Light, cell phones, action! It was a wonderful day at the sold-out Trashion Show amidst a sun-drenched Hilltop meadow setting. Naomi Spinak once again did a superb job orchestrating the whole affair. She was ably accompanied by her well-tuned committee consisting of Eileen Wold, Dawn Snider, Deb Rudnick, Diane Landry and Shirlee Tan.

Pictured above (all photos by Heather Gorman) is the model for the triple winner, Lynn Christiansen. She received the Best Use of Materials prize, as well as the audience and peer awards. Lynn created a beautiful gown with intricate flowers fashioned entirely from foam.

Here are the other winning designers. Their outfits are pictured below, from left to right:

If you missed the show, you can still...

1) Stop by Bainbridge Arts & Crafts to see the winning garments in person, where the fashions will be displayed through the end of August.

2) Watch the one-minute video by Jonah Kessler-Cohen to get a glimpse of each outfit, or enjoy the longer 10-minute version to hear the designers tell the story behind their creations.

3) Look at all the entries and read about how the designers were inspired to create their outfits on the Trashion Show website.

Perhaps you've noticed curbside recycling carts with pieces of Styrofoam poking out or lids pushed up by stuffed bags of recyclables. We've seen the same thing! And since bagged recyclables just get tossed at the sorting facility, empty bags get tangled up in the equipment, and Styrofoam breaks up into little pieces, we want to educate residents to keep those items out of recycling carts. So Zero Waste has teamed up with Kitsap Solid Waste to create a tag to slip on the handles of carts that contain bagged recyclables, Styrofoam, plastic bags or plastic film.

We'll be running a two-month pilot project to see if tag reminders cut down on cart contamination. If you'd like to help, here are the details:

We'd love to get lots of people involved in order to cover as many different areas as possible. The commitment would involve surveying your neighborhood just four times over eight weeks. We anticipate starting the first recycling week in September, the week of the 6th. Please email Diane Landry if you are interested in participating.

You see them for candidates, for graduates, for causes. Corrugated plastic signs seem to be everywhere nowadays. Zero Waste's Susan Knell is now collecting both the tops and bottoms. The polypropylene plastic will be reused in insulation projects. The metal stands will be stored for anyone who needs to borrow them for future sign use.

You may drop off your signs and/or metal posts (please separate before dropping off) at the Marge Williams Center, 221 Winslow Way West. There is a marked grey bin in front of the building for collecting certain Terracycle items. They can be set inside the bin, or if too crowded, placed neatly next to it. Please email Susan if you have questions. Thank you!

The August theme for Zero Waste's Bainbridge farmers market booth on August 21 will focus on how to be a more conscientious buyer and owner of clothing. The fashion industry accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. How we purchase, wash and treat our clothes figures into that percentage.

Sustainable clothing expert Paige St. Pierre will be on hand to help answer any questions you might have about clothing care, purchasing, and sustainable fashion. She also happens to be this year's winner of the Trashion Show's Ready-to-Wear category (stop by Bainbridge Arts & Crafts to see it) and will have some of her upcycled garments on display!

The date of the annual Bainbridge Island Beach Cleanup is always determined by the weekends' low tides. This year's best time is Sunday, September 19, 9am-12. Our SignUpGenius is live if you want to get a jump on signing up for a location.

If you like teamwork and an international flavor to your cleanups, Plastic Hunt is holding its second annual online competition. Simply gather a group sometime in August, pick up beach trash, inventory it, and document the most impressive trash. A jury of youth from all continents but one awards the prizes.

You don't need an organized cleanup to pick up litter. Zero Waste has grabbers that can be borrowed to have on hand whenever you've got time to spiff up our roadsides. Just email your request here.

I've always wondered if mercury-containing compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), fluorescent tubes, and high intensity discharge lights (HIDs) are actually recycled, or if they are only collected in order to dispose of the mercury safely.

Ridwell, the specialized door-to-door recycling service that recently expanded to Bainbridge, has written a great post that will answer that question! (Spoiler: If you don't have time to read it, Ridwell takes the bulbs to EcoLights in Seattle. This processor separates out the metal for recycling and the phosphur and glass for reuse, the latter in concrete production.) Although the article doesn't address LEDs, Ecolights shreds them separately to recover the circuit board, aluminum, plastic and steel.

Mercury light bulb recycling is one example of an extended producer responsibility (EPR)* program. To encourage households to keep a certain product from ending up in the landfill (in this case, because it is hazardous), legislation is passed to establish an organization that facilitates take-back of that product, with costs borne by the users and producers of the product, not by local governments.

*See article below on Oregon's just-passed EPR bill.

LightCycle Washington was created in 2015 as the result of such legislation. Through this program, Washington residents and businesses may recycle up to 10 mercury-containing lights per day at certain locations across the state. (Sidenote: Prior to LightCycle, businesses were already delivering boxfuls to EcoLights to comply with Washington state's "dangerous waste" requirements.) As of 2019, over three million bulbs had been recycled!

To fund this stewardship organization, a fee is tacked onto the sale of each CFL, HID lamp, or fluorescent tube. The charge has increased over time, from 25 to 95 cents per bulb, in order to maintain the program. Go to Zero Waste's Reuse/Recycle Guide page on light bulbs to find nearby drop-off locations.

Although Bainbridge Island resumed its plastic bag ban some months back, the new state-wide ban goes into effect on October 1. No longer will you see flimsy plastic check-out bags in Poulsbo stores or any other part of Kitsap County. Or if you do, as I have observed in the Bainbridge Walgreen's and at Safeway's curbside pick-up service, the bags must be a legislated 2.25ml or greater in thickness (these bags hit exactly that mark), contain at least 20% post-consumer recycled plastic, and incur an 8-cent charge per bag.

Your best bet, environmentally speaking, is to go bagless or to choose bags that can make hundreds of hauls. Do you really need some of the bags pictured below?

One easy way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to direct our organic waste (food, paper towels, napkins) into compost instead of the trash, because when organics are landfilled, they decompose anaerobically and produce methane, a powerful GHG.

A curbside yard waste service that accepts all food scraps, as Bainbridge Disposal does, is unfortunately not available to many communities, since there currently exist only 185 full-scale food waste composting facilities in the United States. Cost is usually a major hurdle to starting up. Therefore, Representative Julia Brownley and Senator Cory Booker have introduced a bill to both houses of Congress that has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of compost collections across the country.

The COMPOST Act (Cultivating Organic Matter through the Promotion Of Sustainable Techniques Act) would provide $200 million annually over the next ten years in grants and loan guarantees for a range of compost facilities and programs to increase composting of food waste nationally. If you are interested in asking our legislators to support the bill, sign here. A summary of the bill is here.

Last month, Maine was the first state to pass Extended Producer Responsibility legislation for consumer packaging. Oregon just became the second. Could Washington be next?

According to the Product Stewardship Institute, Oregon's bill requires "producers of packaging, paper products, and food service ware to share responsibility for supporting effective recycling programs across the state."

The full press release is here.

The Center for Biological Diversity is conducting research to understand the best terms to use when talking about waste management practices. Take this short 7-minute survey to help inform future communication strategies. The survey will be open through August. 

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