Their tails are wagging and they are in the car as soon as they see the recycling bins being loaded. The dogs of Lopez Island don’t miss a chance to steer their owners straight to the dump on a weekend morning to be treated like first class customers with biscuits upon arrival. To celebrate our enthusiastic canine patrons and their obedient owners, local non-profit SWAP created the first ever “Dogs of the Dump” calendar for 2018. The calendar was an immediate success and sold out of all copies. We hope to increase the success and popularity of this fundraiser with a new approach to the 2019 Dogs of the Dump calendar. SWAP is offering dogs and owners a special 45-minute “4 Rs” photo shoot: reduce, reuse, recycle, ruff! Costumes, props and set pieces can be included to feature the season, holiday or other aspects of each month of the year. Photo subjects will receive a thumb drive with high resolution photos from their shoot, as well as a complimentary calendar! If your pup and family are interested in being featured in the 2019 calendar, here are the steps to get involved: Consider your first and second choice for the month your group would like to be featured in (up to four groups may share the same month). Email your choices to: nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org to schedule your 45-minute photo shoot. Make a tax-deductible donation of $100 in cash or check to SWAP to reserve yourspot.Then start planning the costume, props, and scenery for your canine friend(s). SWAP will curate the photos and create the final calendar to hit the sales racks around July 4. Each photoshoot group will receive one complimentary calendar. We look forward to hosting you and your dogs at the dump this spring.

ZERO WASTE BLOG WEEK 2 Howdy folks. This past week was incredibly busy so I have not had time to update the Blog. I wanted to share some more on compost and talk about the do’s and don’ts of our household composting: DO’s-these are the things that are OK to put in the compost: Paper – we put paper in the worm bin and in the yard waste compost. Paper is fine if it is not plastic coated and does not have lots of print on it. I like to shred thick paper so it composts faster and any paper going into the worm bin – such as paper bags get torn into strips. Egg shells go in but do not break down much – I just spread them when I spread the compost and eventually they disappear. Bones – large bones go through the shredder after the worms pick them clean. Small bones get spread and eventually break down. Avocado pits – we have started cutting the pits up into pieces because the whole pit takes years to break down. Tissue is just fine – in fact the worms eat it right up because they like cellulose. Don’t – these are things that I do not compost: Plastic – I remove the plastic labels on fruit and veggies because the labels never break down. Plastic coated paper – the paper will break down but not the plastic and you end up with thin strips of plastic film in the compost. Hair – best to put hair in the bushes or woods for the birds to find (for making nests) or throw it in the trash. It takes many years for it to break down. Some people may compost the hair but I just don’t like globs of hair in the garden, after I spread the compost. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ZERO WASTE BLOG - day two Let’s talk compost: We originally mixed all our compost together in a pallet bin, yard waste and kitchen waste, but then we started having a rat problem.  Rats were feasting on our kitchen waste and we were not happy about seeing rats when we went to the dump our compost bucket. Our solution was to purchase some metal 55 gallon drums that previously had grain in them.  I drilled holes in the bottom and sides of the drum and then began using this as a worm bin.  The rats can not get into the metal drum, since it has a tight fitting metal lid, so this makes a wonderful worm bin for all our kitchen waste.  Since we are meat eaters, we put fat and bones in there, too.  Then, when the drum fills (about every 3 - 4 months), I start a new drum.  I let the first drum “finish” which just means that we let it sit for a few more months for the worms to finish off eating the food.  When the drum appears to be mostly worm castings, I push the drum over and empty it out. The castings get spread on plants that we want to have rich compost put onto such as our rhubarb and asparagus. We use 3 drums per year and just keep cycling the drums as they fill and we no longer have rats in the compost area. Here is the drum with worm castings ready to empty - shells and bones get spread and eventually break down.  Large bones get pulled out and get put in the chipper. Yard waste:  We have gardens and woods around our house so there is no shortage of branches, garden cuttings and weeds that all add to our compost.  I have made bins out of free pallets and use these bins to compost our yard waste. I have a gas run chipper/shredder which chips the branches and shreds the garden waste into small pieces that make quick compost.  I know that there are ways to compost without the gas run chipper but I have perfected this method of making quick compost and have not yet given up on the fossil fuel run chipper. Here are some photos of our yard waste compost: The compost is spread on our flower gardens, vegetable gardens and fruit trees.  We are keeping thousands of pounds of waste out of our landfill while enriching our soil.  I love composting and am happy to share my success stories and discuss my failures if anyone want to dialogue. Compost happens!

