Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Hhp Outreach Education topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
MassDEP stakeholders push for clearer public outreach, contact points and cross-agency messaging on HHPs
Summary
Stakeholders at a MassDEP workshop urged improvements to the agency's outreach strategy for household hazardous products, including website updates, translated materials, a clear MassDEP point of contact and cross-promotion across state agencies.
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection staff presented outreach recommendations in a draft Household Hazardous Products action plan and heard that outreach capacity and clarity are major barriers to household participation in hazardous-waste diversion.
The plan recommends updating and publicizing the MassDEP website, promoting RecycleSmart and RecyclingWorks in Massachusetts, adding collection-location maps to MassDEP’s Beyond the Bin, and expanding translations. Attendees urged clear, direct contact points at MassDEP and broader cross-promotion across EEA agencies to reach audiences that do not routinely access DEP communications.
Phil Goddard (participant) and others asked that MassDEP make a regular update to stakeholder venues, such as presenting this topic as a standing item at SWAC or similar forums so municipalities know the outcomes and can coordinate budgets and logistics. One attendee said personal outreach is effective but limited in scale: “I might speak to 300 people a year where there are 400,000 residents in the region,” illustrating the difficulty of scaling phone-based assistance.
Several people advocated centralized, consistent messaging across agencies under the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs so that fish-and-wildlife, coastal and parks constituencies also receive HHP guidance through their normal permitting or outreach channels. Caitlin (MassDEP) asked participants to submit written comments; MassDEP staff said they will revise the materials and return to the group in future meetings.
