In San Francisco, composting is a normal part of trash collection. Photo courtesy of SFEnvironment.org.
Fort Worth recently released its draft 20-year Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan, outlining how the city will reduce, manage and dispose of its solid waste during the next two decades. It’s an update to the 1995-2015 plan.
While cities like Austin and Dallas have recently implemented long-term “zero waste” plans to reduce waste going into landfills and incinerators by up to 85-90 percent, Fort Worth’s goal is only 50 percent by 2036.
Fort Worth should aim higher and strive for a zero-waste future as soon as possible. That can happen if city officials hear from residents that it’s a priority to reduce waste.
Zero waste is a philosophy that encourages the redesign of commercial and consumer products so that all materials are reused, recycled or composted.
Waste diversion programs such as recycling and composting can be extended to all apartments, businesses, events and public places. Little to no materials are wasted in landfills or incinerators.
While the Fort Worth plan has some good ideas, it does not include specific policies to achieve substantial landfill diversion or sustainability within the 20-year period. Zero Waste Fort Worth, Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Greater Fort Worth Sierra Club think the city can do better – much better!
Organic materials (food and yard waste) continue to be the largest component of municipal solid waste. So, why does the plan only recommend a study to identify suitable city-owned property for a new composting facility by 2020? We call on the city to immediately initiate a pilot program for curbside organics collection and composting, with implementation of residential organics collection by 2019 and city-wide collection by 2023.
Another component the plan doesn’t address well is industrial, commercial and institutional recycling. Currently, commercial businesses are not required to recycle, and most do not voluntarily recycle. But the plan only recommends requiring private haulers to offer optional recycling services to businesses by 2018. We recommend the city require by ordinance that all commercial businesses must recycle by 2019, similar to the requirement that Fort Worth already uses for apartments.
Fort Worth is growing, and there is a great deal of new construction and building demolition. Construction and demolition waste is another large component of municipal solid waste that isn’t being addressed in Fort Worth. The plan only recommends working to establish a program that encourages the diversion of construction and demolition materials. We recommend the city require by ordinance that 40 percent of construction and demolition materials be recycled by 2020, moving to 80 percent by 2029.
Keeping valuable resources from being wasted not only benefits the local and regional environment by reducing emissions and energy use, but also stimulates job growth and boosts our economy.
Fort Worth residents can comment on the plan through Friday by emailing swplan@fortworthtexas.gov. Further information will be available at the Rethinking Waste Open House at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, 3220 Botanic Garden Blvd.
You can also let Mayor Betsy Price and your council member know you want a stronger plan!
John MacFarlane is the conservation chairman for the Greater Fort Worth Sierra Club, which advocates for clean water, clean air and zero waste.
AUSTIN, Texas — Environmental advocates believe they have a solution to help reach the Austin’s goal of zero waste. Curbside composting would add a third bin to a homeowners recycling and trash cans, strictly for organic food waste.
Austin resident Mario Bravo grew up on 25 acres of land in San Antonio, and for him composting was the norm.
“I was really shocked to find out that San Antonio has it citywide and we don’t when everybody thinks of Austin as the trendsetter,” Bravo said.
For the past three years in Austin, 14,000 households have participated in the city’s pilot program for curbside composting. Those families have kept about nine pounds of waste out of landfills, per household, each week.
“That’s 44,000 tons a year of organic materials that wouldn’t be going to the landfills and will instead be going to strengthen our soils, conserve water and protect our climate,” said Andrew Dobbs with the Texas Campaign for the Environment.
Thursday, environmental advocates pushed Austin City Council to implement the policy citywide.
“We can’t keep throwing away everything,” said Dobbs. “We can’t depend upon landfills very much longer, and we’ve got a climate crisis and a soil crisis, and compost solves both of those problems.”
— Cost to Residents: —
They say it’s an obvious solution to the city’s goal of Zero Waste by 2040. Yet homeowners would see an increase of $5 a month, or $60 a year, phased in over time.
“But what’s great is the vast majority of Austin families will be able to downsize their trash and actually save money,” Dobbs said.
Bravo can’t help but think about the larger picture.
“When it goes into landfills it’s going to form a lot of methane which contributes to climate change,” he said.
That he says can all be monitored starting with a simple change in lifestyle.
— What’s Next: —
The city hopes to recycle three-quarters of its waste by 2020. Right now the city is recycling at about 40 percent. City Council will vote on the composting budget in September.
The city of Dallas is recycling at just half the rate it set as a goal in a “Zero Waste” plan that City Hall approved three years ago. But the city’s not kicking the blue bins to the curb just yet.
The plan’s first benchmark calls for getting Dallas residents and companies — by 2020 — to send 40 percent of their waste through recycling or re-use channels instead of trucking it to the landfill. That percentage — called the diversion rate — is at 21 percent, among the lowest rates of major Texas cities, according to the Sanitation Services Department.
Kelly High, the director of the department, said they are fighting a two-front battle.
“Externally we’re dealing with people in the commercial sector and properties and hotels and apartments. Internally we’re trying to increase not only participation but tonnage for our residents,” he said, meaning the amount that each resident recycles.
Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News
Dallas provides weekly recycling pickup along with its garbage pickup for residents in standalone homes. Apartment complexes can set up their own recycling system or drop off materials at one of 140 dumpster locations in Dallas. The Sanitation Services department also runs a bulk and brush program allowing residents to leave unwieldy materials such as old furniture, mattresses, tree limbs, and bagged leaves on the curb for free pickup.
Some of the department’s biggest successes, though, have been through social media. The department maintains Twitter and Facebook accounts and also released an app where residents can search for information about recyclable materials, set up reminders for recycling pickups, and a game to practice sorting materials correctly.
