Walla Walla 2020 and Beyond: Reduce, reuse, recycle

At the founding session of Walla Walla 2020 in 1988, one element of our vision that didn’t exist in our community was a comprehensive recycling program.

We knew it was important to reduce the number of disposable items we bought and to reuse whatever we could before putting things either into a landfill or a recycling process, but the absence of a convenient recycling option for residential users seemed a missing link to us.

We began our efforts to encourage waste reduction and recycling by setting up several prototype neighborhood recycling stations in our alleys.

We used salvaged trash cans marked for newspaper, aluminum, tin cans and glass, along with a place for cardboard, which were picked up by volunteers and sold to Walla Walla Recycling.

We also studied Walla Walla County’s Solid Waste Management Plan, identified provisions regarding recycling that had never been implemented and requested that county commissioners establish a recycling advisory committee as provided for in the plan.

The commissioners appointed the 10 members of Walla Walla 2020’s recycling committee, together with the directors of Goodwill Industries, the Salvation Army and the Lillie Rice Center — the three non-profit agencies we were working with on recycling, as the members.

Thus we became the Walla Walla County Recycling Committee.

Subsequently, we learned about a state grant for waste reduction and recycling and submitted an application. When the grant was awarded, the county hired Gretchen Lowe as Eastern Washington’s first county recycling coordinator outside of Spokane.

Since then, community recycling efforts have continued to evolve.

Through outreach by the committee, internal recycling programs were established by major employers and institutions in the community including the three colleges, government agencies, hospitals and other businesses.

In 1997, the city replaced our volunteer system of alley stations with curbside recycling for city residents.
Initially the pickups were made by sorting everything at the curb. Starting in 2010, this was changed to collecting co-mingled recyclables that are sent to large sorting facilities.

This system worked well until a couple of years ago, when Asian markets, which purchased about 25% of what is collected, began closing. Communities throughout the U.S., including ours, have begun adopting temporary measures to maintain their recycling systems during this period of market transition.

Throughout these changes, we have continued to emphasize that to do our part as businesses and individuals, we need to buy as many recycled content products and materials as we can.

A recycling system won’t survive without a strong market for recycled content materials.

Besides working on recycling collection, committee members and the county recycling coordinator focused on recycling and waste reduction education and gave numerous presentations in schools and throughout the community, including advocating for community and individual composting.

This resulted initially in a privately operated community composting program and ultimately resulted in the city’s curbside green waste collection and its landfill composting facility.

Walla Walla 2020 was an early promoter for bringing your own shopping bag to reduce waste.

The Bag Ladies, led by Deborah Winter and Shirley Muse, set up display racks for selling reusable shopping bags in several supermarkets. Some of these bags were produced by inmates at the Penitentiary who were trained by local businesswoman Cheryl Ray.

As part of the campaign, which included a newspaper ad listing the names of people who pledged not to accept throwaway bags at stores, Barbara Clark wrote and recorded a jingle as a public service announcement for local radio stations.

You can hear it at ubne.ws/2JWhCKw.

Walla Walla 2020 members were also instrumental in the development of several waste reduction programs in the community.
We started a Green Seal business certification program that promoted waste reduction, recycling and energy efficiency. This later became the $mart Business Partners Program led by Sandra Cannon.

We advocated for establishing a household hazardous waste facility at the city’s landfill. We also facilitated a series of workshops for the construction community on building green.
While we certainly have further to go as a community and individually to reduce the amount of solid waste we generate and toss away, it’s encouraging to look back over these last 30 years and see the progress we have made, catalyzed by a small group of people working effectively with others.

Sandy Shelin is an environmental resources specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and has served as chairwoman of the Walla Walla 2020 Recycling and Waste Reduction Committee as well as a member of the Walla Walla County Solid Waste Advisory Committee.