The Fairground Road recycling station now has a Project COW compost bin that will be open two days a week.

The bin will be open with  volunteers helping people compost Wednesdays between 5 & 7 PM, and Saturdays from 9 to noon.

Come by and start composting!

Monday Dec. 6th, 6PM in the Hannah Cossman room of the Municipal Building.

Also, guests are welcome to our regular meetings every first and third Tuesday at 1PM in the Hannah Cossman room, right next to the Selectboard Meeting Room.

Remember, no plastic bags will be accepted, so put your compostable yard waste in a paper bag. these are available at area grocery and hardware stores.

Solid Waste Committee Meeting

Hanna Cosman Room, Second Floor, Municipal Center

11/2/10, 1:30 – 3:00 PM

Agenda

1. Convene meeting (time)
2. Confirm meeting officially warned
3. Approve minutes of 10/19/10 meeting
4. Proposed new text for sandwich board (postponed from 10/19 meeting) – Dora Bouboulis (10 minutes)
5. New trash/recycling containers, report on – Peter (5 minutes)
6. Disclaimer statement (obtained?) – what will we send home with the students? – All (10 minutes)
7. School programs – next steps – Francine (15 minutes)
8. “Excellent!” sticker – report – Francine & Peter G (10 minutes)
9. Evening meetings – one per quarter? – early December?  Jane & Peter (10 minutes)
10. Other business
    1. Brochure reprints – Places to supply – Nancy (5 minutes)
    2. Teaching Berkley &Veller how to recycle – Jane (10 minutes)
11. Next meeting 11/16/10, 1:30PM, Hanna Cosman Room
12. Adjourn

Items on the back burner:

Update on the Recycling Coordinator position

1.    Convene meeting (time)
2.    Confirm meeting officially warned
3.    Approve minutes of 10/5/10 meeting
4.    Proposed new text for sandwich board – Dora Bouboulis (10 minutes)
5.    TTT sticker – final changes, approval needed – Nancy (15 minutes)
6.    New trash/recycling containers, next steps – Peter (5 minutes)
7.    School programs and disclaimer statement – Francine and Clarice (20 minutes)
8.    Evening meetings – one more discussion – Peter (10 minutes)
9.    Other business
10.    Adjourn

Items on the back burner:
Update on the Recycling Coordinator position

I hope that this course fills up in Brattleboro. I will certainly try and attend. A well developed compost pile is one of the best things for your garden, and it is of course a great way to reduce unnecessary rubbish at the curb.

Master Composting Course

Mondays 6-9 pm, October 18 -November 8

$40

Recycling Electronics will be easier in Vermont thanks to a new law

Yesterday I went to a conference on Extended Producer Responsibility in Portland, Maine.

Extended Producer Responsibility, also called product stewardship, is where the government legislates that producers of goods have a physical and financial obligation over the lifetime of the good and including its recovery at the end of life.

Maine has passed a lot of first in the nation product stewardship laws, and several states have followed suit. This year, Vermont passed an EPR law for electronics and we already have several laws on the books governing mercury and batteries. The legislature is looking into creating a framework law that would help determine what goods would be affected in the future.

Why product stewardship? The industrial system developed with the idea of a straight line, ore, oil, and wood get extracted from the earth, they get processed into materials, the materials get manufactured into goods, and the goods get sold to consumers who use it until the “end of life” of the unit and it goes to its grave – for any consumer good, that’s usually the dump. This linear model doesn’t work any more, we are poisoning ourselves with mercury, toxic chemicals, and throwing away valuable resources that could be reused to make more products. Product Stewardship turns this line into a closed loop.

One of the speakers at yesterday’s conference explained that product stewardship laws “won’t work for banana peels” but there are a lot of large or toxic products that will benefit from such laws.

EPR laws are going to determine how many products get treated after they are no longer being used very soon.

To find out more about product stewardship and EPR check out these websites:
http://www.vtpsc.org/ – The Vermont Product Stewardship Council
http://www.productstewardship.us/ – The Product Stewardship Institute

Below is the list of items that may and may not be recycled by WSWMD which means they may be put out for curbside collection on your recycling day as well as placed in the recycling containers by the high school and at the WSWMD transfer center on Old Ferry Rd.

RECYCLABLE PLASTIC ITEMS

Bottles and Jars (soda, water, juice, liquor, coffee, shampoo, detergent, condiments, salad dressing, vitamins, peanut butter, mayonnaise, etc.)

Medicine Containers

Small Pails (no metal handles)

Dairy Tubs (yogurt, cottage cheese, dip, etc)

Deli and Take-Out Containers

Plastic Lids

Plastic Egg Cartons

NONRECYCLABLE PLASTIC ITEMS

Large molded items (laundry baskets, 5-gallon pails, toys, etc.)

Plastic Drums

Plastic Bags

Styrofoam

Cellophane

Stretch Wrap

Rubber

Kiddy Pools and Pool Liners

Plastic Bottles that contained motor oil or other chemicals

To find out more about this news please visit Windham Solid Waste.

Members of the Solid Waste Committee have been studying the issue of trash and waste reduction issues in Brattleboro for several years, and we unanimously support PAYT for its effectiveness in reducing solid waste tonnage and increasing recycling. PAYT encourages the three Rs reduce, reuse, and recycle,  as well as composting by making the costs of trash disposal visible to consumers.

Here are some recent articles about PAYT in the media:

Fish from WKVT on PAYT

Alex Wilson of Building Green on recycling

Interviews with me and Moss Kahler on PAYT by Lisa Kuneman

If you have more links, you can post them in the comments.