“We constantly engage with them [Dallas residents]. We’re monitoring our social media sites probably 18 hours a day,” said Murray Myers, the manager of the Zero Waste Division in the department. “To them, that provides a good customer service tool they might not find elsewhere.”
Better education could lead to better recycling results, but the Sanitation Services Department is still looking for new ways to reach out to residents who don’t even have a blue bin.
“Still about 20 percent of Dallas households don’t have a roll cart. We think it’s time to switch it up and reach out again…in a more hands-on, person-to-person approach where we’re going in the neighborhoods and just talking with them about recycling and why it’s important,” Myers said.
Corey Troiani, program director at advocacy group Texas Campaign for the Environment, wants to see the city require recycling for apartment buildings. He said that apartments, commercial buildings, and construction and demolition waste account for 83 percent of the city’s waste.
“The issue is that we’re still relying on the same voluntary encouragement for these folks to do these programs. Apartments, businesses and hotels are all aware of the fact that it is likely to become mandatory to have these programs in place,” Troiani said. “They’re pretty much holding out.”
The Texas Campaign for the Environment was one of the stakeholders that developed the Zero Waste Plan.
High acknowledged that a city ordinance requiring recycling could be in the cards. “At some point if that voluntary component doesn’t move forward, part of the considerations [the city] council will look at would be to make multifamily or commercial buildings provide the option for their tenants to recycle,” he said, adding that it could be brought to council in the next couple of years around the time that the Zero Waste Plan would be re-evaluated and reconfigured.
The department plans to continue strengthening its voluntary recycling program until then. In December it agreed to a public-private partnership with Spanish company Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas to build and operate a new recycling facility out of McCommas Bluff Landfill in southern Dallas.
“We can bring schoolkids there to see how recyclables are processed…right next to the landfill. It’s an opportunity to explain why we would want to move away from landfills and to more recycling,” High said.
However, that facility won’t be operating until January. And by that point, the city could be even further behind its goal for zero waste.
Carrol Seale is a believer in Austin composting. That doesn’t mean doing it was always easy. She tried to make up games to help her kids, ages 13 and 9, remember which scraps went where: recycling, composting or trash. The city-provided compost bin was too big to fit in her kitchen, so Seale purchased a smaller one from the Container Store, with a tight lid to ward off the fruit flies that would buzz when someone forgot to seal it.
Into the compost bin goes organic materials, including uneaten food, yard trimmings and old pizza boxes. The family’s commitment to regularly sorting its organic waste from regular trash “goes in cycles,” Seale said. But building the habit through a city pilot program has made Seale support expanding composting citywide.
Whether to commit to that, with the costs and resident fees associated with it, is up for debate at City Hall as budget talks amp up for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
Andrew Dobbs, area program director for Texas Campaign for the Environment, checks out a banner by compost supporters in front of Austin City Hall – Photo by Al Braden
City staffers have suggested phasing in curbside collection of composting materials from all Austin households over a period of five years. The first year would cost $4.2 million and add $1 to monthly utility bills. The fees would incrementally increase to reach $5.40 per month in the fifth year. The city would have to buy new trucks and add 55 employees, for a cost of $23.2 million after five years.
Advocates say composting is the necessary next step toward the city’s “Zero Waste” goal, which aims to reduce trash sent to landfills and incinerators 90 percent by 2040. Austin is behind in its goals to divert landfill waste.
It could save the cost down the road of building new landfills, advocates say. The city has estimated 46 percent of Austin waste is compostable.
Others caution that $5.40 per month is a substantial fee for some Austin families, particularly for a program that residents might find tough to commit to.
The pilot program, which began in 2013, phased in compost pickup to 14,000 homes in 10 pockets of the city. It provides a separate bin for food scraps, paper items, yard waste, hair, lint and small wooden items. Pickup is weekly. City staff estimated nearly two-thirds of those homes leave something organic at the curb on any given week.
In a budget workshop discussion on the program Wednesday, staffers mentioned options of rolling out citywide composting as quickly as three years or as slowly as seven years, which would speed up or delay the costs.
Mayor Steve Adler and Council Members Delia Garza, Leslie Pool and Kathie Tovo expressed support for moving forward on composting. Council Members Ellen Troxclair and Sheri Gallo expressed some hesitation at the cost and asked whether residents could be allowed to opt-in or opt-out if they wanted.
“We’re looking at a balance of not pricing our community out of our community and doing what’s best for the environment,” Gallo said.
Staffers cautioned against allowing residents to opt out. Doing so would make it much more expensive for those who did choose to participate, as trucks would still have to travel the same routes for pickup, said Bob Gedert, director of Austin Resource Recovery.
Garza said $5.40 per month was a small part of the average person’s budget and should be weighed against the benefits of reducing waste.
“If we don’t implement policies like these and instead seek to just have a blanket ‘We want Austin to be affordable for everybody,’ if that’s an Austin that has 10 dumps in my district and three more gas plants … we have to rethink,” she said.
Other proponents of the program have noted that if residents start putting more waste in the compost bin, they might be able to reduce the size of their trash cart to lower their overall cost that way.
Gedert said he considered the council’s reaction promising. The council will decide during future budget discussions whether to approve expenditures for the program.
The Texas Railroad Commission has nothing to do with trains—it’s the state agency that is supposed to regulate the oil and gas industry in Texas. This makes it one of the most important agencies there is, and right now they are undergoing an important review. Next year our state lawmakers could be voting on major changes to the agency. Because of the out-sized pollution impacts from oil and gas operations throughout Texas, this is a crucial opportunity to protect our environment and public health and safety for all residents.
