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Kenmore urges composting, recycling clarity and surface-water behaviors to protect streams
Summary
City climate staff described outreach encouraging composting, reduced food waste, better recycling labeling and behavior-change work to keep pollutants out of storm drains; residents are urged to use commercial car washes and pick up pet waste because storm drains flow untreated to local water bodies.
Kenmore’s climate and outreach work includes education on waste reduction, composting and surface-water behavior to prevent pollutants from entering local streams and lakes, Climate Action Program Manager Nina Rasmussen said in an interview.
Rasmussen said the city promotes composting and waste-reduction habits and is working on clearer recycling labels because changes in recycling end markets have made sorting harder. "There are many resources online to help folks sort of plan how they purchase food and making sure you know we're not leading to a lot of spoilage and then, therefore waste," she said.
On surface-water outreach, Rasmussen said the city’s permit requires behavior-change programming rather than a purely regulatory approach. "We're incentivizing folks to do better. We're not regulating them to do better," she said. She stressed that storm drains send runoff directly to streams and lakes without treatment: "There is no treatment center. There's no there's nothing to sort of clean it up before it goes back into our water bodies."
Rasmussen said outreach emphasizes simple actions such as picking up pet waste, using commercial car washes instead of washing vehicles in driveways, and promoting compost collection where available. The city is taking those messages to public events such as farmers markets, movie nights and concerts to make the information accessible.
