New Maker in Residence Art Show: “Upcycled Stardust” The ReMakery (behind Lopez Bookstore) welcomes you to the newest Maker in Residence art show opening Friday, August 6 from 5-8 pm, with an artist talk 6-7 pm. This month’s Makers in Residence are Julia Mira and Lucy McGown. Julia Mira is a school teacher on Waldron Island, and an experienced maker and artist in many mediums. She speaks about her background and current body of work as, “I was born in Hollywood a long time ago. I remember jacaranda trees and wild parrots; the thick smell of eucalyptus and jasmine; torrential rains and choking smog; palms and carob trees crammed with songbirds. The Pacific Northwest has different constellations, a different smell and texture. Almost thirty years off the grid placed me squarely in the dirt and water, with the patterns and relationships to be found here. My practice arises from that messy, fecund interleaving. Messy and fecund. The world is so big! TIOLI has so much stuff to work with! How to honor ALL of it? During the Maker in Residency month of July I’m re-purposing books into sketchbooks, tucking some of the greeting cards and envelopes from that delicious collection at TIOLI into their pages. Who could resist “Thinking of You” between the covers of a retired mechanical engineering book? So many lovely fabric scraps pass through TIOLI shelves, and I’ve found the perfect vehicle for them–a roomy patchwork bag that showcases them–velvets, silks, and calicos alike. Outside my kitchen window, I’ve set up several natural dye vats along with their mordants and assists. There’s even an indigo vat, which periodically blooms with the characteristic “flower” that tells me the pH is (temporarily, alas) correct. Experimenting with this fabric art gives me the opportunity to use cotton bedsheets and only slightly stained linens from the bedding section of TIOLI. The resulting botanical prints find new life as bag liners, upcycled clothing accents, and art.” Lucy McGown speaks about herself and her work as "Hi, my name is Lucy McGown. I’ve lived on Lopez Island for the past 7 years and I’m going into 12th grade here at Lopez Island High School. I’m excited to be a Maker in Residence and I will be making small scenes in tin cans (pocket fairy houses), and recycled fabric pleated skirts while I am here.” The combination of their work has elements of whimsy, earthy connection, magic, upcycled genius, beautiful repurposing and gorgeous artistry. The exhibition runs Friday August 6 from 5-8 pm to the next day, Saturday August 7 from 12 pm - 6 pm and coincides with the Chimera Gallery’s opening in hopes to create a mini art walk in the same corner of Lopez plaza. To learn more about the ReMakery: www.lopezsolidwaste.org/remakery.

Beginning August 13th, 2021, a 32 gallon can of garbage will be $10. Take It or Leave It and recycling remain free of charge. Why the fee increase? Unprecedented Growth in Garbage. Lopez Sold Waste Disposal District (LSWDD) has seen a dramatic rise in garbage at its drop-box facility. Lopez’s award-winning local facility handled over 295 tons of recyclable materials last year. Local drivers hauled off 760 tons of garbage on its District roll-off truck, a 7% increase over the previous year, and removed 137 tons of glass from the waste stream. Now LSWDD has gone from 239 tons of garbage in the first half-year in 2017 to 396 tons this half-year. Skagit’s mainland garbage fees on LSWDD have now increased 20%. LSWDD is no longer able to recycle paper on the mainland free of charge. Both San Juan and Orcas have charged for recycling but LSWDD has continued to opt for free recycling, including paper and glass. Additionally LSWDD created the Remakery so that more of Lopez’s cast-offs can be made into useable products and not go into the garbage. Take It or Leave It is still free for shopping and dropping. With more residents coming through the dump facility than ever before, LSWDD has opened the facility another reday a week. This has added additional trips to haul garbage to the mainland, along with higher ferry fares. LSWDD has hired more staff to keep the facility safe from accidents between pedestrians and other vehicles in a very crowded space. The tiny postage stamp of the Lopez Dump is a valued resource, and LSWDD is doing all it can to keep it open and available for ease of access to residents. The consequence of expanded service, additional staff, increased safety measures means that it costs LSWDD more to continue its unique and valued dump. Rather than increase the levy, LSWDD has decided to increase its can charge for the first time since LSWDD has been in operation. Beginning August 13th, 2021, a 32 gallon can of garbage will be $10. Take It or Leave It and recycling remain free of charge.