State officials from the Texas Sunset Commission are currently undertaking this comprehensive review process, and they just released a report on the important changes that are needed at the Railroad Commission. What they found was disturbing. In their own words, the Railroad Commission:
Has a “lack of strategic approach to enforcement and inability to provide basic performance information.”
“Cannot demonstrate the effectiveness of its oil and natural gas enforcement program.”“Struggles to report reliable data.”
“Does not, and seemingly cannot, report the complete number of oil and gas violations cited by Railroad Commission staff last year.”
“Cannot guarantee that major violations (such as ‘a large spill that contaminates freshwater’) are being appropriately addressed.”
“Does not specifically track repeat violations.”
“Failed to deter operators from repeatedly violating regulations that could result in groundwater contamination.”
These aren’t quotes from us here at Texas Campaign for the Environment or from another environmental group—this is a state oversight agency telling us that our way of enforcing oil and gas laws in Texas is broken. Read the whole report here.
At the heart of this problem is the way that the Railroad Commission enforces the law. This agency bends over backwards to avoid issuing penalties. Instead, they will forego any fines or other discipline as long as the lawbreaker complies after they are caught. The report found that current enforcement policy has the “unintended effect that operators will simply wait to be told to comply with regulations.” Bad actors know they can break the law freely until an inspector comes—keep in mind that over 65% of oil and gas leases have gone more than 2 years without an inspection.
And because the agency doesn’t keep track of repeat offenders, those bad operators can start breaking the law again as soon as the inspector leaves. If another inspector shows up months or years later and find the same exact violations, the company still won’t be fined—they can play the same “we will now start obeying the law” game over and over again. As the report says, “the Railroad Commission cannot be certain that operators are not committing repeated violations.”
Finally, as if all of this weren’t bad enough, the one threat the state agency really does have—a “lease severance” which forbids a lawbreaking operator from producing any oil and gas—“may be an empty threat” according to this report. Last year nearly 20% of the operators barred from producing oil and gas were caught doing it anyway, and the only way the state agency ever catches them is if they turn themselves in.
The solution is a simple, commonsense idea that state lawmakers of all political stripes should be able to support. The Texas Railroad Commission needs to get serious about enforcing the law, tracking their performance, and making violation and penalty information available to the public and our elected officials. The report makes an important recommendation: Make the Railroad Commission develop a public, annual strategic plan that tracks and measures the effectiveness of monitoring and enforcement.
Enforcing existing state laws designed to protect our air, water and land shouldn’t be a controversial issue. Better enforcement could improve other areas such as our chronic smog problem in D/FW—much of our regional ozone pollution can be traced to oil and gas emissions. It could even affect the growing number of earthquakes caused by the oil and gas industry, because if state officials want to put rules in place to prevent this damaging seismic activity, they’ll be utterly useless without proper enforcement.
Sadly, oil and gas industry lobbyists have convinced many of our state lawmakers that nothing needs to change at the Railroad Commission. (It should come as no surprise that oil and gas lobbyists are among the most powerful in the state.) But many other elected officials, community leaders and local groups know that the Texas Railroad Commission needs a better strategy for living up to its obligations.
We’re working to organize broad support and convince state officials to do what’s right and take Texas law seriously. Yes, this can be done if enough people get involved now. You can take action today!
Remember a few years ago when news spread about the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) being used in plastic baby bottles, pacifiers and sippy cups? There was mounting evidence that BPA could cause behavioral changes in infants and children and trigger the early onset of puberty in females. At that time, many retailers quickly pulled those items from store shelves – even giant companies like Walmart responded.
Unfortunately, chemical industry lobbyists have kept BPA from being banned in the US. That means it’s still in many everyday products. Today a shocking 93% of American have measurable levels of BPA in our bodies, which suggests that we are being exposed to this chemical repeatedly. And over the past few years, hundreds of studies have linked even very small amounts of BPA to breast and prostate cancer, infertility, type-2 diabetes, obesity, asthma, and behavioral changes including attention deficit disorder.
One place BPA is still widely used is in food packaging, especially as a liner in canned foods. Of course we expect the food we buy to be safe for our families – but BPA can actually leach out of can liners, into the food itself. The good news is some food companies have already pledged to eliminate BPA. The bad news is it’s a minority of canned food producers. The worse news is, not all of the “BPA free” companies have explained what chemicals they will be using instead. Some of the substitutes could be even worse.
So how do we really know what’s in the cans that Americans eat from every day?
When this national report was released on March 30, we held actions outside an Austin Randalls and Dallas Kroger. This national campaign is sending a message to retailers and food manufacturers that BPA and other toxic chemicals such as polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene should not be used in can liners.
Another organization working on this issue, Breast Cancer Fund, gave food giant Campbells a heads up that 100% of their cans tested had BPA – despite the fact that Campbells had promised to phase out BPA in can liners back in 2012. Obviously they hadn’t followed through on that pledge. In response, two days before the report was released, Campbells announced it would remove BPA from its cans by mid-2017.
Will Campbells keep its latest promise? Will Campbells and other brands guarantee with rigorous scientific testing that the new can liners are not “regrettable substitutes,” but are truly safer for our health? Will major grocery stores work with food suppliers to eliminate BPA in all canned foods moving forward?
The answer largely depends on whether all of us keep the pressure on Randalls, Krogers, Walmart, dollar stores, Campbells and other brands to make food packaging safe. You can take action here:www.toxicfoodcans.org
Whether you’ve been paying rapt attention to this unusual presidential campaign or not, we hope that you will vote in this election. Remember it’s not only the top of the ticket that matters.
State legislators we elect this year will come to Austin next January and they will have a big impact on whether we move forward or backward on the long-range vision of a Texas free from pollution.
