows and ownership patterns of the neighborhood and helped to build cooperative businesses.

Later we widened our lens to examine cities, and then regions. We became a national organization and worked with state and national governments. Yet our work continued to be informed by our projects in communities and our connections to grassroots organizations, small businesses, farmers and local governments.
In 1974 our conceptual framework was novel. ILSR was the first to systematically apply the concept of local self-reliance to urban areas. A 1975 PlowBoy interview in Mother Earth News with ILSR's founders presented this concept to readers who had been exposed only to the notion of rural self-sufficiency. ILSR offered a vision of sustainable, self-reliant cities that extract the maximum value from their local human, capital and natural resources. That vision cut across traditional environmental, economic development and community development lines.

In 1978 and 1980 two ILSR studies made concrete and accessible the relatively new concept of economic "leakages". ILSR was the first organization to painstakingly track the flow of energy related dollars through an urban economy. "Planning for Energy Self-Reliance: The Case of the District of Columbia" concluded that 85 cents of every energy dollar leaves the community, a far higher leakage than from any other household expenditure. Our conclusion was that energy conservation should play a key role in urban economic development strategies.

In 1980 ILSR was the first to investigate the energy conservation and solar energy potential for a major city (Baltimore) and was one of the first groups to formally testify before a utility regulatory commission in favor of investing in energy conservation as a cheaper alternative to new energy supplies.
ILSR also tracked the dollar flows of a neighborhood franchise--MacDonald's--in study that remains a classic. We found that of the $750,000 spent there almost two-thirds left not only the neighborhood but the metropolitan area. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we insisted that every time a fast food restaurant opened the number of jobs in the local economy actually declined.

ILSR has always believed that with the proper public policies, communities could become far more productive places. Our energy and solid waste work reflects this orientation. Indeed, ILSR defines waste not only as materials we throw away (e.g. garbage) but as available resources we do not harness (e.g. wind and sunlight).
In 1979, the conventional wisdom was that solar electric devices (photovoltaics) would be part of orbiting satellite systems or centralized utility owned applications. For the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, ILSR analyzed the potential for decentralized solar power plants. "Decentralized Applications for Photovoltaics" concluded that decentralized PVs were cost-competitive with centralized applications.
In 1983, after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law that required electric utilities to purchase power from independent producers, ILSR published "Be Your Own Power Company", the first and to this day still the only popular how-to book for small scale power producers.

In 1990, "The $6 Billion Solution: Making Minnesota Energy Self-Reliant", provided Minnesota policymakers, business and citizen organizations the first assessment of the potential for substituting homegrown fuels for imported energy and offered strategies to achieve that goal.

With regard to solid waste, ILSR has always argued that these are valuable resources that, if recovered, could strengthen local and regional economies. In the late 1970s and early 1980s ILSR was the primary national group providing assistance to grassroots organizations fighting garbage incinerators. By the mid-1980's ILSR's citizen training efforts helped communities defeat or cancel over 150 large-scale waste incinerators. We helped to stop more than 30 proposed incinerators with the dual argument that incinerators were expensive and polluting and that they foreclosed the more valuable option of recycling.

To prove to policymakers that communities would recycle in 1986 we published the first case studies on the subject, "Beyond 25 Percent". In 1988, "Beyond 40 Percent" became a bestseller among activists and policymakers. For the first time it offered concrete evidence that recycling and composting could become the primary waste handling strategy rather than playing only supplementary roles.

Stopping incinerators made recycling possible. Recycling made economic development possible. But, as we argued in our 1989 report, "Salvaging the Future", the most important economic benefit occurs when the recovered materials are manufactured into finished products within the local economy. That report, and subsequent more refined studies, concluded that a city of one million could generate 250 additional jobs if it recycled 50 percent of its waste. That same city could generate about 1,500 jobs and add about $250 million to the local economy and support more than two dozen manufacturing plants utilizing the recycled materials.
ILSR combines research and action. With respect to solid waste, we began working with a handful of cities that embraced our strategic framework to fashion an economic development strategy. Since 1990, our efforts have helped to establish 15 largely locally-owned businesses with more than 250 employees and attracted more than $20 million in new investment to low-income and working-class communities.