Lopezians Brian Estey, Eric Blaser, Isaac Berg, and Jelte Endeavor, a quadruplet known as “The Plastic Pack”, describe their interest and passion in recycling and sustainability. They descended on the Tour de Lopez on April 28th to get a grip on recycling, outreach, and composting. In the pouring rain, The Plastic Pack collected 83.4 pounds of pure food waste minus napkins, semi-compostable paper plates and cups from soaked participants from both the BBQ and bike rest stops. Plastic Pack member Isaac Berg brandishes part of the spoils. Compost is like gold dust … but only if carefully ‘sorted at source’. The experience motivated Isaac to start a family worm bin at his home on Lopez. Food waste was collected for farm animals and a household scale compositing facility to see what kind of volume could be generated. We wanted to know what impact we could have on the community if we rolled out community-scale composting across the county. Now for some rocket science. 760 cyclists shed about 1.76 oz. per person at a single sitting. Add 4,500 total summer residents times 1.75 oz. x 3 meals a day and you get 1476.56 lbs. of food waste per day! That’s 43,410 lbs. a month. Granted, more careful analysis would still reveal the sheer mass of potentially biodegradable useful garden amendment or farm Animal fodder. Issac’s personal experience seeing the worm bin on the farm inspired him to build one of his own. Now growing vegetables for his family in his back yard, he can add his own worm castings to his own vegetable beds for free and reducing his volume of garbage at the same time! How cool is that? Composting! Now composting has a few challenges. For one, it needs to be away from your main living space because it may attract rodents. This can be alleviated by baiting, and composting in sealed prefabricated hard black plastic bins. Worms and enzymes added can speed up the process. In worm bins virtually odorless, can be kept in a freeze free environment like a mud room, garage or out buildings like a pump house. Fascinating to watch how they devour food waste minus meats and fats. Worms sterilize and aerate the soil as they digest the organic matter. The by product is worm castings and liquid fertilizer is a gardener’s dream! So, in the end, we were amazed how much food waste we collected and the potential to impact quantity of household garbage that is collected on the island. Composting at home is a substantial and worthy way of adding black gold to any garden or planter boxes can substantially reduce island waste and meet LSWDD Challenge of zero waste. The Plastic Pack is available to help get a grip on composting and recycling at your island event. Contact ThePlasticPack@gmail.com.