Texas Campaign for the Environment does not endorse candidates. We do urge Texans to question the candidates who are running to represent you about environmental issues. Here are a few for you to consider asking candidates and their campaigns:
Will you oppose or support local control? For instance, will you vote against bills that would forbid local governments from preventing pollution from single-use bags or from protecting heritage trees?
Will you make it easier or more difficult for people, businesses and local governments to challenge polluting facilities that can harm our quality of life?
Will you support or oppose legislation that would help consumers recycle household batteries like Texas has done with TVs and computers?
Will you back stronger accountability for oil and gas operations? One idea is to have bigger buffers between drilling and homes or schools.
Keep in mind that in Texas, the state legislature has the responsibility to draw legislative districts and so most of them are shaped so that one party or the other has a lock on that district. This means the people who take the time to vote in the party primaries for the most part determine who the winner will be.
So it’s time to swing into action if you want to elect a legislator who reflects your values. Today is THE LAST DAY to EARLY VOTE or you can vote on Election Day Tuesday March 1.
Every day, Bob and Lisa Parr wake up to a life affected by pollution from the oil and gas industry. When new gas drilling and fracking operations began near their home in Wise County, the gas company released so much toxic pollution that living and breathing on their own property was literally making the Parr family sick. They had to take the drilling company to court in a years-long lawsuit before a jury finally ruled that they were owed $3 million in damages.
Unfortunately, the state agency that is supposed to protect their safety and property rights by enforcing standards for the oil and gas industry — anachronistically called the Railroad Commission of Texas — bends over backwards to protect drilling companies instead.
Ryan Sitton is somehow both the CEO of an energy company and a Railroad Commissioner. That means he’s in charge of regulating his own industry. Predictably, the Railroad Commission always takes the side of industry, insisting that any contamination of our air, water, and land is “below levels of concern” and “protective of human health.” Even after chemical fingerprint testing definitively showed that a private water well in Parker County was contaminated with gas from a fracking operation — so much that it was flammable on tap — the Railroad Commission continued to argue that it was “naturally occurring.”
Now Sitton and the Railroad Commission claim their updated “Rule 13” requires responsible drilling practices that prevent water pollution. But an extensive investigation by WFAA shows what a farce this is. Many drilling companies simply ignore the rule and choose not to install protective well casings, and the industry-lapdog Railroad Commission often looks the other way. An environmental scientist sums it up in the WFAA report: “The price of not following the rules will be paid by Texans whose well water is being destroyed.”
That means Bob and Lisa aren’t alone. And beyond those residents who have seen their drinking water irreversibly polluted, there are millions more here in North Texas who breathe dirty air that exceeds the federal limit for ozone pollution. According to the state environmental agency, oil and gas activities are one of the largest sources of ozone-forming emissions in DFW, adding to our regional smog problems.
Then there is the persistent problem of earthquakes caused by oil and gas operations. In industry-friendly Oklahoma, the state agency has instituted a “stoplight” system of “green, yellow, red” to shut down specific wastewater injection wells that are linked to earthquakes. But the Railroad Commission of Texas won’t even publicly admit that there is such a link at all. The agency even hired its own seismologist just so he could publicly deny that the oil and gas industry was responsible for causing any earthquakes in Texas. Meanwhile scientists at SMU, the University of Texas and the U.S. Geological Survey have documented the link repeatedly. Many North Texans have their homes, businesses and nerves shaken on a regular basis.
Here’s the sad reality: the Railroad Commission of Texas does not work for all residents, but primarily for the oil and gas industry instead. Many of the campaign contributions collected by elected commissioners such as Sitton come directly from the oil and gas industry. The Railroad Commission treats oil and gas companies like “clients” to be served.
In the 2017 Texas Legislature, state lawmakers will be doing a “sunset review” of this agency. Will our State Senators and Representatives get the Railroad Commission in better shape to protect its real clients — all Texas residents — or will it just be business as usual?
That’s a question that all voters should be asking their candidates for the Texas House and Senate during the primary and general elections this year. In addition, one of the three seats for Railroad Commissioner is on the ballot this year, so Texas voters can decide who should be running this agency. Make sure your voice is heard.
Corey Troiani DFW Program Director Texas Campaign for the Environment
Austin Chronicle
By Robyn Ross; photos by John Anderson
It’s the bales of stuffed animals that elicit the gasps on the Goodwill Resource Center tours. They’re at the back of the warehouse, past the doors to the outlet store, where stuff of all kinds sells for $1.49 a pound. They’re past the baler, which compresses T-shirts and towels into half-ton bricks for wholesale buyers. Past the pallets of books stacked 25 feet high, the endless rows of suitcases, and the shrink-wrapped TVs. Something about the once-loved teddy bears mashed together in an anonymous block, valued for their collective weight rather than the memories they evoke, makes visitors suck in their breath.
Photo courtesy of Goodwill
But Goodwill can’t afford to be sentimental – it doesn’t have time. With almost 95 million pounds of donations last year, it has to process goods as fast as it can, to sell them in stores, at the outlet, or to vendors who take them to flea markets, resale shops, online auctions, and domestic and overseas recycling operations. The stuffed animals are both the evidence of a successful reuse operation – Goodwill Central Texas keeps 81% of the donations it receives out of the landfill – and of just how much stuff Austinites discard.
