Come to the BI Zero Waste booth at the Bainbridge Island Farmers Market this Saturday, June 11, anytime between 10am-2pm, for the opportunity to talk with the program supervisor of Kitsap Solid Waste, Caitlin Newman.

In order to promote curbside composting, KSW is giving away kitchen food scrap containers (see photo) and certified compostable kitchen bags to those who subscribe to curbside composting, as well as a guide to curbside compostables and a Keep it Fresh! food storage guide.

Also available will be the new Recycle Right recycling guide and brochures on two popular takeback programs, PaintCare and MedProject (prescription drugs).

BI Zero Waste will be raffling off* The Zero Waste Cookbook, by Giovanna Torrico and Amelia Wasiliev. It contains 100 recipes for using food you might otherwise have composted, such as apple skin biscuits, leftover pasta frittata, and overripe avocado & chocolate mousse.

We're a quarter of the way to filling the discard station spots on July 4th. As a station guide, you help festival goers make sure they throw in the right recycle-compost-landfill bin. In this way, we keep an impressive 75% of event discards from ending up in the landfill.

Please go here to sign up for one of the remaining 38 slots.

There’s still time to get tickets for the most fabulous fashion event on the island! ReFashion Bainbridge presents Fashion in the Forest outside at IslandWood. Come anytime between 1-4pm on Sunday, June 12, to traverse the trails, where over 15 models and designers will be stationed to show off their upcycled ready-to-wear, theatrical or mystery box creations.

Or better yet, get a preview at Zero Waste's display in the lobby case of the Bainbridge Public Library June 16-30. If these dispensers are a success, you may be able to borrow them for your community event as well.

Our library showcase coincidentally begins on World Refill Day, a global public awareness campaign to prevent plastic pollution and help people live with less waste.

Ridwell is a doorstep recycling service for certain non-curbside recyclables/reusables. Every two weeks they collect "threads," light bulbs, batteries and plastic film, plus one category that changes each time. Ridwell's preference is to find a reuse for what they collect; otherwise, they recycle through vetted businesses.

BI Zero Waste first hosted a Ridwell representative in a Zoom meeting in February 2021 to introduce them to our community. A couple months later, this Seattle start-up expanded to Bainbridge and presently services 570 island households.

We're writing about them now because of a new material they've added to the Bainbridge program: #1 PET clear plastic clamshell containers. For an extra $2, they will include a kitchen-sized plastic bag to fill with this type of plastic, which is not accepted in our curbside or transfer station recycling. If you don't subscribe, you might find a neighbor who does and chip in for a bag to recycle your clamshells.

Ridwell also lets households recycle Styrofoam for an additional $9 a (bigger-sized) bag. And recently, they committed to collecting bread tabs, bottle caps and empty prescription drug bottles twice a year as the extra category.

If you're interested in talking with them in person, come to the July 3rd Street Dance. They will have a box truck by Ericksen and Winslow Way as part of the Touch-a-Truck experience.

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