Did you miss the "ReMade on Lopez" Fashion at Vitas on June 26th, 2021 due to the heat? Don't worry, thanks to videographer Ken Kortge, we have the best of the show here for your viewing enjoyment! Don't miss our next Maker in Residence Art Show coming up Friday August 6, 5-8 pm, and Saturday 4-6 pm at the ReMakery!

The LSWDD reminds Lopezians that Take It or Leave It (TIOLI) is open for shopping on Fridays and Saturdays 11-4, and available for your donation drop-offs on Sundays and Mondays 11-3. The donation reservation system created during the pandemic has proven to be extremely valuable and is still highly encouraged for donations on Sundays and Mondays. Reservations help LSWDD not accept items that cannot be received or are garbage, which means better shopping! The hard working volunteers that make TIOLI possible thank you, as this new system is much more sustainable and helps volunteers keep TIOLI clean and organized. Reservations are extremely fast and easy to make online at www.lopezsolidwaste.org. Recently there have been complaints filed with the Sheriff’s Department and Public Works that free piles are appearing at intersections, which is considered illegal dumping. LSWDD had a one-day, one-time event with free piles during the height of the pandemic, but they have not been sanctioned since. LSWDD asks that residents please bring useable clean items that you no longer want to Take It or Leave It, keeping Lopez litter free.

LSWDD’s newest pilot project,The ReMakery, is lining up for a full weekend of arts and education around zero waste with art show opening “Precious to Permanent” on Friday, June 25th from 5-8 pm at the ReMakery and “ReMade on Lopez” a Showcase & Fashion Event at Vitas on Saturday, June 26th from 4-8 pm. The first exhibition titled “Precious to Permanent” is on Friday, June 25 from 5-8 pm at the ReMakery. This show features the first two makers to participate in the ReMakery’s new Maker in Residence Program, Suz O’Dell and Tam Paynter. Suz O’Dell is a metal clay jewelry artist. Metal Clay is a recycled product originally manufactured by Mitsubishi Material Corp and Aida Chemical Industries in Japan. These companies recycle and reclaim a variety of different metals. The silver and gold comes from many different recycled sources including film stock and negatives. During her residency, Suz also experimented with using metals reclaimed from LSWDD’s recycle plaza and TIOLI in her work and in her display. Tam Paynter worked for most of her career in IT at the Smithsonian Institute. She has been long wanting to create sculpture with mylar and monofilament that has movement. She has been exploring the issues of permanence and ubiquity of those materials in her new art installation titled “The World is Too Much With Us— Ghost Nets and Marine Debris” in this exhibition at the ReMakery. On Saturday, June 26th from 4-8 pm at Vitas, there will be a Showcase Fashion and Fundraising event titled “ReMade on Lopez” featuring all the items that have been remade since the opening of the ReMakery. ReMade items will be on sale and for silent auction from 4-6 pm and give guests a time to get some delicious Vitas food and drink as well as find a table and seating for the stage show. The stage show will be 6 pm- 7:30. Anyone familiar with LSWDD and SWAP history knows that these fashion shows are sell out events which promise innovative fashion, insider education about zero waste, textile reuse and recycling, and fun and surprises for the whole family. “ReMade on Lopez” will also feature many of the prototypes created at the ReMakery in a show filled with fun, humor, up to date information, and great inspiration to take home. The ReMakery is a new maker space on Lopez that offers drop in maker times, classes, workshops, monthly Repair Cafes every second Saturday, and the new Maker in Residence program. The goal of the ReMakery is to educate our community about the value of reduction, reuse, repair, and repurposing items locally to increase the local circular economy. The ReMakery provides Lopezians with space, tools and instruction to help transform materials that might have otherwise been exported off the island and to landfill, or far away recycling centers across the globe. The localization of reuse helps decrease green house gas emissions, creates potential revenue sources for local makers and entrepreneurs, and most importantly, continues to keep LSWDD’s Zero Waste Mission in the forefront of the minds of the community. For more information please go to www.lopezsolidwaste.org/remakery.

Household Hazardous Waste behind Public Works, next to LSWDD (aka the Dump) on Saturday, June 26 from 11 am - 2 pm.

The Repair Cafe is where you can bring in items that need simple repairs in four main categories: appliances, furniture, textiles/clothes, and jewelry. This event is to help get all those old, beloved items out of the corners of your house and closets and back into use! If your item needs a replacement part, please get that part and bring it with you. Simple fixes are what we do, not major rebuilds. There are thousands of Repair Cafes happening worldwide. If you want to learn more about the history and the movement, check out www.repaircafe.org If you are interested in volunteering for this event, or future Repair Cafes, contact nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org El Repair Cafe es un lugar donde puede traer objetos que necesitan una reparación muy simple. Hay cuatro categorías principales: electrodomésticos, muebles, textiles/ropa, y joyería. ¡Este evento es para ayudar a sacar todos esos artículos viejos y amados de los rincones de sus casas y armarios y volver a usarlos! Si su artículo necesita una pieza de repuesto, consígala y tráigala. Lo que hacemos son arreglos simples, no grandes reconstrucciones. Hay miles de Repair Cafe en todo el mundo. Si desea obtener más información sobre la historia y el movimiento, visite www.repaircafe.org Si está interesado en ser voluntario para este evento o para futuros Repair Cafe, comuníquese con nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org

ReMakery Grand Opening, Saturday, May 1 from 11 am - 4 pm Located in Lopez Plaza behind Holly B's Bakery, the ReMakery! 37 Weeks Point Way, Units #10 and #11. In January of 2021, the Department of Ecology announced that due to Covid, there were grant funds that needed to be spent by June 30, 2021. LSWDD applied for their Recycled Market Grant in January, and in February was awarded $50,000 to begin the ReMakery: a new maker space for transforming materials from the recycle plaza and TIOLI into new and usable goods. The ReMakery will be offering classes, workshops, Repair Cafes, Maker in Residence programs, and a host of other maker events. The ReMakery will have industrial sewing machines, sergers, regular sewing machines, 3D printers, jewelry making, leather working tools, electronics repair and tools, and soon a laser cutter, along with host of other useful tools to upcycle and transform materials. The goal of the ReMakery is to educate our community about the value of reduction, reuse, repair, and repurposing items locally to increase the local circular economy (see diagram below). It will provide the Lopez community with space, tools and instruction to help transform materialsthat might have otherwise been exported off the island and to landfill, or far away recycling centers across the globe. The localization of reuse helps decrease green house gas emissions, creates potential revenue sources for local makers and entrepreneurs, and most importantly, continues to keep LSWDD's Zero Waste Mission in the forefront of the minds of the community. Just to help put the need for the ReMakery into context, Pre-Covid, LSWDD was shipping off nearly 1,000 lbs per WEEK of textiles. This equates to nearly 50,000 lbs a year that go through the Goodwill industries, with many traveling to far away countries increasing emissions and green house gases which contribute to climate change. What if we could decrease just a small percentage of these textiles by remaking items locally? What are your ideas? You are welcome to get involved and continue to make our world more sustainable with a reduction in waste. For questions or ideas, or to volunteer to teach a class or create a zero waste item contact Nikyta at nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org.

