WEAVE Presents held a concert Sunday evening. Do you notice which receptacle is missing from their discard station above? If you wondered "Where's the trash can?" you got it!

WEAVE organizer Liza Pascal planned a truly zero waste event. For drinks, she knew any type of plastic cup would have to be trashed, so she did the research and discovered the reuse cup company, r.Cup, which has recently established a wash hub in Seattle.

In addition to alcohol, WEAVE offered free water. They got 5-gallon jugs and borrowed water pumps from the Chamber of Commerce so people could self-serve using the r.Cups. In that way, they also avoided unnecessary plastic water bottles.

Second, WEAVE made sure their food vendor was using truly compostable service ware. (Zero Waste helped by furnishing wooden utensils). Then it was a matter of collecting the discards. Zero Waste provided all the containers and signs you see above, except for the r.Cup equipment. The ZW Tableware Lending Library pitched in by loaning tablecloths. Hence, the evening was all set to send nothing to the landfill!

Washable cups are by far the better environmental choice over disposables in terms of CO₂ emissions, as shown in the chart below. (Other studies reveal a similar CO₂ reduction with reusable plastic cups, which r.Cup uses.)

Source: Upstream Reuse Wins report

When you're planning an event, think reduction and reuse first for the best environmental outcome.

Rotary Auction

Of course, this event is a shining example of reuse on an island-wide scale. But aside from the actual sale day, here are examples of Rotary reducing and reusing...and saving money in the process, so that net proceeds are even greater and more money gets funneled back into community grants.

• Elimination of water bottles for volunteers during collection week. Everyone is encouraged to bring their own bottle, and water refill stations are provided.
• Use of washable utensils (a loan from the Zero Waste Tableware Lending Library) for all volunteer lunches and dinners
• Contact with pre- and post-sale harvesters, meaning organizations and individuals who can reuse unsalable donated items, thus avoiding dumpster fees
• Support of the Green Team's Lawn of Opportunity, which redirects donations that departments cannot sell

Perhaps you noticed that the ZW Tableware Lending Library (or LL, pictured left) was mentioned twice in the articles above. Not only do organizations benefit from borrowing from us for their events, but so do individuals. In fact, there have been 90 loan transactions since the start of the year, and only four volunteer librarians to shoulder that load.

We are reaching out to our readership to see if any of you have an interest in becoming a volunteer tableware lending librarian. Some handy attributes include

• attention to detail (reading and filling in a simple spreadsheet to make sure orders don't overlap)
• free time and flexibility (mutually agreed-upon meeting times to preview, check out and return)
• enthusiasm for supporting community events (meetings, weddings, memorials services, celebrations) to happen in a greener way
• because of LL location, proximity to central BI a plus

If this sounds up your alley, please email Jane Martin, who will show you the library in person and explain the procedures. Then you can decide if you would like to be mentored and determine after a couple check-outs if this position is right for you. Thank you for considering!

Thank you to the more than 40 new and returning volunteers who each gave from 1-8 hours over the course of two days to ensure that Zero Waste's discard management was a success at the July 3rd Street Dance and July 4th celebration.

Instead of an overflowing 40-yard dumpster headed for the landfill (a common occurrence before recycling and compost collection), guests filled about 20 curbside toters with food and compostable tableware and about 15 recycle toters with cans and bottles. Our ZW volunteers made sure that items went in the proper containers. In addition, vendors were able to recycle boxes in cardboard dumpsters. The end result was only about 10 yards of trash going to the landfill.

Another big thank you is due Bainbridge Disposal, which provides free toter drop-off and pick-up, plus compost, recycling, and waste disposal, for these two major community gatherings.

More Event Waste Management

National Night Out

Combining the city's new compost container with Zero Waste containers and signs, ZW monitored the two discard stations for National Night Out on August 1. The organizers were thoughtful in choosing compostable paper wrap instead of bulky food boats for serving the free hot dogs.

VOLUNTEER ALERT

If you would like to receive a personal request when ZW volunteers are needed for smaller-sized community events, such as National Night Out, please email Diane Landry and she will add you to the list of "go-to" station monitors.

Every weekday Bainbridge Disposal trucks our recyclables to the building on the left, the Waste Management/JMK Fibers materials recovery facility, more commonly known as a MRF (pronounced "murf"), in the Port of Tacoma.

And every day, once or twice a day, the operations in this former airplane hangar come to a complete halt for 20-30 minutes, as is common at all MRFs nationwide.

Why this shutdown of operations? Paper is separated from other recyclables at the MRF by sending it upwards via rotating discs, while gravity drops the bottles and cans down to another conveyor belt. But certain contaminants called "tanglers" that many people put in recycling constantly wrap around these sorting discs, which then become ineffective at moving the paper. Watch this one-minute video or study the photo below to see if you can guess the most common type of tangler (answer at bottom of the newsletter).

The 8th annual Bainbridge Island Beach Cleanup will take place on Saturday, September 30, during the low-tide hours of 10am-1pm. The SignUpGenius isn't quite ready for registration, but you can get questions answered about the event by going to the BIBC page on the Sustainable Bainbridge website.

Former EPA administrator Judith Enck's virtual Beyond Plastic Pollution course, held through Bennington College, is slated for seven Wednesdays, September 6-October 18, 4-6pm. Those of us who have taken the course, now in its eighth iteration, come away feeling even more educated and inspired to take action because of it.

BI Zero Waste will provide a $100 scholarship to a high school student who audits the class. If you know of someone who might be interested, please email BI Zero Waste.

By far the most common tangler is plastic bags. Other examples are hoses, lightstrings, cords, cables and textiles.

The upshot:

• NEVER put plastic bags or film in curbside or transfer station recycling.
• NEVER bag your recyclables. With materials passing by on the MRF's conveyor belts at approximately four feet per second, there is no time to open the bags and sort, so the bags get pulled off the conveyor belt and tossed down the trash chute.