RIP, Arthur Boone: Bay Area Recycling Champion

creative NCRA sign made with all recyclable materials
The Gigantic team worked with Arthur Boone to create this sign for NCRA

The Gigantic team would like to take a moment to salute and honor Arthur Boone, who passed away in October at the age of 86. Boone was a pioneer and force of nature for recycling education and outreach in the Bay Area since the 1980s.

Described in Northern California Recycling Association (NCRA)’s remembrance as “an innovator, visionary, and somewhat of a crank” Arthur Boone started out as an Episcopal minister, then a civil rights worker, before founding the Oakland Recycling Association.There, he brought active questions and a constant search for improvement to the local recycling scene, tirelessly calling out “Obstacles to Zero Waste” and working to eliminate them. In the following years he would serve NCRA in various positions, including some 30 years on their board, and came up with the idea for the Recycling Update Conference, an annual “speed dating” event featuring 10-minute presentations for and by industry professionals that is valued to this day.

One memorable collaboration – partially built on Boone’s front lawn – occurred in 2011 when he tasked us with creating a NCRA conference sign out of recycled materials to celebrate recycling and composting. It was a true team effort to cut the recycled metal, attach the glass pieces and cardboard curls, and hot-glue the fake leaves and orange slices. The sign keeps on going – helped by several repairs over the years. It’s a joy to see it (and get a team photo with the sign) at every NCRA Recycling Update. All in all, a great and ongoing reminder of the creative and can-do spirit of Boone.

Boone’s achievements, including credit for planting 1,000 trees in the Bay Area—several just a block from our office have been noted in a Proclamation by StopWaste issued on his passing. After all his good work, may he rest in peace.

Gigantic team members with the sign at NCRA 2023
Gigantic team members with the sign at NCRA 2023

 

OOPS! Tags Tackle Cart Contamination

In environmental outreach work, reaching people when they are most open to effective feedback is always a challenge. Many waste agencies are using “oops tags” to indicate to residents that they have put the wrong items in the wrong carts, e.g. “OOPS – this item belongs in recycling” or “OOPS – only food scraps in the green cart, please!”

The Gigantic team has been working with clients on various kinds of OOPS tags for some years now. While we believe that customized, one-to-one outreach is effective, it is difficult to measure if the tags are responsible for positive impact.                     

We would love to experiment with taking the feedback one step further, by having haulers NOT pick up contaminated carts. This has been tried elsewhere, with positive results.

For now, we are continuing to refine and test various cart tags. Our latest effort: placing “OOPS” tags on Garbage carts, to draw attention to the large presence of food scraps and other items in the Garbage that should be recycled or composted.

Below are some examples of oops tags that Gigantic has created with various clients. We would love to discuss OOPS tags and the strategy behind them with you:

This tag, to be placed on Organics carts, is simple:

hang tag with pictues of what does and does not go in Binny

In 2023, we made a more elaborate tag that the outreach team could “customize”, depending on the contaminant. We understood from resident surveys that people were unsure or even skeptical about what happens to food scraps in the Organics cart. This tag also confirms that rich compost is made from the food scraps, and connects correct use of the organics cart with making healthy compost for farmers:

We are experimenting this year with placing an “oops” tag on the Garbage cart, calling out the items that should be in Recycling or Organics:

oops tag with comic - keep food scraps out of garbage

For Milpitas, we helped refine their tag design, which uses the same tag for all carts. Audit staff circle the appropriate cart, and provide very specific feedback on the types of items found (see image below). Milpitas staff have reported the tags are working work well, especially when they have the opportunity to speak directly with a resident, but that they need to add a few additional categories of contaminants.

While difficult to tie results directly to cart tagging, City staff noted that they are seeing some positive trends in households selected for a pilot project.  The pilot area received food waste prevention outreach and then OOPS tags shortly thereafter. Follow-up audits over two years show some improvements. The fullness of the food scrap compartment increased from 8.8% full to 24% full. At the same time, contamination decreased by 42.5%.

Milpitas oops tag with detailed examples of what goes where

There’s no one right way to use OOPS Tags, but they’re one of the most evidence-based ways to address contamination. They make a great addition to a cart-contamination reduction strategy.

Recycling: Hero or Villain? The Public Is Confused

Environmental specialists are working, like everyone else, in a polarized world where distrust of media and “truthiness” can make us question absolutely everything.

