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Green Project Terminology: The Language of the Green Wave • 25

At City Year’s locations across the United States and in South
Africa, young people—called “corps members”—serve full-time for 10
months.
City Year’s vision is that one day the most commonly asked question
of a young person will be, “Where are you going to do your service
year?”
City Year leverages the talent, energy, and idealism of corps mem-
bers who serve as tutors, mentors, and role models to help students
stay on track—and get back on track—to graduate.

BiodegradaBle

Biodegradability of products used by project managers and by the prod-
ucts of their projects is another one of the key issues with which PMs must
deal. Biodegradable has a variety of definitions depending on the point of
view. The foci of the definition differences have to do with rate of biode-
gradability and if the product is really biodegradable. One of the prod-
ucts that is getting a lot of interest is biodegradable diapers. We use this
example because it illustrates the definition, not because Green PM is at its
infancy. Still, it’s a reminder that, indeed, Green PM is at a very tender age!
Disposable diapers have always been a problem in landfills. Their tendency
to hang around forever has caused a surge in the manufacture of “biode-
gradable diapers.” While diapers make up only about 3% of the landfill
space, they lag behind only newspapers and food/beverage containers, and
amount to 10 billion diapers annually in the United States. The energy
costs to wash cloth diapers far outweigh the benefits of using cloth diapers.
Parker Mathusa, program director of the New York State Energy Research
and Development Authority, explained that cloth diapers changed six
times a day use 142 gallons of water a week to launder. Cloth diapers gen-
erate 50% more processed solid waste than disposables and consume three
times more nonrenewable energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, for
heating and pumping water to wash them than do disposables. The con-
troversy now arises with biodegradable diapers in that if they are put into
plastic bags and put out for trash collection, they will not be exposed to
the elements they need to biodegrade. Some manufacturers, Procter and
Gamble being one of them, are recommending that biodegradable diapers
be composed to allow the same organisms that are present in compost