Friday, April 30, 5 -8 pm In Honor of National Poetry Month and as this long Pandemic Winter of our collective lives approaches a collective Spring with vaccinations and return to each other in community, you are invited to interact with a new ReMakery art project: “Messages in a Bottle”. It’s a free take it or leave it style exchange: bring down a message or a poem in a bottle, leave it in the wine box, and/or take a message in a bottle. You can also read poetic messages in bottles as part of the interactive art installation. This event is to celebrate National Poetry Month and to commemorate the Grand Opening of the ReMakery on May 1, 2021. See the examples below for step by step instructions on how to participate. This event will be highlighting reuse for glass bottles, which currently go to an inert landfill on Lopez once they leave the recycle plaza. This will also be an opportunity to highlight the collection and reuse of corks. Currently, LSWDD collects corks and sends them to a company called ReCork based out of Vancouver, BC. However, due to the creativity of LSWDD staff member, Alannya Sowers, this year's batch of corks that would have cost several hundred dollars to ship to ReCork, are now being kept on the island and up-cycled into cork boards in a ReMakery class! This saves us hundreds of dollars in shipping. Look forward to attending that class, and for more examples like this one of the ReMakery envigorating the local, circular economy!

When driving down Lopez roads, it is common to see a bearded man in a baseball hat alongside the road with a bag in hand picking up trash. If one didn’t know him or his story, he might just seem like a curiosity— not the incredible Zero Waste Hero that he is. That man is Mike Moore, and he has been performing this amazing community service of keeping our roadsides clean for many decades. He is receiving the first “Golden Grabbers” Zero Waste Hero Award on Saturday, April 24th at 10 am at the registration for the Great Islands Clean Up. Moore tells the story like this: “I have always been a hiker and when I came to Lopez I enjoyed walking Lopez Hill, Watmough and the Iceberg trails. Later I became a bus driver for the Lopez School and I began to notice the amount of trash on the roads, even the back roads where the students lived. So instead of hiking the trails I started walking the Island roads and picking up what I found. This was back in the days before aluminum, when you could find rusted beer cans made of metal, and there were even trash piles in the salal left there in pre-Dump days. Today much of the ancient trash is gone but you can always find more so (carefully) join us on the Great Islands Clean Up to leave a cleaner Island for the school kids to enjoy.” Mike Moore has recently turned 80, and Lopez Solid Waste Disposal District and the Lopez Trails Network have come together to honor him with a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Golden Grabbers Zero Waste Hero Award. “Grabbers” are a long pole with a grabber at the end used for litter collection, so it was a fitting gift that is also utilitarian. Moore has been part of the Great Islands Clean Up Leadership team since 2015, empowering all Lopezians to get in on the fun keeping our roads and beaches clean and tidy. This year, at the Spring Great Islands Clean Up scheduled for Saturday, April 24th, Mike will be presented with the first ever Golden Grabber Award at 10 am in the lot behind Public Works, just next to LSWDD aka the Dump. Due to Covid considerations, this year’s registration from 9- 10 am will be a drive through event, but folks are encouraged to sign the large thank you poster as they come through which will also be presented to Mike with his award. In addition, now when you see a bearded man collecting trash along the side of Lopez roads, you can smile and wave in thanks for his many years of work! Mike Moore is happy to accept this gift in the hopes that his actions will continue to inspire Lopezians to be good stewards of our lands and seas, and each do our part to make our island, and the world a cleaner place. Here are two short videos, one of the New Golden Grabbers Award and Mike's lifetime achievement award:https://youtu.be/XCdvOf9kpiQ The other of Mike receiving his award at the Spring Great Islands Clean Up, 2021: https://youtu.be/-QCxqniAIVY Both videos made my Ken Kortge, with great thanks from LSWDD and the Lopez Island Community.