ZERO WASTE BLOG Day 1 – May 1, 2018 Our family consists of 3 individuals who are all dedicated to the 3 R’s –recycling, reuse and reducing our waste, especially plastics. Meet the team: Ashwini Bartolucci, Lopez High School Senior.  Ashwini has volunteered for many years at the LSWDD or dump. She is also working on the Re-Make project to develop a method to turn #1 PET plastic into filament for the school’s 3-D Printer. She will present her findings on this project at her Senior presentation. Teri Linneman has worked as the Transportation Supervisor and bus driver at Lopez School for 35 years and has a commitment to the students that she meets in her everyday work. She is an extraordinary chef sourcing local ingredients whenever possible. She does most of the cooking in our household and is committed to purchasing products with either no packaging or minimal packaging and regularly shops at local farm stands. Liz Scranton has a small painting contracting business called Custom Wood Finishes and works on many large job sites where there is a lot of waste. At home she tries to practice the 3 R’s as much as possible and hopes after this challenge to take some of what she learns to the job site. In our household we have started to look more critically at the items we buy, especially since China stopped taking our plastics. Part of the reason we signed up for the Zero Waste Challenge is to push ourselves to reduce our global footprint and find alternatives that will help us achieve this goal. Here are some of the things we have started to do: We have begun to look at all the items we buy and choose the ones that have the least packaging or not buy the item at all if there is a better alternative. We have begun buying more things in bulk but one thing we wonder is how does the bulk item come to the store. Take rice as an example – is it packaged in a large plastic bag and placed in a box? Also, if 100 people use a plastic bag to purchase their bulk rice – are we really reducing waste by buying bulk?  This has not stopped us from buying bulk items but it is something we wonder about. We have stopped buying some items altogether due to the packaging such as the rice crackers that we enjoy.  These crackers come in plastic packaging. Bring our own bags to the store when we shop – not just our shopping bag but also the bags that we put fruit, veggies and other items into. Using a coffee cone that does not need a paper filter. We have realized that there are some items that we will continue to buy that have waste and we will discuss this over the month. We stopped our “paper towel habit” over 15 years ago and have never looked back.  We use rags for wiping up spills, dry our hands on towels. The rags are washed or thrown out, depending on what they were used for. Here are some things we hope to accomplish this month: Liz is going to write to some of our manufacturers and request that they change their packaging. Remove ourselves from junk mailing lists. Teri is going to make cloth bags for our bulk items – right now we use plastic bags that have already been used half a dozen times but eventually they get holes in them. Inventory our purchases to determine where we can reduce our waste. We like the Traditional Medicinal line of teas but the packaging is plastic coated paper and is not recyclable. Ashwini is going to try and source the ingredients and make our own tea as similar to the ones we buy from Traditional Medicinal. This will reduce the energy that goes into the packaging and reduce the waste going into the landfill. Also, part of the May Zero Waste Challenge is to compost. We have been composting for over 25 years and have quite extensive compost systems at home. We will elaborate on our compost systems and submit some photos later in the month. We’re excited for this Zero Waste challenge – so here we go…

The ReMake Lab of Lopez Island, WA working towards small scale localized recycling and manufacturing by turning recycled plastics into 3D printer filament. Project Description: On our small, rural island recycling is both expensive and time consuming. Moving recyclables off Lopez Island contributes to green house gas emissions produced by transport. This project is looking for local solutions to turn burdens into resources, and encourage our youth to envision a future where creative solutions solve community challenges. This project is focusing shredding #1 PET (like water bottles) and #2 HDPE plastics (like milk jugs) then extruding them into filament for 3D printers. 3D Printers are the future of home manufacturing, and quickly becoming available very inexpensively. We are working to get in front of the home manufacturing wave that we know is coming by creating the material 3D printers will need to run with local recyclables. Lopez Solid Waste Disposal District has been working with their office's 3D printer since November, 2016 and helped Lopez School to purchase and begin working with their 3D printer in the same year. This project is in line with the “Maker” Movement, described as umbrella term for independent inventors, designers and tinkerers. The name of our project is adding the recycling and reuse ethic to the maker movement and therefore referred to as the Re-Make Lab. Our team of builders includes 4 high school students, one coordinator and two PhD Engineers. Nikyta Palmisani, Training, Education and Outreach Coordinator for Lopez Solid Waste Disposal District is the concept initiator and facilitator. The first group of Lopez students chosen for this project are all female; an underrepresented population in STEM, and the project is being well documented to serve for future college scholarship applications. The students on our STEM “Dream Team” are Nora Zapalac, Naomi Vliet, Ashi Bartolucci, and Kate Combs. Brad Bucanon and Page Read, both experienced Mechanical Engineering PhD’s have volunteered their time and expertise to the project. David Zapalac as LSWDD Facility Manager and Dave Sather, Lopez