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Politics & Government

Zero waste by 2020

Fairfax leads the fight towards zero waste.

Ten years. It may seem like a long time, but not when you're pursuing a goal as lofty as zero waste. That's how many years are left for Fairfax residents to reach "zero" if they're to achieve the stated goal of a 2007 Fairfax Town Council resolution. The resolution targets 2020—appropriately, a year with two zeroes in it.

It may be the most ambitious zero-waste goal of any town in the country. But is it attainable?

"It's a lot easier to pass a resolution than to implement it," admits Pam Hartwell-Herrero, executive director of Sustainable Fairfax and a town council member. "There's so much to do, with so many players."

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Hartwell-Herrero is one of those players, an irrepressible force on the local environmental scene. She can be found most days at Sustainable Fairfax, the nonprofit organization housed in a pretty cottage across from Fairfax's Bolinas Park. What happens inside is an exemplar of volunteer commitment and energy. Zero waste is high on its list of long-term goals, a target as problematic as it is noble.

Zero waste -- a concept that first surfaced in the early days of the environmental movement in the 1970s -- is exactly what it sounds like: the elimination of all permanent waste. It may sound utopian, but Hartwell-Herrero and others are convinced it's achievable if people and decision-makers want it badly enough to change their behavior.

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How? Well, for starters, 40 to 60 percent of landfill is compostable waste. That's why Marin Sanitary Service (MSS)—the company that serves Fairfax, San Anselmo and most of Marin—is now encouraging Fairfax residents to add all compostable food waste to their yard waste in MSS's big green barrels. (San Anselmo is excluded because by law food waste isn't allowed to sit curbside for two weeks—the frequency of San Anselmo yard-waste pickups.)

"We've been all about zero waste for generations," says Patty Garbarino, president of MSS. "We were the first to pick up recyclables curbside in 1979 and the first to open an indoor commercial dump to divert recyclables from landfill in 1987." She also notes proudly that their 75 percent diversion rate is best in the state and makes the case for the viability of a zero-waste goal.

"About 95 percent of the county's remaining waste that isn't recyclable," she says, "is either food waste, which we plan to divert with a food waste-to-energy plan, or paper, which we can divert for recycling." The tiny percentage of what remains after that, she adds, is plastic. And MSS has a solution for that problem too: education. MSS educates 3,200 students a year, plus adults in visiting groups, at their Waste Not Classroom. And a big part of the message is to avoid purchasing plastic.

Sustainable Fairfax and MSS are not the only leading players in the zero waste game. Fairfax Lumber has opened an Away Station, where reusable construction and demolition materials can be dropped off. And volunteers from Sustainable Fairfax and other Marin-based environmental groups work to educate town residents on how to reduce waste.  

"Many of the people we educate are motivated to become advocates," said Hartwell-Herrero. "We inform people about the three R's—reduce, reuse and recycle—and tell them that even buying products with less packaging and products made from recycled content can make a big difference in our individual contributions to the landfill."   

She admits that many Fairfax residents still don't know about the zero waste push, although they have probably heard about one aspect of it: the widely publicized plastic-bag ban. Plastic bags have been banned from Fairfax stores and restaurants since May 2009. The ban was passed by 79 percent of voters, despite opposition campaign mailers sent by the American Chemistry Council. In no other municipality in the nation has such a measure been put on the ballot and passed.

Hartwell-Herrero next hopes to assemble a Zero Waste Task Force. The current Zero Waste Committee is comprised only of herself, fellow council member Larry Bragman, and Town Manager Michael Rock, but a task force would add representatives from a wider range of folks. "I'm hoping we can include people from local businesses, nonprofits and schools, as well as Marin Sanitary," she says. All the players.

The next step for Fairfax may be a paper bag fee, which will encourage shoppers to shop with cloth bags. This idea is also gaining momentum countywide, with two local groups—the Marin chapters of Green Sangha and Teens Turning Green—introducing the idea in a meeting last spring to the county's mayors.

That's not the only zero-waste effort countywide. Marin's Hazardous and Solid Waste Management Joint Power Authority passed a zero-waste resolution in 2006. It wasn't as aggressive as the Fairfax resolution, with a goal of zero waste by 2025 rather than 2020, but the county can do far more than Fairfax with its heftier resources. In fact, before the end of the year the county's waste management division will hire a zero-waste coordinator assigned to work with local agencies and businesses on the issue.

Meanwhile, Fairfax continues to forge ahead as Marin's eco-leader of the pack. "We've encouraged the county to try out programs in Fairfax before instituting them countywide," says Hartwell-Herrero. "It's an ideal community for pilot waste-reduction programs, because residents have shown they're receptive to them."

Will the Little Town That Could achieve its zero-waste goal by 2020? It thinks it can, it thinks it can.

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