— by Learner Limbach —
Notes and talking points above a sign made entirely of plastic collected on the island by Brook Meinhardt
This past weekend I attended the event Talking Trash – Imagining the Future for Solid Waste on Orcas hosted by the Exchange/Orcas Recycling Services (ORS). The event consisted of three hours of engaging presentations and community dialogue about how we can work together as a community to solve our waste issues.
Much of our waste can be a resource if handled in the right way.
There are many things I personally took away from the event that left me feeling energized. For one thing, there are many things we can all do in partnership with ORS in the short term to engage our community in moving toward the longer-term solutions including. These include piloting community collection/sorting in visible community places and educating ourselves/each other about what is recyclable and what is not.
As a community member, and General Manager of the Orcas Food Co-op, several ideas from the discussions stood out as feasible in the near-term and warrant further exploration. For example, it was suggested that at the Co-op we could have shelf level signage so that customers can easily identify which items are packaged in the recyclable types (#1 & #2) of plastic and which are not. As we encourage customers to buy products in more eco-friendly packaging we can also put more attention into pressuring manufacturers to change their packaging.
Several policy ideas were discussed that I think have potential in San Juan County. At my table it was proposed that we ban bottled water and non-compostable “to-go” containers. These ideas build on the existing bans on styrofoam and single-use plastic bags and I was excited at the willingness to think big. A ban on bottled water would be the first in the state, and a plastic “to-go” container ban would be the second, following the footsteps of Lake Forest Park in King County. As Heather Trim from Zero-Waste Washington pointed out, 50% of all plastic in the world has been produced in the past 14 years. Clearly we need bold action to turn things around.
Some of this may sound ambitious, but it absolutely is what needs to happen and I think San Juan County can lead the way. If you want to learn more or get involved I highly recommend visiting the Exchange/Orcas Recycling Services website and signing up on their mailing list. If you want to reach me and/or talk about what the Orcas Food Co-op can do feel free to shoot me an e-mail at learner@orcasfood.coop. Thank you to ORS for hosting this discussion and leading the way to a zero-waste future! Count me in for helping bring these solutions to fruition.
Learner Limbach is the General Manager of Orcas Food Co-op
The 3 R’s Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Let’s start a campaign about Reducing our impact !
Let’s start with the shopping bags !
How many paper and plastic bags are used every day in
San Juan County ?
I like the Costco model No bags !
How about, at the Food Co-Op, instead of shelf labeling, put a red sticker on things that can not be recycles and a green sticker on those that can. Could be a very simple 1 inch dot. Even I could figure that out and it is much easier than searching for the recycle number somewhere on the container.
Getting rid of (disposing of them properly) plastic bottles is a good idea. But banning them entirely penalizes those people that are disposing of them properly. The problem seem to me to be those people who don’t dispose of them properly. Why not focus on those folks.
Thank you for your guest opinion on Talking Trash. Here are two additional thoughts:
I find that the 3-gallon biodegradable plastic bags intended for counter-top compost bins make good, re-usable produce bags to use when shopping for fruit and vegetables.
Also, we could cut down considerably on plastic water bottles by having a convenient faucet on the side of drinking fountains for the purpose of refilling water bottles of any kind.