You’ve seen the headlines in everything from business press, public radio …

“Recycling Doesn’t Work”

“Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work”

“You Can’t Recycle Your Way Out”

“America’s Broken Recycling System”

At Gigantic, we work with clients whose jurisdictions:

  • Don’t accept “compostable” plastic
  • Do accept “compostable” plastic
  • Only accept Plastics # 1, 2, 5
  • Only accept “rigid” plastics
  • Ask you to put plastic bags in the Garbage
  • Ask you to put plastic bags in the Recycling
  • Accept paper cups in Recycling
  • Accept paper cups in the Garbage
  • Put pizza boxes in the Recycling
  • Put pizza boxes in the Organics

And on and on…

We can't recycle our way out of the plastic crisis - Insta post from Story of Stuff
Source: Story of Stuff Instagram

Is it any wonder that residents are wondering what’s going on?

If we had a magic wand, we’d wave it and make all this a lot simpler: focus on just a few of the most easily identified recyclable materials so that “waste” streams are clean and easily processed. We’d like to see:

  • All jurisdictions’ carts be the same color and labels as in other jurisdictions.
  • Every jurisdiction have the same “what goes where” instructions and
  • VASTLY simplify “what goes where” messaging to focus on the most recyclable items, in order to cut down on contamination. We have seen over and over that “wishcycling” is a real thing, and a real hassle for materials facilities.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. For now, environmental communicators need to be honest about the challenges of recycling, while reassuring the public that many problems can be solved and not to give up hope.

Recycling Is Not Broken, but Can Use Some Help: A National Zero Waste Conference Session

zero waste conference hero imageWhile recycling has been getting a bad rap recently, the recent National Zero Waste Conference offered some fresh and hopeful perspectives. Gigantic Team Member Dennis Uyat coordinated the session: “Recycling Is Not Broken, But Can Use Some Help.” The conference was attended by over 400 people, and the session was moderated by Maurice Sampson, Eastern Pennsylvania Director of Clean Water Action.

Recent years have seen a shift towards upstream solutions like source reduction and reuse, however, recycling still has a place in the transformation of materials like paper, glass, metal, and plastic into new and useful products. Neil Seldman of the Recycling Cornucopia Project and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, opened with an overview of an increase in domestic recycling  markets and infrastructure since the National Sword Policy began to be enforced in 2018 in China. He writes, “Despite the fact that China had been warning for years that this cut-off was coming, U.S. recyclers were stunned and unprepared. But eventually, as prices for secondary materials fell in the tumult caused by the Chinese ban, private investment began re-building the U.S. manufacturing sector, and end-use capacity that had languished during the years that recycling collectors shipped a large percentage of materials to China rather than supplying domestic mills, returned to use.”

Many cities in the U.S. have implemented single-stream recycling systems, but they are not the only, or most cost effective, option. Speaker Joanne Schafer, Deputy Executive Director of the Centre County Recycling and Refuse Authority (CCRRA), spoke about their curb-sort recycling program in rural central Pennsylvania.

Municipalities that implement recycling often consider going with a single-stream system, and CCRRA hired MSW Consultants to see if it would be more cost effective to centralize recycling. They found that with the current weekly collection and 90% participation, the capital costs – a new MRF and truck fleet along with future costs of an education campaign – did not justify a system change. In this case, source separation of glass, cardboard, mixed paper, recyclable plastics and metals at the curb was more effective for residents and collectors.

Centre County, Pennsylvania is a good example of how grassroots recycling efforts in prior decades turned into a viable financial model. The decision to invest in labor over capital proved fruitful in the development of more localized recycling economies, which are less vulnerable to the whims of international global markets and commodity prices.

The session ended with Gary Liss, of the Recycling Is Infrastructure Too Campaign and Zero Waste USA, who laid out the American Recycling Infrastructure Plan, which vies for federal funding for community based recycling programs. It covers 50 initiatives with $18.3 billion allocated for the build-out of recycling infrastructure over three years. The Plan advocates “for the inclusion of waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting infrastructure and programs that will stem climate disruption, address racial injustice, and create thousands of jobs throughout the country.” Gary detailed a number of current EPA Green Infrastructure Funding Opportunities.

Recycling is often dismissed as big industries continue producing plastic and waste by design, which invariably ends up being burned in incinerators or buried in landfills. The Second Recycling Revolution is driven by grassroots efforts to build local community power, to redesign a more circular economy.

Regular people are finding big and small solutions to municipal solid waste problems. Gary ended with a question for the audience, “How much waste are you for?,” and the audience responded, “Zero!”

Find out more about the National Zero Waste Conference.

Garden Pots and Mulch Bags, OH MY!

On a recent chilly early Monday morning in March, Stef and I were conducting spot checks* for our client, Livermore Recycles. In a single lid-flipping morning, we walk several miles and record data on approximately 200 residential trash/recycling/composting set-outs. I flip the lid on each cart and call out what I see while Stef records the data on her clipboard.

