After their former captain’s life took a turn hard starboard, members of a public waste education team are staying the course.
BHC Consulting, the company contracted by Powell River Regional District (PRRD) to conduct its waste education program since 2011, under the guise of Let’s Talk Trash team, ended its relationship with the local government last fall after company owner Coco Hess accepted an overseas job teaching sailing, wilderness education and youth leadership.
With Hess’s departure, Abby McLennan, Inger-Lise Burns and Tai Uhlmann, the remaining members of the team, reformed Let’s Talk Trash as a partnership designed to continue the work they had been doing over the past three years.
“We decided that we wanted to continue on without Coco,” said Uhlmann, adding that the team supported Hess’s decision to leave.
They submitted an interim proposal to the regional district for the rest of 2013 and then filed one for 2014 which the PRRD directors approved in January. The regional district’s solid waste management plan mandates it provide a public waste education program.
“The regional district was very helpful and supportive of us to keep going on,” said Uhlmann.
Once its contract for the year was in place, the team continued with its original initiatives. “It’s been business as usual, which means busy and chaotic,” said Burns.
There will be, however, a few alterations. The team will be helping to launch Multi Material BC’s (MMBC) public education campaign about changes to recycling in Powell River at the end of the month. MMBC is an industry stewardship group formed by retailers and other packaging producers, slated to take responsibility for collecting and recycling packaging of all sorts starting in May as a result of new provincial regulations.
The trash team will be at PRRD’s rural recycling depots during the change over to help people.
“This is an exciting and new era in the evolution of recycling initiatives,” said Al Radke, the regional district’s chief administrative officer. “It is a paradigm shift and we do not exactly know how it will unfold or what to expect. However, it is fundamentally a step in the right direction.”
Radke emphasized the need for public participation in the program and an understanding of what can and can not be recycled.
The team is working together with Sea Fair organizers to make the summer festival a zero-waste event, one of the few summer events that have not already gone that way. McLennan said they are in talks with Salish Soils, a municipal compost centre in Sechelt, to handle the festival’s overwhelming amount of paper plates and cups. She added that the team is consulting to determine which paper products break down best.
Uhlmann said the team’s zero-waste stations—five bins put together to help people sort their waste into metals, plastics, paper, compostables and refundables—have been exceptionally popular.
“It’s one of our highest profile things,” agreed Burns.
The stations are free to use, for a small deposit, and can be set up at weddings, festivals or even birthday parties.
After putting together more than 35 bi-weekly public radio shows, the team has decided to scale back a bit by making only one per month. The plan is to record a live show on the last Thursday of each month from 5 to 6 pm and then rebroadcast it throughout the next month on CJMP 90.1FM.
Burns said the team will try to line up the topics of the show with current issues in waste management. Shows will continue to be varied in topics, provide news from around the province related to waste reductions and give listeners tips on composting and recycling.
With the changeover in leadership, the team moved its office into a shared space at Powell River Community Resource Centre (CRC) last month. This gives members more public exposure and puts them closer to the Compost Education Centre, located in CRC’s community gardens. People interested in learning more about gardening and composting can do self-guided tours to see how to start up a backyard compost and how freezer composters work.
Readers can visit the Let's Talk Trash team website to hear the team’s podcast or get more information about what the team is working on.