Goodwill Central Texas is one of the largest reusers of materials in Austin, but it’s hardly alone. The last quarter of 2015 saw the establishment of the Austin Creative Reuse Center, the kickoff of the city’s Fixit Clinic series, the grand opening of the new Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and the rollout of the city’s upgraded Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center. Still, zero-waste advocates say reuse is often overlooked in favor of the most famous of the “Three Rs,” recycling – even though recycling requires more energy and resources than reusing a product in its current form. And in Austin’s master plan for getting to zero waste, its “Highest and Best Use Hierarchy” ranks reuse third on the list – behind both sustainable product redesign and waste reduction, and ahead of recycling and composting.
“I always call reuse the lesser known of the Rs that people don’t like to talk about,” says Blythe Christopher de Orive, founder of the art materials exchange site Re-Sourcery.org and a member of the Austin Zero Waste Alliance. “It seems like everybody can get behind recycling, because it’s like, ‘Oh, I can put it in a bin, and it goes somewhere else.’ Reuse is not as sexy. But I think it’s a matter of behavior change – we have to make it seem cool.”
When Austin was starting to make plans to reach zero waste, in 2008, experts estimated residents were throwing away $11 million of usable goods each year. Then, last year the city conducted its first-ever study of what’s actually in its residential trash. The study’s most publicized conclusion was that 90% of what residents throw away could be recycled or composted – and as a result the city amped up its promotion of recycling. But the study also shows that people are still trashing reusable stuff: an estimated 3,300 tons of textiles and 344 tons of electronics last year (another 276 tons of textiles were incorrectly placed in blue recycling bins). That’s a lot of shirts and DVD players in the landfill.
For a city that just missed its zero-waste benchmark goal – Austin was supposed to reach 50% diversion by 2015, and instead is hovering around 42% – those materials represent a missed opportunity, both environmentally and economically.
Making reuse mainstream will be crucial to meeting the city’s goal of diverting 90% of materials from the landfill by 2040, and experts say it will require a combination of government leadership, corporate responsibility, and individual commitment.
Resale Market
Austin Craigslist, Feb. 2: KIDS TOYS. Total of 10 stuffed animals (1 white cat, 1 lamb, 1 horse, 1 bulldog with skirt, 1 pink pig, 1 mother rabbit with 1 baby rabbit, 1 brown dog, 1 red crab, 1 reindeer) Very clean and excellent condition. $10 cash.
When donations are dropped off at the 50 donation sites in Goodwill Central Texas’ 15-county service area, they’re vetted for salability and displayed in a store for about three weeks. What hasn’t sold by then is taken to the Goodwill outlet at its Resource Center on Burleson Road. From the loading dock everything is dumped onto rolling tables that are wheeled onto the sales floor, where stuff is sold by the pound. (“It’s Black Friday every day in the Goodwill outlet,” Director of Development Lisa Apfelberg says.) The tables stay in the store for less than an hour before being rolled back to the warehouse, where materials picked over by the outlet’s voracious shoppers are then sorted into 30 categories of recyclable material: electronics, metal, rugs, purses, skates. Whatever’s left after about two minutes of sorting is trash. The outlet staff turns over an average of 1,300 tables a day in a highly efficient process that’s the subject of Forklift Danceworks’ new show this weekend (see “Goodwill Hosts Reuse-Inspired Performance,” p.32).
The stuff that gets a second chance through Goodwill also gives its clients a second chance: Proceeds from the stores constitute 55% of the funding for Goodwill’s high school and job training programs, aimed at people who have disabilities, limited education, criminal records, or a history of homelessness.
Thus far in 2016, donations to Goodwill Central Texas are up 20% year over year. “We’re struggling to keep up with how generous Austin is, but it’s a good challenge to have,” says Assistant Aftermarket Manager Timothy Boston. He says that in addition to the clothes, electronics, and housewares, people donate some head-scratchers: family photos, sharks preserved in formaldehyde, a terrarium that employees discovered still had a lizard in it. Some items are beyond repair, but others are brand-new. After-market Manager Donnie Brown remembers seeing a spotless Vera Wang dress with the tags still on it.
“I’ve noticed that the life span of people using an item isn’t that long,” Brown says. “I’ve seen computers and stereos that look like they’re probably 6 months old. As soon as a new technology comes out, Austinites want to receive that new technology.”
Goodwill sent about 2.5 million pounds of computers last year to be refurbished or recycled through its partnership with Dell, called Dell Reconnect. But even Goodwill can’t find a home for everything it receives. Last year Austinites donated 2.5 million pounds of televisions, which are not particularly marketable, and also difficult to recycle. The Resource Center ends up with 80 pounds a day of unsold wicker baskets which can’t be recycled due to their treated wood. Glass and furniture make up much of the remaining landfilled material.
Of course, Goodwill’s resale-as-reuse model is present across Austin, in consignment shops primarily peddling clothing and housewares. That retail mix makes north Burnet Road the perfect location for the Austin Public Library’s used bookstore, Recycled Reads. While libraries are the ultimate model of reuse, even they generate waste when books are withdrawn because they’re dirty, outdated, or redundant (a bestseller like The Martian needs lots of shelf space now, but it won’t in five years). And books can’t simply be put in a recycling bin, because the covers clog processing equipment and the glue in bindings degrades the quality of the baled paper. To keep withdrawn library books out of the landfill and offer residents a place to exchange their own unwanted reading material, the library opened Recycled Reads in 2009. The store accepts donations from the public, along with the six pallets a week of material removed from APL collections, for a total of about 70,000 pieces of material – or 12 to 15 tons – a month. What isn’t sold in the store is picked up by Goodwill to travel through its retail funnel, or sold to Thrift Books, an online book dealer that pays Recycled Reads by the pound. What Thrift Books can’t sell is donated or recycled into paper stock.
