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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. .'