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Environment Now outreach: role-play shows how food businesses can reach 0 waste
Summary
Department of the Environment staff demonstrated a typical visit to a food establishment: checking three-stream bin setups, offering customized signs and vendor lists for compostable products, providing multilingual staff trainings, and referring hazardous waste disposal to Recology.
Vernon Haney of the Department of the Environment provided a role-play demonstration showing how the department—s Environment Now team works with food establishments to achieve 0 waste.
Haney walked commissioners through a visit checklist: verify that establishments have all three color-coded bins in appropriate locations, offer customized signs to reduce contamination, provide a vendor list of compostable or recyclable service items (cutlery, lids, cups, bags), and offer free staff trainings in multiple languages. He noted Recology maintains a hazardous-waste disposal appointment service (phone number provided during the presentation) for items that cannot be placed in the three bins (paint, light bulbs, solvents).
In Q&A commissioners asked how many businesses the team visits. Haney said a recent campaign visited about 1,000 businesses and prior pilot efforts visited a few hundred. Directors and commissioners praised the outreach—s value and suggested follow-up training and expanded outreach in targeted languages.