On this morning, a pattern was beginning to emerge. From the compost cart we could tell folks were definitely working on their gardens and yards this time of year AND some of them were confused about where their nursery pots and mulch bags should end up. Unfortunately, film plastics such as mulch bags and those black flimsy pots belong in the trash – we found several set-outs where these items were contaminating the organics cart and the recycling cart.

flower pots wrongly placed in recycling and organics carts

As a result of seeing this in the field on Monday, and verifying with the team that this continued throughout the week, we were able to create a social media post prior to the next weekend to let Livermore residents know:

FB post about trashing mulch bags and pots

We were quite pleased when we saw the comments and likes come in:

positive comments on the post

I’d call that a Gigantic success and a good example of how we can act upon what we see is needed in a short amount of time.

*Gigantic Idea Studio, has been flipping lids in Livermore twice a year (Spring and Fall since 2017. This involves early morning starts to stay ahead of the Livermore Sanitation trucks as we flip lids on approximately 1,000 setouts during a single week. The data is collected, reviewed and reported back to the client, along with recommendations for messaging specific to Livermore residents’ needs.

Actors Sought for Recycling Video

Seeking Actors with Green Ambition

zwm logoZero Waste Marin is seeking one adult and one youth actor (aged 10-14) for two educational videos about waste and recycling in Marin County. Applicants must be available for two full days of shooting plus (Zoom) rehearsal time and wardrobe fitting. Actors must be able to travel to Novato for one day and San Rafael for the other. Video will be filmed (mostly) outside. 

For requirements, application procedure and compensation details:

Download Adult Actor Listing

Download Youth Actor Listing

 

Zero Waste Holiday Outreach — 2020 Style

Well, if there’s one word none of us would like to hear in 2021, it’s “unprecedented.” Throughout 2020, so many things we took for granted in the world of zero waste and recycling outreach, such as promoting reusable bags and cups, had to be postponed or replaced with COVID-19-related topics, such as sorting shipping waste or putting masks and gloves in the trash.

Now the holidays are here, and we find ourselves in the same outreach predicament. We can’t rely on tried-and-true holiday campaigns like our “Giving the Gift of Good Times” video for Santa Clara and Marin Counties. (Click here for the 2019 version). No-waste gifts that involve groups of people, such as fitness classes, dining out, amusement park passes, or theater tickets are not a viable option this year. Even food waste reduction topics need a fresh take, as gatherings have been reduced in size or cancelled altogether, and some of our neighbors are facing food insecurity.

create joy, not waste holiday ideas

For our clients this year, we helped adjust messaging to cover these topics in a way that aligns with public health guidelines and new realities. For example, for Palo Alto, we created a “Create Joy, Not Waste” ad, web page and bill insert (above) to align with hosting a small gathering with Zero Waste style. Actions like portion planning, using reusable dishes, recycling bottles and cans and decorating with compostable decorations still make sense, even if it’s just for your own household.

We re-envisioned our Zero Waste gift idea list to remove gifts for in-person activities and include those that offer online versions, such as art classes and music lessons and streaming theater. Local options for all of these were available, offering another benefit to the community. Outdoor recreation is at an all-time high, so national and state park passes can replace amusement parks.

And lastly, if staying home means we’re more likely to buy “stuff” this year than past years, we made sure to provide options for zero waste gift ideas that eliminate or greatly reduce packaging waste—shampoo bars, unpackaged handmade soaps, or subscriptions for refillable beauty products.

We hope this inspires you all to keep the Zero Waste holiday outreach traditions going. Small tweaks to the messaging are all it takes.

 

Going Plastic-Free in Pandemic Times: A Tough Job

Click above to see the phases of Dennis’ Plastic-Free July waste audit.

[pl_facebook_like url=”https://www.facebook.com/giganticidea”]

[pl_twitter_follow username=”@GiganticIdeas”]

Members of the Gigantic team have been observing Plastic-Free July for some years now (see past blogs). Besides being the right thing to do, it lets us understand how it feels to set and strive for challenging environmental behavior goals. This year, going plastic-free has been harder than ever, as COVID-19 concerns have made plastic more common, even in places like the farmers’ market, where it was rare before.

Team member Dennis Uyat decided to keep a record of the plastic he could not avoid during July, despite his best efforts, and reflect on how it could be avoided. 

To get a handle on this pile, Dennis sorted the waste into categories. Note the new arrivals this year: PPE masks and gloves, which are a huge, problematic addition to the waste stream.

Next, Dennis came up with a strategy for avoiding these items in the future. While “reduce use” is a common call-to-action, we also like the gentler, more encouraging “do your best.” No one likes to feel like a failure at waste reduction or anything else!

