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Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
November 18, 2021     Shelton Mason County Journal
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November 18, 2021
 
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By Kirk Boxleitner‘ kbox/eitner@masoncounty. com The League of Women Voters of Mason County’s'Climate Change Com- mittee welcomed Heather Trim, exec- utive director of Zero Waste Washing- ton, to speakvia Zoom on Nov 11. Zero Waste Washington is a state- wide nonprofit I organization that works to make trash obsolete by help! ing pass laws, and by conducting re— search and community-based pilot programs. ‘ The group’s focus includes reuse and repair, plastic production, toxic chemicals and producer responsibility. Trim recalled how, a dozen years ago, Zero Waste Washington helped pass one of the strongest “e-waste” laws in the country so electronics can be taken to Goodwill ’_and recycled, paid for by manufacturers. , ‘ Trim also cited the 2018 Secure Drug Takeback Act, a first-in-the-na- tion program 10 years in themaking, which started-in November 2020 to drop off leftover medication at collec- tion sites, paid for by the pharmaceu- tical industry. Trim'also reported that a 2019 bill concerning leftover paint went into ef- fect in April, allowing submitted latex and oil-based paints, sealers, stains, lacquers and varnishes to be resold for half the ‘price through Habitat for Humanity. ‘ Trim also touted the 2020 reus- able bag bill “that you all helped get passed,” which Went into effect Oct. 1 and “means no thin plastic carry-home o bags” on the retail level. ‘ Of the bills introduced to the Legis- lature in 2021, six passed. Trim talk— ed about Senate Bill 5022, designed to reduCe plastic pollution and im- prove recycling ‘by banning expanded ‘ polystyrene and disalloWing food es- tablishments from. serving single-use plastic utensils, straws, condiment packages or cold beverage lids —— un- less they’re requested by customers. SB 5022 also aims to make recy- cling more efficient by removing pre- viously required confusing logos, as well as by requiring minimum levels of reCycled content for certain contain- ers and all trash bags, which Trim be- lieves “will help drive the market for recycling" and “reduce the use of vir- gin material,” which, for plastics, is oil and gas. In 2022, Trim said she hopes to see extended producer responsibility bills for packaging move forward, as well as an organics-methane bill and a “right to repair” electronics bill, the latter of which is being battled in Washing- ton, New York and Massachusetts. It would require. manufacturers of de- vices with electronic screens to sup- ply the specs, parts and tools to repair them, at cost, to the public. Trim cited data showing food waste is a pervasive challenge, with 72 bil- lion pounds of food going to waste each year in the United States, or $218 bil- lion worth of food thrown away. Twen- ty-one percent of the country’s fresh water is used to produce food that is never eaten. Trim also referred to EPA findings Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021 Shelton-Mason County Journal — Page A—21 dawnpours. from 2018, indicating that municipal solid-Waste landfills were already the third-largest source of human-relat- ed methane emissions in the United States, and noted that methane has come to the fore of discussions, at fo— rums such as the recently concluded U.N.‘ Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. “We’ve focused on COZ, (which) we have to deal with,” Trim said. “Meth- ane is a short~lived gas. It doesn’t last long, relative to CO2, but it is way more potent for those years that it lasts.” Trim sees addressing methane as a means to “bend the curve” of climate change faster. She pulled up the 2020-21 Wash- ington Statewide Waste Characteriza- tion Study, the latest in a series con- ducted by the Department of Ecology every five years, which found the ma- jority of materials going to state land- fills or incinerators — 1.2 million tons each year, or 22.8% of the total load I is organic waste. , . One solution Trim touted is‘com- posting, which mitigates h climate change by removing organic materials from landfills, improves soil by adding nutrients, reduces the need for chemi- cal fertilizers, and improves water quality through erosion control and reducing the pollutants in stormwater runoff. , ', Food waste needs to be stop at its source, Trim said, by sending excess food- to food rescue services, and redi- recting remaining inedible food, green waste and other organic waste to be ainbow connection A rainbow lands next to Shelton’s West: ern Gateway on West Railroad Avenue on Nov. 6, a, colorful break from a series of Journal photo by Gordon Weeks League of Women Voters discuss waSte reductions used as animal feed, compoSt, and bio- gas and other renewable fuels. Meanwhile, Zero Waste Washing- ton wrote a report in May on'improv— ing organic materials management ‘within the state. Trim said Mason County has one compost facility and is composting pre-consumer food processing waste, post-consumer food waste, yard de~ bris, land-clearing debris and wood waste, with some of these materials coming from Kitsap County. .0 Twenty-two other states either ful- ly or partially ban yard waste in their \ landfills, while five other states ban commercial food waste from large gen- erators, and two ban food waste from all sources, Trim said. Washington has yet to enact any Such bans.~ ., As such, Trim said Zero Waste Washington is contributing to a bill similar to one that passed in Califor— nia in 2016 to reduce theemissions of Short-range climate pollutants below their 2013 levels by 2030, with goals of reducing methane and hydrofluoro- carbon gases by 40% each and anthro: pogenic Carbon by 50%. - I - Not only have the average annual costs to Washington households for re- cycling services increased, Trim said access to curbside recycling services is uneven across the state, with the Puget. Sound area having the mdst ac— cess and the eastern side of the state having the least. ‘ Worse yet, according to Trim, state recycling rates went from 37.1% in 2000, peaking at 56.6% in 2011, to de— clining to 48.5% in 2017. .'