Secondary Principle are also included on the team. In the first year, our Dream Team worked to prototype two machines: a shredder for the plastic recyclables and an extruder to melt the plastics into 1.75 mm filament. Page Read helped innovate a two part system: a fly wheel hand crank, so Lopezians and visitors could hand shred water bottles individually in the LSWDD recycle plaza, and an up cycled motor that attaches to the shredder for faster production. Page also worked with our student team on every step from design to manufacture as embedded learning within the innovation process. By fall of 2017, our shredder was on site and in use shredding plastic water bottles into flakes for use in the extruder. The extruder prototype took our working group 10 months to innovate, during the course of which Brad Bucannan, our resident Plastics Expert, discovered that a company called Filastruder had created a machine tailored to our needs. In our process it was price comparable to either buy 4 temperature sensors for our prototype, or simply purchase both a Filastruder (filament extruder) and Filawinder (filament winder) for the same cost. Page Read continued to be a master teacher, and as both Filastruder and Filawinder were both kits, Page created venues for both mechanical and electrical learning for our Dream Team. As of April, 2018, we have now produced our first #1 PET 3D print using Lopez recycled and extruded filament. We are still continuing to innovate solutions to many challenges and will be presenting our initial findings at Maker Faire 2018 in the Bay Area on May 20th at 4:30 pm on the Education Stage, and at the Washington State Recycling Association's Annual Conference, this year in Blaine, WA on May 22 at 11:30 am. Stay tuned for more updates!

In 1907,  Leo Baekeland created the first synthetic plastic our planet was never  the same again( Knight).  Today the oceans that were once plastic free, are filled with plastic particles, even in the most remote places, plastic can still be found in abundance (Goldstein). They are harmful to the environment, and especially to marine wildlife (Annual Reviews vol. 42). Humans, mostly Americans, have built their lives around one-time-use plastics: coffee cups, plastic bags, straws, and the list goes on.  Plastics  aren’t worth building your life around. From  my own experience going three weeks zero waste, and the insights of a fellow conscious consumer, I learned that it is  hard, but doable to live without plastic. Whether we want to believe it or not, what we do affects other creatures on our planet. It is estimated that one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from plastic that we create (Plastic Statistics). The plastics that enter the oceans are photodegradable. This means that the plastic decomposes when it comes in contact with sunlight. When plastic photodegrades it breaks into little pieces. These plastic pieces are small but deadly. Each year 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic are ingested by fish in the North Pacific, sea turtles mistake plastic for food, and it is estimated that 6o% of all seabirds have ingested plastic (Ocean Plastics Pollution). The ingested plastics can cause intestinal injury or death (Ocean Plastics Pollution). The majority of  the plastic that we create ends up in the ocean. We are directly harming our marine life. We can change how we impact the earth. Though it may seem impossible there are ways to live without plastic. One doesn’t have to completely change how they live. Small acts of consciousness can make a huge difference. I interviewed Nikyta Palmisani; she is the Training, Education and Outreach Coordinator for the Lopez Island dump. When I asked Nikyta how she thought people could make a difference. Her responses were very practical, and offered easy ways to be more conscious of how one lives with plastics.  She suggested that for starters, think about what you consume, and where it goes when you are done with it. Then you can start to make changes. Bring your own coffee cup (2.5 billion cups are thrown away yearly in the UK). Shop in bulk to reduce packaging, I shopped only bulk for three weeks and found lots of new interesting recipes and goodies to cook. Buy high quality products that will last longer. Set up your car with a No Trash kit, this can contain bags, a coffee cup, or whatever else you might  need on a daily basis out in the world. As you can see it is not necessary to make drastic changes to make a difference. My own experience, going three weeks zero waste, has shown me that our world has been taken over by plastics. We build our lives around a  synthetic substance that poisons our planet and harms our wildlife. I am lucky that I can afford to buy healthy food, that is not wrapped in plastic. Unfortunately the underprivileged folk are forced to eat unhealthy food that is heavily packaged. In the book Nickel and Dimed Barbara Ehrenreich often ate a bag of potato chips for lunch, or she ate at a fast food restaurant. The cheaper the food the more packaging it tends to have. In 2017 I traveled to Nicaragua, a South American country, struggling its way out of poverty. I was shocked by the trash lined streets and the ditches filled with plastic. It struck me then, that when people don’t have access to the necessities of life ( water, food, shelter), trash and pollution aren’t even on their minds. I believe that humans can change, we can make a difference. The next time you go shopping, stop and think about what you buy. Think of the marine life eating plastic every day. Think of the hundreds of birds that die because their stomachs are full of plastic. Think of our beautiful planet and ask, how can I make a difference. The next time you see a potato chip bag on the side of the road, understand that there is a good chance the one who left it there is trying to survive. Understand that for you stopping and picking it up isn’t going to make or break your life or career.

I turned 82 on April 3 and have lately been reflecting on how America met the resource challenges of WWII.  I was in kindergarten when the war started and just finished 4th grade when it was over.  During those years everyone was involved, my Dad went into the Navy, we had ration stamps we had to use to buy certain things, gasoline was rationed and I remember standing in a long line to get 1 piece of bubble gum! Every week day, we brought a different needed thing to school: Mondaywas newspapers; Tuesday was saved bacon fat in a tin can: Wednesday was metal (mostly flattened tin cans, but any metal you came across that wasn’t needed); Thursday was balls of tinfoil that came on cigarette and other packages .=In the Fall we brought large pods off Milk Weed bushes which they used to fill life preservers for ships. OnFriday, I brought in a dime or quarter (whatever my family could afford) for a stamp to glue into my War Savings Bond Booklet and when I had $18.75, I turned it in and a US Savings Bond was mailed to my house!  We also had a family Victory Garden to help out with food, as the USA was not only feed our troops and sailors, but civilians in war torn countries. It seems to me America is facing another huge challenge now. As a country, we have become addicted to using plastics, which are not biodegradable, and now that China is not buying most of our plastics anymore, the problem for solid waste management has become almost unconfrontable. I’m sure that you’ve heard that there is a huge island of plastic laden trash in the Pacific Ocean threatening that ocean. The question is for each of us, what can we do individually to stop using plastics!   One idea I had is to leave all the plastic packaging at the market where we buy it, so that maybe they would push for a different kind of packaging.  Another problem is that storing and cooking in many plastics is not healthy with harmful chemicals leaching into the food. The Lopez Island Solid Waste District had a meeting last month to see what we could do, and my husband and I said we would work on it in March and here’s what we did: 1. bought stainless steel drink containers and stopped getting coffee with the plastic lids 2. bought a set of glass storage containers and started using plastic containers for storage other than food. 3. buy milk in glass bottles (When I was a kid, milk was delivered by a horse-drawn wagon and on very cold days the cream would freeze and raised the cap a couple of inches, which I would sometimes help myself to free ice cream from neighbors’ bottles) 4. besides carrying our own bags to the market, we now have small cloth bags in which we can put produced which stays fresher in our refrigerator 5. using flat sponge cloths instead of using paper towels and cloth napkins instead of paper napkins-sold in plastic packaging We here on Lopez Island are so lucky that we have great healthy food harvested on this island or from our sea, plus a store that brings in what not available from the closest farms.  It’s sometimes inconvenient or more expensive, but eating real, nourishing and healthy food with the people you love, is what life is all about.  You probably have noticed how fast your containers for the dump are filling up now and I hope you will take on a few changes in your life to meet this challenge. Kay Keeler Lopez Island

First Annual Lopez Vacuum Cleaner Races!! Saturday, Oct 28th at 3 pm at the Dump! Fun, games, and a race that “Doesn’t Suck” (that’s why they are in the race). Come down early to the Take It or Leave It, pick out and costume yourself and one of the 18 TIOLI vacuum cleaners, and win hilarious prizes. Every participant gets a brand new commemorative T Shirt and Mug! There will be a vacuum cleaner cake walk promenade, the race, and the final death march of each vacuum into the dumpster at the end. Families and teams welcome.  Extra points for style and aplomb. Please email Nikyta if you would like to enter at nikytap@lopezsolidwaste.org

