Missoula reviews progress on '0 by 50' zero‑waste plan; task force to set near‑term priorities

At an April Home Resource lunch‑and‑learn in Missoula, Kelly Hess, executive director of Home Resource, and Leigh Raderman, climate and sustainability specialist for the City of Missoula, presented a status update on the city’s 0 by 50 plan — the city’s roadmap to 90% waste diversion by 2050 — and described a new task force that will recommend near‑term priorities.

The plan, formally adopted by the City of Missoula in 2018, sets a community goal of reaching what the presenters described as “0 waste” (defined in the plan as roughly 90% diversion). “0 by 50 is Missoula’s pathway to 0 waste, and we're gonna talk about it together,” Hess said during the presentation.

The update emphasized four guiding principles in the plan — that waste is not inevitable, that implementation must be equitable across all Missoulians, that upstream and midstream solutions should be prioritized over downstream fixes, and that transparency and accountability are essential — and four paths to implementation: access, infrastructure, education and policy.

Presenters and Home Resource staff described specific, already‑implemented programs that the city and community organizations have used to advance the plan. Home Resource’s reuse store diverts building…