Member News

What is Zero Waste? 

Zero Waste is a philosophy and a design principle for the 21st Century. It includes 'recycling' but goes beyond recycling by taking a 'whole system' approach to the vast flow of resources and waste through human society.

Eva Aguilar has gone above and beyond the normal scope of her duties promoting waste prevention  and recycling  to Washington County's Latino community in her role as Bilingual Program Educator.

Over the past year in this role, Eva has vastly expanded engagement with Washington County's Latino community and has spearheaded multiple innovative equity projects.

Nextstep Recycling's mission is to provide technology and training to children and adults who have barriers to employment and education, while protecting the environment and community from hazardous waste.

Since starting in 2002 Nextstep has kept millions of pounds of toxic waste out of landfills and has refurbished thousands of computers and granted them back out into the community and to communities around the world.

Green Plate Pilot Program at Portland International Airport

There are several grant opportunities available:

Metro's Investment and Innovation grants are available for projects that involve waste reduction, reuse, recycling, composting or energy recovery in the Portland Metro region. Nonprofits and for-profit businesses can apply. 

Back in 2011, the City of Eugene Waste Prevention and Green Building Program started their first targeted food waste program, which was aimed at commercial businesses.

They worked with their garbage haulers and commercial composter, Rexius, and from those partnerships, Love Food Not Waste was born!

Pete Chism-Winfield (running as past-chair)

Oregon DEQ's Peter Spendelow and ORRA's Kristan Mitchell sit down on OPB's "Think Out Loud" to discuss three things you should never put in your curbside bin. 

Story and Photo from Allison Frost/OPB.

Read more and listen here.

Press Release Issued by the National Recycling Coaltion on May 15, 2018

The China Crisis – Whose Crisis is It?
It is ours.  Recycled materials and trash should look very different from each other, but for years they have been converging in the U.S. 

Metro went live on Facebook on April 6, 2018 to answer the questions about recycling. In the 20-minute segment, Metro recycling experts Matt Korot and Patrick Morgan explained details on everything from what's going on in China and whether recyclables are going to landfills, to how to recycle plastics and where we could be headed in the future.