‘Recycle, don’t throw out’ newest message from King County initiative

Are you throwing items away that could have a second life?

King County is starting a new initiative to get people to stop and think before automatically throwing something in the trash.

The goal of the Re+ program is to make it easier for people to recycle or repurpose an item.

Adrian Tan, the policy and market development manager for King County Solid Waste, said the problem is not that people do not want to recycle; instead, they often just do not have enough information about what can be recycled, where, and how to do so.

“People who live in King County, they really appreciate the nature — we have beautiful surroundings, and they want to protect that,” Tan said. “And people do want to do the right thing. We just have to make it easier for them. We have to make sure that it is the easy, convenient choice.”

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The plan increases ways for people to do the three R’s — reduce, reuse, and recycle (or compost). To improve knowledge about and access to recycling, the county will get more information out to people about where they can take their items — for example, batteries. The county will also work with companies to improve the labeling of their products to show what can be recycled.

Another goal is to get compost collection to all county households. Nearly a third of what goes to the county’s landfill every year is food and yard waste, which could be composted instead.

“When that rots in our landfill, that creates methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas,” Tan said. “Recycling, composting, doing the right thing is one of the easiest ways to contribute toward reducing your greenhouse gas emissions.”

The county’s program will give grants and technical assistance to small businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations to help them recycle and reuse more, as well as to get uneaten, edible food to people in need, rather than throwing it away.

The county will also develop technologies to help convert items that come to landfill into recycled products.

Also, possibly on the table is a county deposit-return system for bottles and other recyclables, so that you would get some cash or credit toward your next purchase when you bring those items back to the store where you bought them. Senate Bill 5154 and House Bill 1131, if passed, would establish such a program statewide.

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The county’s only landfill, Cedar Hills Landfill in Maple Valley, is set to be maxed out by 2040 if nothing changes. Sadly, the majority of what gets thrown out there could be salvaged.

“Right now, 800,000 tons are going to our landfill [every year] — it’s a mountain out there,” Tan said. “And about 70% of that could be reused, recycled, composted — many better ways of doing that.”

Cynthia Adams, a supervisor at King County Solid Waste, regularly sees perfectly good products coming into the Factoria Transfer Station in Bellevue, such as furniture, artwork, bicycles, and other sporting goods, clothing, and toys — many of them still in the original packaging. In some cases, staff can pull out cardboard, metals, or wood to be recycled if they are not contaminated, but for the most part, by the time an item arrives as trash at the transfer station, it is already too late.

Do you throw things out that could be reused? These are just some of the perfectly good items @KingCountyWA sees at its Factoria Transfer Station in #Bellevue. Most of what goes to the county’s Cedar Hills Landfill could be recycled/reused – and the landfill will be full by 2040. pic.twitter.com/z1WvsWKpot

— Nicole Jennings (@nicoleKIROFM) February 2, 2023

“It’s heartbreaking to see Victorian furniture going over the wall … They didn’t think to take it somewhere else, they didn’t think to have a garage sale, they didn’t think to ask a neighbor, put it online, to see if it could have a second life,” Adams said.

Adams said we need a shift in our society’s way of thinking, from a consumer culture that is waste-driven to one that stops and considers how to make do and reuse a product.

“I believe a lot of it is our mindset that you buy it, use it, and you’re done. And sometimes you don’t think about, ‘How can I help my community or someone else?’ ” she said. “I think slowly we’re getting there … but we haven’t changed our mindset to a recycle future.”

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