Recycled Reads and its pioneering manager Mindy Reed have received national recognition for their efforts: In 2013, the store was awarded an Institute of Museum and Lib¬rary Services grant to create online training for other libraries to emulate the Austin model, and in 2015 Reed was named one of 50 “movers and shakers” in her field by Library Journal. “I’m proud of that award because any innovative idea takes a while before it makes its way through the rest of the system,” Reed says. “You have to have your allies – like other city departments – in place to pull it off. But I believe other cities will see we have to do something to have a sustainable model [in libraries], and I’m proud Austin is setting the benchmark.”
Austin also set a benchmark with its Habitat for Humanity ReStore, which, when it opened in 1992, was the first of its kind. The retail outlet sells gently used construction materials, fixtures, furniture, and home decor, with profits going to support Habi¬tat’s mission of building affordable homes. (Donations are not used to build the homes; the nonprofit works with wholesalers that cut it a deal.) In late January, contractors renovating an apartment complex in the Domain asked the ReStore to collect some items they needed removed: doors, ceiling fans, cabinets, sinks, light fixtures, all of them in good condition. But the store also gets donations of brand-new items – almost 2,000 gallons of eggshell paint purchased for a new Downtown high-rise that turned out to be the wrong color were then donated by the construction company. Batches of tile too small to sell in a traditional retail setting. Jacuzzi tubs that showrooms purged to make room for new inventory.
“We might have a lot of the same stuff as Home Depot, but we service a completely different client,” says Store Manager David Little. “It doesn’t always have to do with income level; it has everything to do with being more conscious about the cost of things and keeping things recycled.”
One of the newest entrants to the resale market is the Austin Creative Reuse Center, which opened last fall but is hosting an official celebration this Saturday, Feb. 13. Tucked in a storefront in the Linc shopping center, near the ACC Highland campus, the nonprofit center accepts donations of fabric, art and office supplies, and repurposable materials from conferences and expos, and resells them at a discount. The space is an upgrade to the operation that had previously been housed in founder Rebecca Stuch’s garage, but it’s already feeling cramped. In its 2014 fiscal year, Austin Creative Reuse collected and rehomed 3 tons of materials. Now that the storefront is open, it’s processing 2 tons every month as businesses donate unsold inventory and people clean out their craft closets.
Rebecca Stuch of the Austin Creative Reuse Center
“So many people have great intentions that they’re going to make something, but then they don’t have time,” Stuch says. “The idea is, bring that stuff to us, and we’ll be your craft closet, or the storage and tinkering area in your garage.”
The center sells odds and ends like cardboard tubes, fabric scraps, and CD cases, but its inventory also includes supplies that have never been used. “One way people talk about reuse is that it’s going to be something really worn out or dirty, and sometimes it’s not any of that,” Stuch says, pointing to a bolt of pristine blue organza donated by a wedding decorator. “It can be something brand new, but the person ordered too much, or they were going to start a project and didn’t finish it.”
Borrow and Share
Austin Craigslist, Jan. 31: A huge name brand lot of women’s clothing sizes L/XL and 14/16…. Brand names include; Gap, New York & Company, Eddie Bauer, and more…. They are all worn but still in great condition. Well actually a few still has the tag on them! … What could get better.
Another approach to reuse involves trading or sharing, rather than selling. At the Toybrary, near Anderson Lane and MoPac, toddlers bang cheerfully on xylophones and wobble on rocking horses while owner Liza Wilson checks out a toy to a member parent. Opened in July 2013, the storefront has a selection of 1,000 toys – puzzles, dolls, pretend food, shape sorters, blocks – that members, who pay a monthly fee, can borrow, three at a time. Wilson, a former preschool teacher, chooses her inventory based on Montessori-influenced criteria: The toys have an educational bent, and none require batteries. They come from eBay, children’s resale shops, garage sales, the South Austin secondhand shop Anna’s Toy Depot, and occasional donations. All are cleaned with a disinfecting mixture of lavender oil and water between borrows.
Every day Wilson hears people talk about how they’re overwhelmed with toys at home, whether due to the generosity of grandparents, children growing bored with materials they’ve outgrown, or a culture that encourages continual consumption.
“It’s not anybody’s fault, but the ‘system’ right now is wrong,” she says. “We’re not doing toys the right way, because buying and buying doesn’t make sense when the kids are going through them so quickly. What makes sense is to borrow or share toys. My motto is ‘Happy wallets, happy kids, less clutter, less waste.'”
In April the Toybrary will host a children’s and baby clothes exchange with Ashley Wearing, founder of the Austin Clothes Exchange. The swap meet started four years ago in Wearing’s home, but when monthly attendance surpassed 100 she found a larger venue at the HOPE Farmers Market. Now, every first Sunday, Wearing sets up a table, clothes rack, and tent, and invites thrift-minded shoppers to drop off their unwanted clothes and browse the piles for new treasures. In addition to her regular gig at the farmers’ market, she’s hosted swaps at Patagonia, TOMS Roasting Company, and the BabyEarth store in Round Rock. At the end of the swap, whatever’s left – and there are always leftover clothes – is donated to a worthy cause, sometimes the homeless members of a church that meets under the I-35 bridge.
“People are becoming more aware of the practices with manufacturing companies, especially in places like Africa and India, where clothes are being mass-produced for very low wages,” Wearing says. “I feel like it is necessary for us to get to a point where we reuse our clothes and anything that we can within our community.”
She laughs as she describes seeing particular outfits cycle through the exchange multiple times. “There’s a dress that I swapped four years ago – it must have exchanged between 30 people already. Imagine if we all did that. No one would really ever have to shop for clothes.”
