ENVISIONING A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE WITH THE TOKYO DELEGATION
By Kira Telgen, Blue Daisi’s Project Assistant
I’ve called Seattle home for four years now, but up until a couple of weeks ago, the tallest building I had been in in the city was the downtown public library. At 11 stories, it’s no ant hill, but even on the top floor, you’re dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings. Luckily for me, though, I have friends in high places.
By friends, of course, I mean Seattle Public Utilities. A couple of weeks ago, Blue Daisi joined Seattle Public Utilities, local reusable dishware vendors r.World and Perennial Zero Waste, and OKAPI, a mug-sharing service, to welcome a delegation from Tokyo. The delegation was on a tour of major global cities to learn about sustainability practices to guide policymaking in Japan, and Seattle was one of their stops.
The bulk of the morning was dedicated to a presentation by Susan Fife-Ferris, Director of Solid Waste Planning and Program Management at Seattle Public Utilities. Serving 780,000 people, the city manages just under 800,000 tons of waste annually. Although that’s a rather daunting number, there is much to celebrate: over the last 25 years, the city has increased diversion (from garbage to recycling and compost) from 28% to 53% across all sectors. Despite massive population increases, overall waste generation has decreased, with the city’s per capita residential waste production sitting at 2.5 pounds, nearly half the national average. There is a lot to celebrate.
However, in 2020, SPU found that 63% of Seattle’s residential garbage wasn’t garbage. Nearly two-thirds of residential waste could have been captured for recycling or composting had it been cleaned and sorted properly. SPU gathers figures like this through its waste composition studies, which are conducted regularly for each customer sector (residential, commercial, self-haul, and construction + demolition) and material stream (garbage, recycling, and compost).
Hence, the bulk of SPU’s work towards making the city more sustainable focuses on waste prevention and reuse. These areas offer the greatest potential for waste reduction by removing items from the stream entirely. While educating residents on proper waste sorting is crucial, eliminating waste from the start is the city’s goal.
Blue Daisi has had our hands in many of these efforts thanks to our work with Reuse Seattle, a city-wide initiative funded by SPU to reduce waste from single-use food and beverage packaging. Over the years, we’ve worked closely with reuse vendors such as Bold Reuse, Perennial, and r.World to put on sustainable events like the Columbia City Night Market, Georgetown Steam Plant Science Fair, and Seeking Cultura. We also connect cafes, businesses, and restaurants with waste reduction resources as part of the city’s Green Business Program.
There is still a long way to go, but as we spent the morning reflecting on the work the city has done and sharing our knowledge and perspectives with the Tokyo Delegation, I couldn’t help but feel an immense amount of accomplishment and pride for the city I call home. At the top of the Seattle Municipal Tower, some 62 stories above ground, one can see quite far: even, perhaps, to the decades to come, one in which Seattle’s per capita waste is merely a pound a person, one in which the prevalence of single-use plastics is vastly diminished, one in which all city events are completely reusable.
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