Help shape the future of organics recycling in Washington: Comments due by Jan. 28

Photo courtesy Washington State Department of Ecology

The Washington State Department of Ecology wants your comments on model ordinances designed to help communities reduce landfill waste. A key part of that mission is diverting organic materials – food scraps, yard waste, and more – away from landfills. Ecology’s Organics Management Group has developed model ordinances to help city and county governments create successful organics recycling programs.

Now through Jan. 28, the public is invited to review the model ordinances and comment about potential environmental impacts. Once finalized, cities and counties will have the option of adopting the ordinances whole, in part, or use them as a reference to write their own language intended to:

– Implement mandatory organics collection: This includes guidance for single-family residences and certain businesses within designated Organics Recycling Collection Areas (ORCA) and/or Business Organics Management Areas (BOMA).

– Require waste reduction, diversion and management plans: These plans would be needed as part of special event permits.

– Ensure new buildings are designed for organic waste collection: This applies when new buildings are anticipated to generate 0.25 cubic yards per week or more of organic waste at their final site.

These ordinances are designed to help local governments comply with Washington’s Organics Management Laws, as directed by RCW 70A.205.030. They provide an available framework for implementing effective organics recycling programs. According to Ecology, local governments that adopt the model ordinance without significant changes could avoid the need for a local State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) review.

Before Ecology publishes final model ordinances, the department is conducting a SEPA review and seeking your feedback on the potential environmental impacts they might have. Ecology has issued a Determination of Nonsignificance based on the department’s initial assessment that these ordinances are not expected to have a significant adverse impact on the environment.

How to participate

1. Visit the project webpage.
2. Read the documents and review the proposed model ordinances and our Determination of Nonsignificance.
3. Leave your comments. All comments must be submitted through the public comment page. Comments received through email or in writing will be added to the public page.

Direct questions about the comment period and model ordinances to Patrick Merscher at patrick.merscher@ecy.wa.gov or 564-233-1065.

 

  1. I no longer have any organic waste owing to having bought a Lomi counter-top composter (https://lomi.com/). It really works, and it all goes into the garden or the lawn.

    I got interested in composting back when I lived on the family ranch; the compost heap was fine, but didn’t work in the very cold winters, and the local bears were given to rooting in it. I experimented with any number of commercial composting barrels and the like, but not till the Lomi did I find a really quick and easy way to compost. It’s not for larger amounts of garden waste, but it really does work wonders on kitchen and table leftovers!

  2. People do a terrible job of recycling as it is now, I doubt people will do a good job at this either but it sure will be cause for higher taxes and more government employees. Maybe we can start a soylent green type of facility so we can recycle the scraps into food for the poor so we can get rid of all the food programs. We waste a lot of food in this country.

    1. Leave up to you, Jim, to find a way to make an article about recycling into something about the terrible tax burden that you have. What it lacks in relevance is outstanding in doggedness. I can also imagine you going through our neighborhood recycling bins in order for you to say with confidence, “People do such a terrible job of recycling….” Please let me know what you will say to the Department of Ecology to help us improve.

      1. I started recycling as a child some 50 years ago I have witnessed how probably tens of thousands of people have dealt with their recycling. I hope that is a large enough sample of the population for a valid overview.. I am sure you can look up what can be and how it should be done on a government website or every year it seems I receive a letter describing it in detail. I’ll let you solve the problem I don’t have because my criticism of government and people seems draw your ire.

      2. Actually, Mike, the article isn’t about recycling per se; it’s about a state agency creating ordinances about how cities should promote and enforce organic recycling. I didn’t see any mention in the article about the state providing any more funding for the cities to implement these ordinances which is standard operating procedure in almost everything coming down from the state in legislation and/or agency enactment of legislation; so I think you are being a little unfair about at least some of what Jim is saying. In some areas we do pretty well with recycling and in other areas it is pretty much another hoax in terms of success. Yard waste we do well, cardboard and plastic – I (like Jim) have my doubts. Starbuck’s recently got outed for their cup recycling being a con job and lot’s of our recycling is just sending e-junk off shore, to go into their landfills. There is room here for lots of different views I think.

  3. Thanks, Clint, for your constructive feedback. It is true that I can too easily take issue with people who I feel complain rather than offer solutions. Often in your comments, as with this article, you are specific as to who you think is doing well and who is not, and why that is so. It is not some blanket blame without explanation. There is always an On the Other Hand: the article is clearly about recycling. It is in the title and the reason for making comments to the Department of Ecology. It is not about our tax burden.

    1. Oh, on the contrary my great friend and respected educator, anytime the state forces communities (usually cities) to adopt specific ordinances and planning requirements without funding those demands, it is about our ever increasing local tax burden. If not explicitly then, definitely, implicitly. This article is about Dept. of Ecology checking off a mandatory box for puSblic engagement on the subject of coming mandatory organics recycling that you and I will have to pay for one way or another. Thinking about this, I have to wonder why we wouldn’t want organics that decay and decompose going into our landfills. Seems like that’s where those things belong, if not composted. As an aside, making SALT (state and local taxes) a major federal tax deduction is supposedly big on Trumps agenda for making everything perfect. Even Trump knows it’s a problem.

    2. If implemented will this increase the cost to the taxpayers by need of more government workers the answer is yes. If implemented will this increase the costs to the consumer for waste services the answer is yes. If implemented will it make a meaningful difference I don’t think so. If so why should we do it? Maybe our time and energy and money would be better spent on education rather than add to a program that doesn’t work well because we don’t have very good buy in from the people.

