If you missed the informative presentations at the January Zero Waste meeting by T&C's Marina Heppenstall and Safeway's Shane Erickson and Adam Brazeau about their stores' waste reduction and diversion practices, you can see it in one of the two ways below.

Marina goes into detail in her presentation, but here's a broad overview of the goals and challenges for T&C in transitioning to less waste.

T&C rolled out their reusable dishware program the last week of January. The woman pictured here enjoyed her experience eating on a "real" plate so much that, even though she's not from Bainbridge, she said she'd come back to do it again.

According to the city's single-use waste ordinance, places with on-site dining must provide reusable service ware (unless they ask for an exemption and are granted it). At the T&C salad and hot food bars, customers choose between dine-in or take-out ware, as pictured at right.

For take-out you can bring your own container but must first fill up using the store's guaranteed clean plate. Then simply transfer to your take-out container (with conveniently provided metal utensils, pictured left). In that way, health department requirements are met and no disposable containers need be used.

To better understand the entire city waste reduction ordinance and the reasons for it, watch COBI's Autumn Salamack's explanation in the 4-minute video below.

If you want a little more nuanced discussion, tune in to Something to Talk about for this half-hour chat with Autumn Salamack and Hannah Ljunngren, who has been the point person with businesses about the ordinance.

Take a virtual in-depth master class on all things plastic pollution-related from Judith Enck, who is the founder of Beyond Plastics, as well as a visiting faculty member and senior advisor at Bennington College and a former regional EPA administrator under President Obama.

The class meets on Wednesdays from 4-6pm PST starting April 19 and runs for five consecutive weeks. Registration information is here.

The course is for high schoolers on up. If you are of high school age and interested in auditing the course, you may apply to BI Zero Waste for a scholarship by writing to us about why you want to attend.

For more details, go to the events page of ReFashion Bainbridge.

Kitsap County Solid Waste and DTG Recycle are teaming up once again to collect Styrofoam and old mattresses and box springs on Saturday, April 15, 11am-3pm, at the Kitsap Fairgrounds. For complete details, visit the Zero Waste Styrofoam page.

Bay Hay and Feed will now be able to take all your nursery tags and labels. Brush off excessive dirt and bring to the tally station in the nursery. They will be sent to Terracycle, who with its partners shreds, washes, melts and reformats the old plastic into pellets, flakes or powder in order to make new plastic products.

Whenever you wonder if something can be recycled or reused locally, go to our Zero Waste Reuse/Recycle Guide and type a key word or phrase into the search bar. If nothing pops up, give us a holler.

If you know of a local organization or individual that will reuse or repurpose something and we don't have that information in the guide, let us know and we may include it.

Thanks to a grant from the Department of Ecology, Kitsap Solid Waste has created a recycling toolkit for multifamily residences with communal recycling areas.

If you live in a community with shared recycling and would like these materials, please fill out this form. After submitting, you will receive an email from bizerowaste@sustainablebainbridge.org to arrange for delivery of the materials.

There are lots of important waste reduction bills in front of our state legislators right now! Read Zero Waste Washington's hot-off-the-press newsletter to keep abreast of the most current status of each.

The Senior Center served hundreds of bikers at the end of a cold (but dry!) Chilly Hilly ride. Thanks to advance planning, all the food service ware went into the compost, the soda cans into the recycling bin, and very little else into the trash. Zero Waste volunteers acted as ambassadors and, along with visuals at the discard stations, made sure tossing away was a stress-free affair.

For the last seven years there's been an island-wide Bainbridge Beach Cleanup in September. This year we want to add an island-wide roadside cleanup in April as part of the celebration of Earth Month. More details are to come, but start thinking of what stretch of road or area of the island could do with a good pick-up!

Do you have a waste prevention idea but need guidance and/or funding to get it off the ground? If so, then visit PrecycleWA.org before the application period closes on March 13.

PreCycle is a regional boot camp pitch competition for the best for-profit or nonprofit business product, service, or idea that addresses waste prevention, waste reduction, or creative reuse in Washington State.

Watch this information session to learn more about the program.

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