A similar exchange – but with a small price tag – happens every semester at the University of Texas, which has its own goal of zero waste by 2020. The Trash to Treasure donation drive led by the Campus Environmental Center, a student organization, collects belongings the 7,500 campus residents don’t want or didn’t make time to move at the end of each semester. In May 2015 the collection bins gathered nearly 15,000 pounds of clothes, furnishings, school supplies, and food (mac and cheese, ramen, Wheat Thins). The clothes and salable housewares are sorted, stored until the next semester, and then offered back to students in a series of sales. Sheets and towels go to the animal shelter for bedding, and some T-shirts were given to inmates in a women’s jail who stitched them into reusable bags, which were then donated to shoppers at a food pantry.
Increase Diversion
Austin Craigslist, Feb. 8: Basically majority of items in my garage I would like to give away for free. Just take what you want/need. Don’t be greedy.
Every reuse activity contributes to “diversion” – keeping things out of the landfill – but not every activity is easy to measure. To understand diversion, imagine a conveyor belt. At one end is a pile of everything Austinites discard: old clothes, clean newspaper, extra food from a banquet, dirty diapers, yard trimmings, a working toaster, banana peels. At the other end is the landfill. As the pile moves down the conveyor belt, robot arms pick out certain items and haul them away. The banquet food is taken to a homeless shelter, the clothes and toaster to a thrift store, the newspaper to a recycler, the yard trimmings and banana peels to a compost pile. By the time the pile reaches the landfill, all that’s left is the diapers. That’s essentially what 90% diversion – Austin’s zero-waste goal – looks like. Right now the diversion rate is 42%.
The Resource Recovery Master Plan, approved by City Council in 2011, includes plans to increase diversion through reuse. It projects that 7,500 tons of materials could be diverted through reuse by 2020, and 25,000 tons by 2030. The tonnage would come from “teacher creative reuse centers” that funnel donated artistic supplies into classrooms, and four “Austin reuse centers” staffed by nonprofits where residents can drop off larger items. While the first such centers were projected to open in 2013, Austin Resource Recovery Director Bob Gedert says the bids he received from potential operators were too high, so his department switched gears. The plan is now to open one reuse drop-off center every two years. The first of the centers, the Recycle & Reuse Drop-Off Center in South Austin, a merger of the Household Hazardous Waste Facility and Resource Recovery Center, opened October 2015. The new center is a one-stop shop for residents to get rid of recyclables, Styrofoam, batteries, electronics, and bulky items; it also replaces the services previously offered by Ecology Action’s Downtown collection center.
The “reuse” in the center’s name means that when customers drop off potentially hazardous waste that still has value, like half a bottle of Windex, the items are set aside for the public to peruse. The same goes for art supplies like paint and brushes, which are housed in a shed open to self-identified teachers and artists. Latex paint that’s still usable is mixed with like colors to make Austin ReBlend, a giveaway paint that comes in three colors. Last year the center remixed 28,000 gallons of it.
But whether the reuse centers will divert the tonnage projected in the master plan remains to be seen. After all, quantifying the amount that Austinites reuse involves calculating tons of things Resource Recovery never picks up at the curb. “If the city is controlling the material and picking it up, we obviously have access to those numbers. But it’s hard to count diversion unless you have the numbers,” Gedert says. How could a city possibly quantify all the stuff that might have been thrown away, were it not for a successful transaction at Goodwill or on Craigslist or Freecycle or a neighborhood e-list?
To get answers, Gedert’s department has hired the same consultant that did the residential trash study to calculate diversion rates for the whole city – and provide an estimated diversion from reuse, including the material processed by Goodwill, the ReStore, Recycled Reads, and Austin Creative Reuse, among others.
The Austin Creative Reuse Center
“The important part about our zero-waste goals is that something doesn’t have to be handled by the city to count,” Gedert says. “In fact, we would encourage the handling of items to be non-city-related to reduce cost. If it happens before it reaches the hands of the city’s employees, and if we don’t have to pick it up and take it to the landfill, that’s a cost reduction.”
Still, the city can nudge residents to reuse in other ways. It can institute policies that require it, such as Austin’s ban on single-use carryout bags that took effect in March 2013. A follow-up report concluded that the rule had effectively cut down on the number of single-use bags that ended up in the trash, but that the sturdier reusable bags sold by local groceries were being thrown away too quickly. In October, the construction and demolition recycling ordinance will take effect. Builders of new structures will be required to find a home other than the landfill for construction waste; demolition waste will be phased in later.
The city has also funded the first two years of operations for the Austin Materials Marketplace, a matchmaking service for waste and entrepreneurs who can use it as a raw material. While the Marketplace doesn’t have a physical space to store the materials – they’re posted online – the city has funded the project’s staff time and software expenses. Operated by Ecology Action of Texas and the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Develop¬ment, the Marketplace has facilitated exchanges of roughly 60 tons of materials since its public launch in August 2014.
One transaction that AMM Program Manager Daniel Kietzer highlights is the processing by Granite Recyclers Austin of granite scraps from countertop fabrication shops into a granite tile product. “That’s a real big win-win for folks on both sides of that transaction,” he says. “Stone is, of course, very heavy and expensive to send to a landfill. But also the people that are taking that stone and making use of it can save a considerable amount of money – $200 to $300 per ton.”
Citizen Pressure
Austin Craigslist, Jan. 24: Giant, chunky old desktop that makes sounds like a jet engine sometimes. I don’t really know anything about computers. You want this for parts? Let your kid tear it apart and rebuild it? … Please unburden me of this machine and find some use for it. Hell, I’ll even give it to you if you’re real cool.
