“Who is wealthy? One who is happy with his lot!” – Ben Zoma (Pirkei Avos)
Stuff. We’ve got tons of it. It’s stuffed into our minds at every turn – stuff on TV, stuff in the stores, stuff delivered to our doors. Our economic indices consider lots of stuff being produced and transported an indication of economic prosperity. We’re building warehouses over precious natural resources to hold all the stuff. We’re using trucks that pollute the air and water and kill salmon to transport the stuff. We love the convenience, but do we really need all that stuff, and do we count the costs? Where does all that stuff end up?
Over 500 tons of garbage are produced in Thurston County every day. Thurston Regional Planning Council’s Sustainable Thurston Report Card paints a gloomy picture of how well the county is performing on its goal to plan and act toward zero waste in the region. The target was to have no net increase in total landfill waste using 2010 as the baseline. Instead, waste collected on a per capital basis has increased since then with levels above those needed to reach the region’s 2020 and 2035 targets.
In 1995, about 1,300 pounds of waste per person ended up in a landfill. In 2021, the numbers climbed to 1,500 pounds and have stayed there through 2023. Never has the amount of waste met the 2020 target of 1,100 pounds or the more ambitious 2035 target of 900 pounds. We’re not unusual. Overall, solid waste generation in the state increased by nearly 71% from 2000 to 2021.
Before environmental regulations, most towns and even businesses and factories had their own dump. Presently, there are 3,000 active landfills and over 10,000 old municipal landfills in the United States. This doesn’t include all the illegal dumps that exist, like the old Sundberg Gravel Pit on Cooper Point Rd that was unregulated for decades, considered by the City of Olympia as a site for 184 houses and now under a cleanup order by the Department of Ecology.
Why are landfills a problem? Pollution. Inevitably, all landfills, including modern ones with liners and leachate collection systems, will leach into ground and surface waters. The proliferation of toxic chemicals in recent decades increases their threat to the public health through air emissions and contaminated ground and surface water. Decomposing garbage in landfills releases large amounts of methane gas, a greenhouse gas 84 times more effective at absorbing the sun’s heat than carbon dioxide, making it a huge contributor to climate change. Leachate can also contain high levels of ammonia, which leads to eutrophication and the creation of “dead zones” where animals cannot survive due to lack of oxygen.
Thurston County Recycling Programs
Recycling in the County was adopted in 1991 by Ordinance 9753. Rates in the County haven’t changed much since it was tracked. In 2009, recycling per person was 435 pounds. It peaked in 2021 at 513 pounds, but went down to 378 pounds per year in 2023.
Thurston County and its cities and towns have implemented several innovative waste reduction/recycling programs. The County offers classroom presentations for 3-8th grade classrooms and hosts tables at community events and by request. It helps residents fix objects they might otherwise throw away at the Fix it Fair at St. Martin’s University.
It helps multi-unit property and mobile home parks recycle to keep costs down and resources out of the landfill by offering free educational materials and on-site assistance. Through the Master Recycler Composter Program sponsored by the County Public Works Department and the Master Gardener Foundation, trained volunteers serve with local organizations, neighborhoods, schools and workplaces to encourage waste prevention, recycling and composting, offering free composting and gardening workshops and doing outreach at events. It even provides book drop-off bins to keep books out of the landfill. Several programs are also available to businesses in the County. They can request free on-site assistance to start a recycling program and get information about what to do with hazardous, construction and demolition waste and commercial food and yard waste.
Legislative Solutions
Laws are already on the books addressing organic waste. Organics Management laws were passed in 2022 and 2024 to divert organic material from landfills with a 2030 goal to reduce organic material by 75%. In this session, Representative Beth Doglio is sponsoring House Bill 1497 which seeks to further reduce wasted food, create cleaner compost and encourage food recycling in multi-family buildings and K-12 schools.
The Recycling Reform Act, House Bill 1150 and its companion Senate Bill 5284 would create an extended producer responsibility (EPR) program – an idea that already exists in Canada and Europe as well as in Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado and Minnesota. It requires consumer goods producers to fund statewide recycling services and to take responsibility for recycling their packaging.
Zero Waste Washington states the law will improve the current system by increasing curbside recycling funded by producers to half a million homes, create a single statewide list of recyclables, ending the confusion about what can or cannot be recycled and provide living wage jobs, besides the environmental benefits of increased recycling. If passed, actual implementation wouldn’t happen till 2030 because new rules, assessments and councils would need to be established first.
A bottle bill has also been proposed. SB 5502/HB 1607 would add a ten cent deposit on glass, plastic and metal beverage containers to incentivize returning them for recycling.
Oregon passed the first Bottle Bill followed by 9 states, all of which have been highly successful. The average nationwide recycling rate for beverage containers is 35%, but in Oregon it reaches 80-90%, and recovery rates for plastic bottles are 3.5 times higher than states without such programs. Containers returned are also of higher quality because they are separated with just other beverage containers, ensuring that almost 100% of the material is recycled. Bottle bills improve recycling, reduce litter, create green jobs, and support local businesses.
SB 5502/HB 1607 would also require a wide range of redemption sites that are easily accessible to the public, like municipal facilities, public spaces, retail stores, sporting events and religious and charitable organizations, all of which would be compensated
by the producer for providing physical space for redemption and the operational costs of the sites. Unredeemed refunds could be used for education and outreach, increasing the number of redemption sites, or other activities that achieve greater recycling.
All these bills are still active as of the date of this writing. The legislative session ends April 27. If you want to help keep our environment clean and encourage recycling, you can comment on these bills by clicking on the link to each bill.
Actions You Can Take
Besides contacting your legislators, there is more you can do to keep waste out of landfills.
Consult the County “Where do I Take My? webpage to learn where to take items like televisions, mattresses, clothing and furniture.
Donate still usable furniture, appliances, hardware and tools to Habitat for Humanity. Contact by email or phone for a pickup or to confirm what they are accepting. https://www.spshabitat.org/store/donate/
Donate books to the public libraries or neighborhood Little Free Libraries
Donate clothes, computers and household items to homeless centers or to thrift stores that promise to recycle them
The E-cycle Washington program accepts tvs, computers, laptops, monitors, tablets, e-readers and portable DVD players. Here’s where you can take them locally.
Keyboards, printers, toner cartridges and cell phones can be dropped off at Best Buy and Staples stores and recycled at no charge.
Keep unwanted medications out of the landfill, our lakes and rivers, and our drinking water. Thurston County has many drop boxes for expired or unwanted medicines and instructions for what to do with unwanted medicines if you can’t access a drop box.
Attend the next Fix-it Fair on Wednesday, April 16 at the Lacey MakerSpace at St. Martin’s University, and check the website for future fairs.
Ask your neighborhood association to have a collection day for donated or recycled items that won’t fit in garbage cans. Or hold a neighborhood yard sale.
Consider paying $14-$24 a month for Ridwell, which picks up materials that are not usually recycled, like plastic film, single use plastic bags, lightbulbs, household batteries, plastic lids, textiles and plastic clamshell containers. Ridwell promises it will be sustainably reused or recycled instead of ending up in the landfill.
Thanks to April Roe, Recycling and Waste Reduction Specialist, and the staff at Thurston County Public Works for information contained in this article.
Esther Grace Kronenberg is a frequent contributor to Works in Progress
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