Eliminating waste is more than individuals recycling or composting, it’s about policy change as well.
NORTHAMPTON - More than a dozen environmental groups and municipalities are coming together Thursday night to talk trash - and how to reduce and eventually eliminate it.
Groups such as the Amherst Energy Task Force, the Northampton health department, Greening Greenfield Energy Committee and the Hampshire Council of Governments are just a handful sponsoring a forum called “Aiming at Zero: Planning for Zero Waste in the Pioneer Valley” at 7 at the John F. Kennedy Middle School.
Lynne Pledger, of Hardwick, a coordinator with Clean Water Action, will be speaking. She said the idea for the joint gathering came from the Amherst Refuse Management and Solid Waste Committee. “They were thinking about the whole Pioneer Valley (to address the issue).The region has a lot of potential about doing innovative things.”
Communities “are paying a lot for waste management,” and that can be addressed by creating what’s called the zero waste plan.
“Zero waste is an effort, a systematic plan for reducing waste year by year,” she said. For example, San Francisco created a 30-year plan to zero waste and is two-third’s toward meeting it.
And while communities are reducing waste by composting and recycling, they actually have to devise such a year-by-year strategy, otherwise, getting to zero won’t happen. Pledger said she will be providing strategies for creating such a plan.
Eliminating waste is more than individuals recycling or composting, it’s about policy change such as the passing of the Extended Producer Responsibility, also known as product stewardship, she said. That law that requires the companies that design and market products to bear the cost of disposal not the municipalities.
Twenty four states have such laws, she said. Massachusetts and New Hampshire are the only two Northeast states without those laws. “If the brand owners have to pay, they will redesign their products so they can be readily repaired,” she said.
She also sees the Thursday forum as “a way of gathering people together for building grass roots support. It’s not just about the decision makers (who have to make the changes.) People have to support those programs (created by the government) and comply. A community has to move forward on this together. It’s not just about litter. It’s about preserving our natural systems we all depend on for life.”
She said there are ways that regions can come together as well. “Becoming a zero waste community is a cultural shift. It can be transformative in a lot of ways. It makes sense for a region to work together.”
The list of sponsors of the gathering also include the Amherst and Northampton league of women voters, the Northampton and Amherst public works departments, Clean Water Action, Coop Power, GREEN Northampton, Pedal People, Pioneer Valley Sustainability Network, Sierra Club of Massachusetts, Toxics Action Network and Transition Northampton.