Even with laws on the books, and incentives to reuse items in business development, individual Austinites have to choose reuse over buying new. And often reusing something takes more effort. For instance, the University of Texas has a surplus property warehouse for computers, furniture, and lab equipment departments have purged. Other offices have the option to “shop” the warehouse when they need new supplies, though doing so requires flexibility – the warehouse might not have exactly what a staff member envisioned – and an investment of time, because the space is located off-campus and its inventory changes weekly.
“It’s easier to stay at your desk on campus and order a new thing online with a click, rather than go out to the surplus warehouse,” says Jim Walker, UT’s director of sustainability. He says the variable in most people’s decision-making about reuse is convenience: “A marriage of how much time you’re willing to give something, with the ease of doing so. What we [at UT] can control on the infrastructure side is the ease: ‘Here’s a warehouse with a bunch of stuff in it. Here’s Trash to Treasure on the West Mall.’ But the other part is we’ve got to invest in changing people’s attitudes – that the desk you got from surplus, that’s now in its fourth office – that’s cool! And that’s worth your effort to go get it.”
Of course, you can only reuse something if it’s designed to last. Reuse advocates decry planned obsolescence and a “throwaway” mentality about goods. For instance, the construction of furniture with particle board, instead of solid wood, means the pieces don’t last as long (the chemicals used in particle board also prevent most of those items from being recycled). And as electronics and computer technology evolves, such equipment becomes outdated more quickly.
These changes aren’t consumers’ fault, says Andrew Dobbs of Texas Campaign for the Environment, a zero-waste watchdog group. TCE advocates for “extended producer responsibility” – akin to the sustainable product design that tops the “Highest and Best Use Hierarchy.” The concept is that manufacturers are obliged to consider the impacts of the products they make throughout those products’ life cycles. Considerations include sourcing materials sustainably, ensuring fair working conditions in factories, designing products so they can be repaired and recycled, and accepting the product back at the end of its life if it can’t be recycled.
“The point of extended producer responsibility is to internalize costs that have been externalized by producers to this point,” Dobbs says. “Our recycling and disposal in this country is done predominantly by the government, or by private contracts between households and the waste companies. How do we get the impact of this waste onto the balance sheet of the people making wasteful products, so that they make less-wasteful products?”
TCE successfully campaigned for legislation to require manufacturers to take back their products at the end of their useful life. A computer takeback initiative passed the Texas Legislature in 2007, and a similar rule for televisions was signed into law in 2011. Still, other products, from smartphones to bread machines, can be rendered unusable by a problem as small as a broken knob or a battery compartment that doesn’t open. Dobbs points to the group iFixit, whose website publishes open-source repair manuals for electronics. The group’s Right to Repair Manifesto reads, in part, “We have the right to devices that can be opened … to repair documentation for everything … to available, reasonably priced service parts.” Consumers should join iFixit’s efforts to pressure manufacturers to make products that can be repaired and used longer, Dobbs says.
“The system is specifically designed to create pollution, and the system is bigger than any of our individual efforts,” he says. “The most important thing you can do is be an active citizen and join up with organized citizens to put pressure on business and government to make those changes, because that has a much bigger impact.”
Grassroots activists are on tour through West Texas next week educating voters about environmental issues leading up to the March 1 primary election. Texas Campaign for the Environment is gathering broad-based support for common sense protections for Texans’ public health and quality of life in response to efforts by state lawmakers last year to attack environmental policies and disable community recourses against pollution.
In addressing water shortages, inadequate recycling, hazardous waste and safety concerns regarding the close proximity of some oil and gas operations to neighborhoods, the Texas legislature can and should make the concerns of communities and environmental organizations a higher priority. Unfortunately, several policies passed last year left property owners and local governments with their hands tied, unable to protect residents’ quality of life.
“We believe that communities deserve to have a say in what kind of polluting facilities are built near our homes, schools and local hospitals,” Andrew Dobbs, Legislative Director for Texas Campaign for the Environment, said. “The state legislature should not be the City Council of Texas.”
Door-to-door canvassers with Texas Campaign for the Environment will be generating handwritten letters to candidates for state house district 84 on Saturday, February 20th. This district is important because of a contested primary election between Rep. John Frullo and Republican Jim Landtroop, a former house representative.
Rep. Frullo voted in favor of SB 709 last year which undermined the contested case hearing process for pollution permits, an important tool used by communities to prevent polluting facilities such as landfills from harming their property. Rep. Frullo also supported HB 40, which stripped cities of their power to create safety standards and buffer zones around oil and gas operations. Communities like Lubbock, if they wanted to pass ordinances to limit nuisances from oil and gas operations close to neighborhoods for example, would not be able to pass such an ordinance unless it meets the industry terms, “commercially reasonable.” Some efforts by legislators to limit Texas cities’ ability to reduce plastic bags were also put forth in 2015, but were held back by a bi-partisan coalition for local control that supports cities’ rights to pass single-use bag reduction ordinances or bans.
On recycling, Texas Campaign for the Environment and North Texas Republican, Rep. Rodney Anderson, advocate legislation that will create a producer-run recycling program for single-use batteries. The state legislature can and should do much more to help community run and producer supported recycling efforts thrive to provide jobs in those economies while keeping trash and toxic chemicals out of the landfill.
“Lubbock residents of all political backgrounds can agree on keeping our air and land clean,” Chelsea Crawford, Field Manager for the group, said. “It’s time that state politicians respond to the values of their constituents, and that’s why we look forward to educating voters about the upcoming election and giving them the opportunity to make their voices heard.”
The primary election is March 1 and early voting starts February 16, running through February 26. While Texas Campaign for the Environment does not endorse candidates, they encourage voters to ask all candidates where they stand on the environment, and to vote with the environment in mind.
(News release from Texas Campaign for the Environment)
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