Since 2015 there has been a concerted inter-island effort to clean up our San Juan Islands roads and beaches twice a year during events called “The Great Islands Clean Up”. This year’s event is scheduled for Saturday, April 24th from 9 am - 2 pm. 2020 was a hard year for everyone. Although there was both a Spring and Fall Great Islands Clean Up, these events were done by individuals and households over a week-long period. Many people found that they missed the enthusiasm generated by working with others on a single day. The theme for this season’s Clean Up is “Restore Hope”, our local take on the national Earthday theme of “Restoring the Earth”. In 2021 Lopez, Orcas, San Juan and Shaw Islands are working to Restore Hope for ourselves and our island home. The County Solid Waste Manager, Mark Ingman, has extra funding available this year in the litter grant that pays for the waste disposal from these biannual events. These funds will make it possible to collect and properly dispose of tires from our marine and terrestrial ecosystems. No-cost acceptance of tires at the Great Islands Cleanup at the April 24th event is for littered/dumped tires on public lands, roads, and beaches. This event is not for household tires, but an event for household tires may be scheduled in the future. Any group/household of GICU litter participants can bring in up to 5 tires they find on public lands April 24th. Removing tires from our ecosystems is important: A compound that helps preserve the rubber in tires has been found to be the key contributor to the death of adult Coho salmon. Therefore, removing tires from our lands, beaches, and waters will contribute to the health and resilience of the salmon. To read more about the scientists who uncovered this connection between salmon die off and tires: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-03/coho-salmon-tire-chemical Another wonderful resource is the mycoast.org app that can be added to smartphones, Marine litter that is difficult to access can be photographed and its location uploaded for pick up by the Department of Natural Resources via boat. To reduce the use of plastic bags, participants are encouraged to use 5 gallon handled buckets they may already have at home for waste pick up, and to separate recyclables from garbage. Most islands have supplies like orange safety vests, litter pickers/grabbers, and gloves available to be borrowed at registration. So get your “pod” together, get out into the fresh air and SPRING into action! To sweeten the deal for volunteers, Lopez Island will be featuring free baked goods from Holly B’s Bakery and coffee supplied by Lopez Grind, supporting our local businesses in Covid recovery. Come to the drive thru registration behind Public Works by the Dump, where supplies can be borrowed and safety waivers signed. With safety and spacing in mind, please arrive for registration any time between 9 - 10 am to spread out arrival times so there is not a traffic cluster. Litter and recycling can be dropped off at the same location starting at 11 am. To register for a beach or road route on Lopez in advance, please contact Skeet (James) Townley at jtownley@blm.org. Groups can also sign safety waivers virtually and register online via www.plasticsfreesalishsea.org/events. This year Lopez is beginning a “Golden Grabbers” Zero Waste Hero Award to be given out annually at the Spring GICU event. Come celebrate Mike Moore, the first recipient to receive this award, at 10 am at the registration event. To read more about Moore and the new Golden Grabber Award, go to www.lopezsolidwaste.org.

Ok friends-- we are starting some FUN to get is through this rough, dark, lonely winter! Get ready for Fashion Fridays! Here is how it goes: LSWDD aka the Dump, will post a weekly theme, and then those of you who have clothes whining in your closets to be worn and remembered, create a fun outfit and post a picture on our FB page: Lopez Island Dump: https://www.facebook.com/lopezsolidwaste The other great many of us who are home and looking for some good excitement will be your supporters via positive comments and people's choice awards! We will use rough and easy consensus to judge weekly Bests, and each week's winner(s) will get A FREE HOUR OF SHOPPING ON FRIDAYS AT TIOLI! This means you get first dibs on stuff before Saturday's shopping day! A fashionistas's dream! We will also be doing Snapshot Saturdays for those of you who want to be seen around town in person! So wear your epic outfit to TIOLI on Shopping Saturday, and Alaynna will snap your photo and post on our FB page for you (with your consent, of course). This week's theme for 1/11/21: : BEST Masked Outfit!! GO! Note: picture below is not an entry, just to introduce you to LSWDD's new employee, Alannya Sowers pictured on the right.