Submitted by the Lopez Solid Waste District The Lopez Solid Waste District regrets to inform the community of new restrictions on plastics recycling at the Lopez dump. Mixed plastics no. 1-7, plastic bags and film, and agricultural plastics are no longer able to be recycled by LSWDD. Plastics still accepted are no. 1 clear or lightly tinted bottles and jars (screw top lid), no. 2 cloudy bottles and jugs (screw top lid), and no. 2 colored bottles and jars (screw top lid). They must be clean and sorted. Skagit River Steel and Recycling has been stockpiling shipments of these materials over the past several months in hopes of a market opening up to receive them. It has not found any buyers further down the supply chain and must stop accepting them as recycling from us at this time. Most other recycling buyers are in the same position, unfortunately. As a convenience and learning opportunity for our recycling customers, we will continue to accept these plastics at the usual location in the recycling plaza until July 2018. However, they will be deposited into the garbage dumpsters by staff daily. Please note this and make every effort to reduce consumption of these plastics or begin placing these specific recyclables into your garbage at home. Mixed plastics nos. 1–7, plastic bags and film, and agricultural plastics are now garbage until you hear otherwise. Mixed plastics include molded plastics, clamshells, tubs and darkly tinted no. 1 bottles. A no. 2 yogurt container or ice cream tub is not a bottle with a screw top lid so it is no longer accepted for recycling. It’s the same molecule as a no. 2 cloudy milk jug or colored detergent jug but because it is not a bottle it is not accepted. In 2017, China announced that it would stop accepting global shipments of many low-grade plastics, metals and mixed paper. LSWDD provides very clean, sorted streams of materials so only our lowest grade plastics are being affected at this time. Treating plastics as garbage instead of recycling is predicted to get worse before it gets better around the U.S. LSWDD plans to leave these plastics receptacles in place in the recycling plaza until July 2018 in hopes that a solution is found by that time. We continue to monitor the global recycling situation very closely in hopes of new buyers and processors opening up with a larger capacity. We are also analyzing options for processing some volume of plastics on site, such as with our Re-Make Lab or a larger application using similar technology. As always, achieving Zero Waste starts with consumers, so please be conscious of your purchasing options and make any adjustments possible to keep this new stream of garbage out of landfills. We encourage you to contact purveyors of products sold only in plastics about your concerns. There is also the option of returning plastic containers to the original purveyors of the products. An educated, active public can and will make the difference. Published in Islands Weekly, January 7, 2018.

Our ReMake Lab Shredder is now up and running on site! Now you can come by and recycle your #1 PET bottles yourself with the help of our volunteers. Our shredder has both a hand crank to test your strength and endurance, and a motorized crank that uses an upcycled motor reclaimed from a TIOLI machine to shred the bottles. The shredded material is for use in our extruder that turns it into 3D printer filament. Both LSWDD and Lopez school have 3D printers, and our goal is to provide them with local fully recycled filament for use in creating new and useful items and educational materials. Look for the shredder next time you are on site! To read more about the ReMake Lab project, visit it’s website at: http://remakelab.weebly.com/

A cello made from an oil can? A violin made from a metal can and a wooden spoon? A drumhead from an X-ray film? Yes! All instruments made from trash found in Cateura, Paraguay, a small town south of Asuncion, the country’s capital. A main source of income in Cateura is looking for items to sell by sifting through the trash that forms the enormous landfill upon which Catuera is built An environmental engineer and musician Favio Chavez came to the landfill as an engineer and instead, he and resident Nicolas Gomez created musical instruments from trash. Then Chavez taught students to be musicians, whose music changed their lives. The DVD, landfillharmonic, tells their incredible story and is available at the Lopez Library.  Check it out!