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BWRC Approved Minutes Sep 5 2019Beverly Waste Reduction Committee Meeting Minutes —September 5, 2019 Beverly Waste Reduction Committee MINUTES: Monthly Meeting, Thursday, September 5, 2019 7:00 PM, Beverly City Hall, Conference Room A CALL TO ORDER: 7:03 pm COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: Susan Higgins (Chair), Sandy Burgess, Nancy Dillon, Joyce Hermon, Toni Musante COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT: John Swain INVITED PARTICIPANTS AND GUESTS: Eric Magers and Aimee Voerman (Seaside Sustainability), Ben Wildrick (Brookwood School), Bruce Swanson, Karen Thaw APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Minutes of the July 2019 meeting were not available for the meeting and will be presented for approval at the next meeting. The August meeting was cancelled. Treasurer's Report Burgess reported that approved expenditures for the month included reimbursement to Charlie Perlo for Senior Day expenses ($509) and reimbursement to Jen Bissett for the sponsorship of the screening of A Plastic Ocean ($324). A donation from the Beverly Rotary Club to sponsor the Styrofoam collection event was deposited into the account ($600). The current account balance is $25,420.54. Burgess reported that she returned bottles and cans from Lobsterfest, which amounted to $7.45. Dillon moved to donate the bottle return funds to Beverly Bootstraps, as we have done in past years; Hermon seconded. The motion passed (5 -0). Styrofoam Collection Event Joyce has confirmed our event date of Saturday, November 2nd with Gold Circuit. Higgins summarized discussions with the Beverly Music & Performing Arts Association ( BMPAA), which has held an electronics collection event on this same date at the high school for the past several years. Higgins and the BMPAA explored the possibility of hosting a joint event. Due to challenging logistics and other complications, BMPAA decided to move their electronics collection event to the following weekend. Mary Barthelmes has drafted a flyer; she will be making some edits to it in the upcoming days, and then we will circulate it for review and distribution. Promotion of the event is a top priority. A formal thank you letter is still owed to the Rotary. Promoting and Expanding Curbside Composting Since the last meeting, Dillon and Swain have been working on compiling notes and ideas for expanding the curbside composting program, building on discussions from the July meeting. Nancy provided a high -level overview of their work. Key recommendations include: • Reaching out to realtors (need to develop promotional material) • Advertisements in newspapers (need to research cost) • Surveying businesses (Do they compost? If no, why not? What are the barriers ?) • Advocate for Black Earth to do an exit survey Page 1 of 3 Beverly Waste Reduction Committee Meeting Minutes —September 5, 2019 • Emphasize the referral program; are their other or better incentives? • Door -to -door canvasing (need promotional material) • Brochures at City Hall and tabling at more events • BevCam programming • Meetings with civic associations • Outreach to schools Dillon wrapped up with a suggestion that we focus on developing promotional materials, to enable the outreach outlined above. Higgins provided a summary of current program statistics. At the start of the year, we had 1039 participants. Black Earth discovered that there were many participants that had not renewed /paid but were continuing to use the service. Those households were dropped from the program in March, bringing the numbers down to less than 900. Since then, many of those households have re- subscribed. As of July 1, 2019, we were back up to 1048 participants. We continue to have at least a dozen new signups each month. Soon we will need to consider restocking the bin supply, which will require discussions with the City about who pays for the bins and where they will be stored. The Committee agreed to invite Black Earth to a future meeting to explore ideas for expanding the program and to discuss potential concerns with service. Polystyrene and Straws — Efforts for Proposed Ordinance Higgins thanked Ben Wildrick (Brookwood School) and Eric Magers and Aimee Voerman (Seaside Sustainability) for joining us at the meeting. Eric provided a brief overview of Seaside Sustainability and gave an introduction to the work they have been doing on polystyrene initiatives including local success stories. Ben updated the committee about the work his students (currently fourth graders) did last year, including letters they wrote to Beverly City Council about their studies of this topic and their concerns. Several City Councilors offered a range of support around this topic, including Julie Flowers and Estelle Rand. Eric suggested that we consider a comprehensive polystyrene ordinance that covers straws, stirrers, and hotstoppers. Seaside has draft language for such an ordinance. We talked a bit about who would draft and lead the ordinance, and concluded it would likely have to be a Councilor with background information and template information that we could all provide. We also talked about what work would need to be done to build more support. Eric noted that in Gloucester, they did a lot of leg work connecting with local businesses — they dropped off letters to every business in town. We agreed it would be important to get one or more City Councilors on board and sitting at the table for discussion as soon as possible. Higgins advised that in drafting an ordinance for Beverly, we need to be mindful of enforcement. Enforcement would likely fall to the Board of Health, which is not directly involved in day -to -day waste management activities. In addition, the Health Department has limited staff. We may need to give consideration to certain exemptions in a polystyrene ban, to facilitate implementation and enforcement. Ben commented how it often takes time for a business to catch up and be prepared to follow the ordinance (i.e., use up existing stock). Ben agreed to compile information about the work his students have done, in order to re- educate City Council about the issue and the objectives of an ordinance. He told the Committee that his students talked to a lot of businesses and found that there are many challenges the businesses would Page 2 of 3 Beverly Waste Reduction Committee Meeting Minutes —September 5, 2019 face. The students also found through their research that there is support for this initiative. This information can be compiled to engage City Council in a discussion and have a call to action. We also discussed that we should engage the Mayor's Office in this effort early in the process. As a group, we talked about other ways to reach out to the community and build support for an ordinance. Eric suggested we consider petitions (on line and /or in paper), and other ways like change.org. Old Business and Other Updates Higgins provided a brief update of Lobsterfest. Thank you to everyone that volunteered and participated. The rain made it a bit challenging, but most things went very well. We separated chip bags again this year, and delivered more than 500 emptied, flattened bags to Subaru for recycling through the Terracycle program. We also collected film plastic this year, including a large amount from the catering station (water bottle case wrapping, sausage roll bags, ice bags, etc.). The film plastic was delivered to Shaws and Market Basket. Next year, we need to put a bottle and can bin over by the catering station. A lot of bottles were ending up in the trash. We recovered what we could, but if we give them a convenient bin we will likely collect more. The caterer made a switch to reusable lobster crates, which eliminated the waxed cardboard we had in past years. This was a fantastic change. Another great change was the switch to Simple Green to clean the tables, so all of the paper towels used in the cleaning process could be composted. Dillon and Burgess volunteered at Senior Day, which was moved to the high school because of the weather. They reported that the event resulted in just one bag of trash! Upcoming Events Higgins reminded the Committee about the September Municipal Recycling Council meeting, which is focused on Composting. Two members of our Committee plan to attend (Higgins, Swain). Some of the topics of interest are drop -off composting programs, and outreach/educational efforts. This is a great opportunity to learn about other models that municipalities are using and become familiar with other composting companies. The other upcoming event is the Electric Vehicle and Sustainability Fair at BHS on September 14tH Burgess, Herman and Swain plan to attend and set up a table on composting. We discussed logistics and items needed for the event. Other Updates and Discussion Items by Committee Members No updates or discussion items. Adjournment There being no further discussion this evening, the meeting was adjourned at 8:30 pm. Page 3 of 3