Plastic is a problematic material. Lightweight, flexible and adaptable, it is also, more importantly, a pervasive, harmful pollutant that has reached all corners of the planet and into our bodies.  Efforts like Plastic-Free July can help raise awareness of the ever-present plastic in our lives and help us be more mindful about avoiding it as much as possible.

2 images of plastic sorted  by type with alternatives to try to reduce it

Moving from Awareness to Action at the Food Waste Summit

Left to right: Nicole Greenspan from Gigantic Idea Studio with clients Lisa Coelho and Amber Duran from SCS Engineers.

While we often work on projects that make composting cool, more and more of Gigantic’s clients are moving up the food recovery hierarchy and asking for outreach about reducing food waste at the source. The goal of cutting food waste in America in half by 2030 was central to the 2019 Food Waste Summit, hosted by ReFED in San Francisco.

The theme was “moving from awareness to action”, with speakers sharing strategies to cut food waste while increasing food security, spurring economic growth and combating climate change. They “set the table” with the cascading impacts of wasting food, gave a “toast to progress” with examples of success at food businesses, and shared innovative approaches to preventing food waste throughout the food system. There was even a cooking demo from one of America’s top chefs, Tiffany Derry, who encouraged attendees to partner with chefs to engage more communities with approachable stories about the value of food.

Alexandria Coari, Capital & Innovation Director at ReFED, shares the opportunities of the Nonprofit Food Recovery Accelerator.

With 40% of food wasted in this country while 40 million Americans are food insecure, there was a big emphasis on how to close the hunger gap with food recovery. ReFED highlighted their Nonprofit Food Recovery Accelerator program with the goal to double the number of rescued meals in America. Nonprofits like Replate, Seeds That Feed, Plentiful, and Brighter Bites shared how they’re exploring innovative earned revenue, technology and human-centered design solutions to scale healthy food access with dignity for the millions facing food insecurity. While these solutions provide real relief, the question came up of whether they go far enough to address the core causes of hunger or food waste in America.

The “Mobile Blast Chiller” van developed by MGM Resorts International, Peravan, and Three Square.

The Summit showcased several technology solutions for better food storage and transport, waste tracking, and end of life management, including Seal the Seasons, Goodr, Leanpath, Winnow, and Mobius. The “Mobile Blast Chiller” van, pictured at right, was developed by MGM Resorts International, Peravan, and Three Square in Las Vegas, to rapidly cool prepared food as it drives, improving food transport safety and efficiency. Apeel Sciences shared how they’re challenging the notion that we need single-use plastic packaging to solve the food waste problem with a peel-inspired produce coating that keeps produce fresher, longer.

ReFED emphasized the need for more public-private partnerships to create demand for waste reduction like the Pacific Coast Collaborative (PCC) and the Federal Winning on Reducing Food Waste Strategy. Government has a key role to play in improving donation liability protection and awareness, standardizing date labeling (e.g. “best if used by” date), and incentivizing organics from the landfill and edible food recovery with bills like SB 1383. The Summit wrapped up with a panel on turning waste into value where they emphasized the need for strong government regulations to ramp up organics recycling capacity given the current economic conditions.

Ami McReynolds, Chief Equity and Programs Offer at Feeding America, shows a map of food insecurity in America.

When I reflect on the Summit and the amazing conversations during and afterwards, I’m left wondering who was not in the room and how that might have changed the dynamic. How we don’t have all the answers, as Ami McReynolds, Chief Equity and Programs Officer at Feeding America observed, and that we need to create a more inclusive environment to bring new voices to the conversation. “How can we build and earn trust with communities?” McReynolds asked at the end of her presentation, “What will it take to be bold and courageous collaborators with communities?” We’re grateful for our incredible clients who are working closely with communities to co-create solutions that address the real needs and root causes of these complex challenges.

Recycling Realities: How to Create Anti-Contamination Messaging

 

There has been a lot of media coverage lately about the problems and challenges of recycling, including the rejection of the tons of recyclables that we used to ship to China. Because of the news, many community members are aware that something bad is going on with recycling.

In our presentation at California Resource Recovery Association (CRRA) on August 12 in Rancho Mirage, California, I presented some notable examples of anti-contamination recycling messages by haulers, as well as our own work tackling these issues in Palo Alto and Livermore.

items prepped for recycling or rejected

We based our work on actual recycling realities in each city. In Palo Alto, the contamination was focused on food and liquid in recycling. In Livermore, sorting issues (“Wishcycling”) as well as organics cart contamination were affecting the quality of the recycling stream. These findings informed our social media, newsletter content and campaign concept development.

Clearly presented information, using clear calls to action (Wipe, Pour, Scrape, etc.) and good visuals is a start to tackling the problem. Reaching residents using a multi-channel approach, and repeating the message regularly will help get the word out.

View the presentation below: