Over 20 persons attended via Zoom our first Zero Waste general meeting since January. Seattle Public Utilities' residential and commercial program managers Becca Fong and Pat Kaufman regaled us with interesting statistics and ongoing challenges. Kitsap Solid Waste's counterparts Chris Piercy and Caitlin Newman weighed in with how and why things are sometimes done differently "across the pond". The meeting minutes are posted here.

Chloe Brezsny lives at 4615 New Sweden Av. and runs a farm/nursery operation. She will take any size plastic, ceramic, or terra cotta pots and trays. Please leave in the collection bin at the farm stand or right by the driveway gate.

Bainbridge High School's Model United Nations Club is partnering with the Seattle-based nonprofit Refugee Artisan Initiative by helping to collect empty and clean 4-ounce baby food jars and 12-ounce jam jars for the refugees' candle-making project.

Collection points are outside the front of the high school or inside the front entrance at Safeway. They will also pick up from your porch. Request pick-up from Mara Saulitis. Collection goes through December 5.

With holiday cooking comes leftovers and, inevitably, food waste. But even before the food reaches your pantry and fridge, there's more waste in the food chain, beginning in the fields, then in transport, processing and purchasing. In fact, if food waste were its own country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations!

The good news is that you have control over that last step in the food journey. Washington's Department of Ecology estimates that 16% of what we throw in the trash is food, half of which is still edible. Throwing out good food or letting it go bad is squandering the money, energy and water that went into growing, transporting, packaging and buying it. Plus, our garbage goes to a landfill where, when the food rots, it emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Find out how you can be a savvier shopper, cook and discarder by checking out the resources and information on the BI Zero Waste Food Waste page.

A team of students at Stanford is conducting a consumer behavior study around reducing food packaging waste in landfills. As part of the process, they would like to talk to people who have experience and/or interest in a waste-free lifestyle. Scroll down on this web page to sign up for a 15-minute "personal consultation session".

If you're not already choosing a reusable water bottle over a recyclable plastic water bottle, consider this:

The potential global warming impact is 98% lower when drinking out of a reusable bottle rather than purchasing and recycling water bottles (Franklin Associates, 2009, life cycle analysis). Bonus: you'll be ingesting fewer microplastics from tap water than from bottled.

In addition, single-use plastic water bottles are one of the biggest sources of trash in our national parks, but the current administration has ended a very successful waste reduction program that allowed each park to choose to ban the sale of plastic water bottles, something that 23 of them, including Zion and Grand Canyon, had opted to do. This decision has prevented the waste of 2 BILLION plastic water bottles to date.

Go here if you would like to write your congressional representative to restore the option for national parks to not offer plastic water bottles for sale.

Join Zero Waste Washington on Monday, November 30, 9am-3pm, to hear how Pacific Northwest entrepreneurs, researchers, and agencies are helping lead the nation with their innovative ideas to help realize a zero-waste paradigm shift. Topics will include different approaches for dealing with the recycling crisis, plastic pollution, and waste proliferation.

Steve Mikami, owner of Bainbridge Island Ace Hardware, is graciously allowing drop-off at his store of residents' broken string lights.* (If they still work, please donate to others.)

The lights are then picked up by Mark Fladgard, a Kingston metals recycler who also collaborates every year with the Rotary Auction Green Team on electronics recycling.

The collection goes through MLK Day, January 18, 2021.

* String lights are the one thing with a cord that cannot be recycled in the "Anything with a cord" box at the Bainbridge Disposal Transfer Station.

Back issues are available here.

Send feedback here.