Strawberry Festival ZWV

Strawberry Festival To Go Greener

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Each year approximately 35,000 people attend the Strawberry Festival. This fun annual event creates a lot of garbage, totaling about 140,000 pounds of combined materials that is usually trucked off island to the landfill. That’s not very “green”; we can do better.

A large portion of festival waste is recyclable. This year, Zero Waste Vashon will be managing 17 recycle and food waste stations to keep recyclables like food, aluminum, glass, and paper out of the landfill and used as a resource. ZWV needs volunteers to help monitor the stations, bring the recyclables and food waste to the central collection point, measure progress, and help Festival-goers get everything in the right place. Please consider volunteering with Zero Waste Vashon to help make our Greener Strawberry Fest a success! The shifts are just 2-3 hrs.

This link will take you to the volunteer sign-up page where you can learn more about the jobs and available time slots: If you prefer to sign up over the phone, please contact Marian Whited, Volunteer Coordinator at 206-909-3534.

 If you are unable to volunteer, you can still help by sorting your waste into the correct  bins: Mixed Recycling, Food Waste and Trash. Keep an eye out for the “Waste Not Want Not” flags above the waste stations, and please stop by the ZWV booth in front of Hinge Gallery for some Green ideas and freebies .

 Thanks to our partners Waste Connections, BioBags, King County Solid Waste, and the Vashon Chamber of Commerce for supporting this project to make Vashon even Greener!

E-Recycling Events

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In April and May 2018 ZWV hosted two electronics recycling events in order to relieve the backlog of electronics accumulating on island. These items are not allowed for disposal at the transfer station. All told we collect 7.5 tons of electronics at these two events!

What happens to my electronics?

This depends on the electronics item. After the event, everything is taken to SBK Recycle in Tacoma. There the computers are stripped of their components. The hard drives are crushed, parts are removed sent to the appropriate processor. For example, mother boards are sent to Japan for processing. There are only 2 plants in the world that can process these components for rare metals safely. One is in Japan and one is in Belgium. An interesting fact is that it is less expensive and environmentally more friendly to recycle these rare metals than it is to mine them. Printers are mostly plastic. They get sent to Auburn to a plastics recycler. Major metal components get sent to metal recycling. LCD screens get sent to California.