Agenda
Welcome
Paul Presendieu, Co-founder WASS, Chair, New Rochelle Natural Resources Advisory Committee
Introduction: The Problem with Waste
Courtney M. Williams, PhD, Founder, WASS
Keynote Speaker: Kirstie Pecci, Executive Director, Just Zero
Solid Waste in Westchester County – How to Save Money, Reduce Waste, and Protect Your Health
[Watch introduction and keynote video]
Though the landscape of waste reduction can seem complicated, there are a number of specific areas where a simple change can have a high impact on 90% of what’s in our current waste stream statewide. Municipalities can form Zero Waste plans, enact pay-as-you-throw policies, implement diversion programs for food scraps, textiles, and other materials, and support producer responsibility in legislation.
Panel: Legislative and Policy Frameworks for Solutions
Legislator Erika Pierce, District 2 Westchester County Board of Legislators
Assemblyman Steve Otis, NYS Assembly District 91
Charlotte Binns, Sustainability Director, Village of Irvington
Since 2010, extended producer responsibility legislation has been pushed in the New York Senate and Assembly, currently in the form of the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, sponsored by Senator Pete Harckham and Assemblymember Deborah Glick. We cannot recycle our way out of current trends, where consumption of material is rising and the length of its lifecycle is falling, and these trends continue to get steeper. At the county and municipal level, a distributed network of small composting facilities need to be constructed to handle food scrap recycling. Small businesses and organizations can take donations of furniture and construction materials for reuse or collect materials for diversion, and towns can highlight them using directories or maps like the Town of Irvington has done. Constructive enforcement of the county’s Upon Request law regulating single-use utensils in takeout food is a good way to keep Zero Waste practices visible.
Community-Based Solutions
Lightning Round: Program Descriptions from Orgs in Attendance
Scaling Solutions: Suzie Fromer, Coordinator Hudson Valley Repair Cafe
Repair cafes have been numerous and well attended, saving $30,000 of manufacturing costs with around a 75% fix rate. They also provide an excellent opportunity to connect with individuals about the need to divert material from the waste stream systemically. Support right-to-repair legislation and fight against planned obsolescence to boost the benefit these cafes provide.
Panel: Implementing Solutions
Liz Sun, Hudson Valley Regional Council; Funding Solutions
Anthony Carbone, Sustainable Materials Management; Scaling Food Scraps Recycling
Lou Vetrone, First Deputy Commissioner Westchester County Department of Environmental Facilities; Implementing Waste Solutions
In order to fund reduction and recycling programs and provide the necessary public education about them, Hudson Valley Regional Council provides a consolidated model of grant application and publishes a monthly grants guide to its mailing list. Sustainable Materials Management, Inc. runs a 2-acre composting facility in Cortlandt, at about 60% of its annual capacity of 2500 tons, which represents 3% of Westchester’s food scraps. Establishing new facilities is a straightforward but lengthy process, and only scalable in a dispersed system, so we need to prepare for an increase in food scraps collection, and we also need to make good decisions about what compostable bags to use, if any. Westchester County is in the process of siting a large-scale composting facility, but would still need to rely on a distributed network and would have nowhere near enough capacity for all the food scraps in the county. The county Department of Environmental Facilities is focused on supporting statewide extended producer responsibility legislation and recycling education in multifamily housing units.
Speaker Biographies