      1. There you go talking about taxes again. Yet in this case it seems that the Department of Ecology is taking your suggestion to heart: “Maybe our time and energy and money would be better spent on education…” Sure, this may be a waste of time in the end, but you don’t know that. At least they are trying to gather opinions, comments, and suggestions so that if new ordinances are needed, they will be based on information gathered from people who feel that they are knowledgeable enough about the subject as to submit a response.

  4. Solutions. Once before I suggested some things we can do as citizens First reduce the amount of plastics you take home. Grocery stores take your own glass containers with lids with you. IF the store won’t put things in them then take them outside etc and put the food in your container and leave the plastic in their store. Same with big box stores super plastic. Pay for it…take your own blade and open it up after you are out of the line and leave it there for them to worry about…If we all do this together we will get the point across. When you buy fresh vegetables don’t use the plastic bags. Take your own cloth bags and either bag yourself or ask them.. Uh don’t buy more than you can eat and if you do like me eat leftovers. Get creative. Knock it off with the plastic flavored water bottles! Jeeze. Use washable metal. Get Liquor back in glass…a prob too. Maybe reuse your styro egg containers. Oh, so many things Michael Molly. I’m talkin helping not taxes. Suggestions Citizens of Edmonds?

  5. 1/2 cont. Make or sell (businesses) 100% cotton old fashioned flour sack bags. Use those for your produce and drying your lettuce (ditch the plastic spinners). Plastic CD DVD boxes. Well gee lets use those to build stands etc. Pain them (sorry but ya need oil based paint if you want them to take the rain etc. Spray paint is what I use. One of my favorite pastimes is coming up with unique ideas. When I moved to Edmonds 32 +years ago we were broke. Employed, Educated (him) but no extra liquid cash so I roamed that giant sort of dump site on 99. I still have a few things from then. Metal tables now still in use. A great draftsman table. I made it into a glass cutting table. I also found the lights heavy base. I painted it all and it still worked. I still have that, and I use it for close up work. There are many things you can do so things don’t even need to be recycled. Buy a wet saw Taurus. Those old plates I have cut all of the outside rims off of hundreds of these and used them in mosaics I used to make. The outside decorative rims are curved so they make an excellent border for say a homemade birdbath. I sold a couple of those.

  6. In the old days we would collect save the newspapers bottles and cans they had value, we would use them where we could, newspapers for weed barrier coffee cans for nuts and bolts glass jars for canning the extra would get packed up in the station wagon and sold. In the scout’s and sports teams we would go around and collect them from people almost everyone had piles then we got recycle bins it cost to rent the can but we got a credit for our recycling so it was about a wash, I don’t think we get credit any longer probably because it costs to much to sort out the garbage and deal with things like uncleaned cans and bottles, certainly not everyone but recycling today is more like garbage overflow then easily processed recyclables people just don’t care simply throwing another required step in the mix is a fools errand.

    1. Now, Jim, you’re finally talkin’ about recycling! Way to go! You talk about what you used to do. My parents did them also when I was growing up. There was little then that we wasted. We had a garden. My job was to turn over the soil with our compost mixed in.
      Clint, are we reading the same article? The one I read attached to these comments asks for comments about recycling from Washingtonians. When I look into the links provided one item I read mentions that a concern for the State is the production of methane gas in landfills. The Department of Ecology states that separating organics would decrease that production. What I read in this article concerns comments about recycling as related to possible ordinances, not taxes.

  7. Okay, Mike, you win. All this forced recycling will absolutely not create any sort of taxation in the implementation of the process’s. Since you and the state are officially fully committed to stopping all that nasty methane coming out of the land fills, maybe next you can come up with some ordinances to order cows to stop farting, since that is a known major source of methane gas going into the atmosphere too. I’m totally with Jim on this one. It’s absurd and a total waste of time and money.

    1. Wow! That is some response! “Forced recycling”? If people would do it the old-fashioned way that Deborah and then Jim mention, perhaps the State would not need to look for suggestions for development of a system that is up to the task. Nathaniel started this discussion with a suggestion involving new technology. Jim injected his tax burdens into it. As important as the issue of taxation is, it is not the only one. And no, I am not working with the State to put a cork in cows, nor do I have any formal or informal allegiance to the Department of Ecology. I am simply of sufficient age that I now think more and more about leaving this place at least as nice as I found it. This does not mean that Edmonds will remain the same. The Historical Society regularly points out some of the changes over time. Our civic park in the Bowl is one example. The stories point this out while emphasizing that you can’t keep down this town by the sea.

  8. Mike, what is a city ordinance that says you have to put your organic waste in a special can and then pay extra money to have it hauled off and disposed of in some way the government deems proper and non polluting if not forced recycling and hidden taxation of some sort? I guess the perfect world now would be all fossil fuel use stopped, the entire world human population becoming vegetarian, and only solar and wind power being allowed to power anything. Let me know when you get all that arranged, so I can congratulate you on the great success. Please hurry, ’cause I’m aging pretty fast now.

  9. Since I dispose of my organic waste in a lawful and environmentally friendly way without paying a tax, I can say that on this topic, you need to be more open minded. But enough of this for me. As you say we disagree, which is okay. If or when we next meet we can go into it in more detail. I appreciate your interest and dedication to what you consider to be the best interests of this town and its residents. BYW there are definitely more bicyclists on our roads. Can’t say whether or not they are stopping to spend money at our shops. But I believe they will.

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