Another Tuesday Green Team Meeting

We had our usual Green Team Meeting at Washington sq last Tuesday. Mariah and Susie discussed how and why more and more residents are using Food Plus! at Washington and the general recycling at all three buildings .It’s awesome to hear that more people in all three buildings are taking the time and energy to learn and recycle properly. They also talked about getting residents to use Food Plus! for yard waste, and just as we were talking about it, we spied Caroline (hope I spelled that right) dumping the garden weeds into the Food Plus! bin outside! Hurrah!

Mary & Robert brought leftover cake from their back-to-back birthdays. Happy belated birthday to you both! We discussed the new signs for the trash chutes and continued talk about helping more people understand recycling and composting and making it easier for them, among other things too.

All in all, it was another good, productive Green Team meeting. Thanks for showing up!

New Recycle Signs

You may notice next time you take your trash out that there is some new signage reminding you to Stop, Think, and Sort next time you throw something away. The poster has a bunch of pictures of things you can recycle, making it easier to figure out what to sort.

 

 

In addition to these signs, we also put up signs at Washington Square to help people figure out what food containers can go into the Food Plus! bins that they have there. They look like this…

General Meeting @ Lincoln Square

After my visit to Washington Sq, I went over to Lincoln Square, where Rose from Sustainable Connections was talking to residents about what they thought about the Expo two weekends ago, how to get people to use their new green roof more, and did some telemetry screen training.

Mary Louise, pictured below, expressed her appreciation for the things we are doing to help residents “green” aspects of their lives and we really love to hear how enthusiastic she is about it! She was even nice enough to volunteer to be interviewed for the movie that we’ll be making! So, Thank you Mary Louise!

If you didn’t read already read about the movie,we are going to make a short movie about all this awesome green stuff going on at Lincoln, Chuckanut, and Washington Squares. This movie will showcase some of the new features in and on the buildings, as well as you, the fabulous people who live there! If you are interested in being in the movie, let us know at the next resident meeting! We would love to feature some residents who can tell us a little bit about themselves and present something from the HUD grant that they think is neat, or something new that they learned, or a new habit that they changed because of the program through Sustainable Connections.

Thank you all for showing up and giving us feedback and asking questions.

Food Plus @ Washington Square and more

Yesterday we had a meeting with the Green Team and other residents at Washington Square about their new Food Plus compost program. We had all the usuals there giving us helpful suggestions and feedback and asking questions about the recyclability and compostability of some common household items such as different types of to-go food containers, chicken bones, and lean cuisine packaging components. We also brought in some new signs that residents had requested to help them remember to compost certain items and also a list of all things compostable. They looked like this…

There were some concerns about the smell of the compost, but we reminded people that that waste will be thrown out either way, whether it’s into the compost or into the trash chute. It makes sense to me to put it with the compost outside, instead of the trash chute inside which has a smell that whafts through the halls. All change is hard though, so we understand the concerns and that’s why we want to make sure everybody’s voice is heard.

Here’s some of those questions being discussed….

Michael wondering about the to-go container in front of him. We decided that it is compostable, but the labeling on it is very confusing! They way you can tell that it IS compostable, is it will say something like “naturewise” or “natureplastic” — something like that.

Robert & Linda listen to Mary’s idea to line home compost bins with old newspaper to absorb the moisture and smell. She got this idea from her childhood memory of using the same technique to ensure incineration of trash, but this idea works well for composting too! Try it out!

Mariah from Sustainable Connections hands (literally, all you can see is her hand) Debra the list of things she can compost. Chuck and Mike in the background also grabbed a sheet for their homes.

We also talked about the short movie that we are going to make about all this awesome green stuff going on at Lincoln, Chuckanut, and Washington Squares. This movie will showcase some of the new features in and on the buildings, as well as you, the fabulous people who live there! If you are interested in being in the movie, let us know at the next resident meeting! We would love to feature some residents who can tell us a little bit about themselves and present something from the HUD grant that they think is neat, or something new that they learned, or a new habit that they changed because of the program through Sustainable Connections.

Thanks for coming and giving us feedback and asking questions!

      As you may have noticed this last Saturday, the Sustainable Connections 10th annual Imagine This! Home and Landscape tour made Lincoln Square one of it’s ten stops on the tour. What an honor! Lincoln Square was a perfect place to have the Expo stop of the tour, which showcased the solar panel array, the touch screen display “telemetry” screen, the green roof and living wall and some of the other green features like low flow toilets, and the poticrete sidewalks made with the old toilets from the building. Best of all, residents of Lincoln Square were offered FREE tickets to the rest of the Home and Landscape tour for Saturday and Sunday, and we hope a few people took advantage of this offer.

The Expo portion of the tour stop, which was held in the Community Room hosted 20 vendors from local businesses like Bellingham Bay Builders, Wild Bird Chalet, Cascade Community Wind, the ReStore, NW Rain Solutions and more! All of these vendors displayed the awesome services that they provide to community members who would like to lower their environmental footprint. This venue also provided the opportunity to tell members of the community about the Green Communities Project

Over 150 people showed up at Lincoln Square on Saturday to check out the upgrades to the buildings at Lincoln Sq, Washington Sq, and Chuckanut Sq, learn about the Green Communities Project, the Bellingham Housing Authority and how to improve their homes to be more environmentally sustainable too!