Today we are in the fourth year of the most extended recession since the 1930s. Some cities are cutting back recycling programs as part of austerity budgets. In 1993, our widely disseminated "The Economic Benefits of Recycling" presented the hard facts that in tight fiscal times cities would do better to expand rather than to abandon their recycling programs. For the first time a single brief report offered operating data on the comparative costs of landfilling, incineration and recycling/composting and the direct and indirect economic impacts of each.

ILSR's interest in local resources extends beyond used materials to new, renewable materials. In 1986, ILSR's "Substituting Agricultural Materials for Petroleum-Based Industrial Products" was the first state-based study of the potential for making agricultural materials into industrial products. In 1992, a broader and more comprehensive report, "The Carbohydrate Economy: Making Chemical and Industrial Materials from Plant Matter", broke new ground by arguing that a new economy is emerging that could potentially satisfy three major objectives: environmental protection, rural development and the preservation of small farms. One leading agricultural journal, AGWEEK dubbed ILSR the "value-added experts" and told its readers, "If you're interested in sustainable development or value-added agriculture, or you're just plain curious about the concept of a carbohydrate economy, then this report is for you."

In October 1992 our work on plant-derived plastics led to our co-hosting the first International Workshop on Biodegradability. Some forty scientists from around the world discussed the elements of a common definition and testing protocol for degradable materials. The proceedings were published in "Toward Common Ground".
In 1990, "A Molecular Basis for Development: Environmental Policy for the 1990s" developed the conceptual framework for a comprehensive materials policy. A year later this approach was applied to one state. "Getting the Most from Our Materials: Making New Jersey the State of the Art" and the subsequent statewide conference, broke new ground by examining the resource interconnections among the agriculture, energy, transportation, solid waste, water and sewage sectors.

In the 1990s, the new kid on the block is "sustainable development". And ILSR is playing a key role in integrating the concepts of human scale, community development and intra-generational equity into a concept that tends to be purely focused on natural resource protection. In early 1993 ILSR staff ran workshops in Kentucky's pioneering conference, "From Rio to the State Capitols", and delivered the keynote address to the opening session of Minnesota's Sustainable Development Initiative. The latter speech, "Setting the Compass: Toward a Sustainable Minnesota" was the first time a local self-reliance framework had been applied to such a statewide initiative.

ILSR's emphasis on the primacy of territorial communities--neighborhoods, cities, counties, regions--has led us to examine the role that transportation subsidies play in encouraging long distribution systems. In 1992, "Getting from Here to There: Building a Rational Transportation System" offered an analysis of a transportation pricing and financing framework that embraced two new economic principles: full cost pricing and least cost accounting.

ILSR's emphasis on the need for local authority led us to monitor developments that undermine this authority. In the 1970s we reported on constitutional precedents that enabled cities to engage in locally oriented economic development techniques. In 1987 ILSR was one of the first American groups to offer a critical analysis of the free trade issue in "Free Trade: The Great Destroyer". Since then we have been actively involved in the debate about GATT and NAFTA. In keeping with our history, philosophy and experience, we maintain that global rules that govern commerce are needed and that these rules should be designed to encourage sustainable communities rather than merely to encourage greater mobility.

In its first 19 years, ILSR has been remarkably focussed. From our first brochure to the first issue of our newsletter, "Self-Reliance", to the last chapters of Neighborhood Power and Self-Reliant Cities to the present, we have elaborated a vision of ecological and locally controlled economies. In 1982 via a full page ad in Mother Jones ILSR announced our vision of a dual economy in which products are made locally from local resources while information travels freely around the planet. We called this dual economy, "A Global Village and a Globe of Villages". In June 1993, in an article in the Utne Reader we laid out the framework for a North American Free Trade Agreement that would be equitable and environmentally sound and which would promote a sense of community.

On the verge of our 20th birthday, ILSR won't rest on our laurels. Indeed, as our age indicates, we may just be achieving maturity. The vision has become fuller and more sophisticated, informed not only by our research but by our experience in building businesses and developing policies in dozens of communities. We look forward to the future.