Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 3/25/21

001american environmental commission calling in from ann arbor one of the things we'll need to do is uh state uh your name uh during the roll call please state your name and uh where you're calling in from okay um so the meeting is called the order at 702 pm um galen do you want to start with the land heritage statement indeed hi i'm galen hardy and i'm dialing in from detroit michigan um as a staff liaison um i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the odawa ojibway and bodhi watmey and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the in the united states on land obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people this taken

002of the land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals and that's the land heritage statement well thank you again so galen would you you want to start the roll call sure okay all right just one second um okay uh commissioner graham commissioner graham commissioner skinner commissioner skinner commissioner needham commissioner needham and hold on one sec i'm gonna check and see if they're in the queue nope they're not all right councilmember dish yes uh commissioner gibb randall commissioner gibb randall is here you need it oh okay uh council member griswold commissioner

003kylie ward here chairman brown uh president commissioner overpat commissioner overpack commissioner marski here and i'm participating from my home at 505 bursting place in ann arbor all righty uh vice chair mitchell a president calling in from ann arbor all right commissioner bonilla um here calling in from ann arbor all right commissioner affairs commissioner affairs we have a quorum all right thank you galen so the first the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda do i have a motion to visit kathy seconded by lisa um discussion i hear no discussion request for discussion so um who uh who approves of the uh agenda that is written please raise your hand or say aye aye aye all those who opposed um the agenda passes unanimously so we come to the part for special

004presentations so uh this this session of the environmental commission will be basically centered around solid waste so i thought i would invite a couple of uh people here to update the commission on the uh on worma recycling challenges and on and on composting uh don uh dan butinski was not able to be present today because we care organics is uh building a composting facility for the city of uh grand rapids so he's very busy with that um but the first up on the agenda here for a special presentation is theo eggermont from the county from washtenaw county he's going to give us an update on warmup um theo hello you may not have realized he was first up there uh steve do you uh can you text him or do you want me to text

005him like my head's up um yeah you might yeah i don't have his uh i don't have his text information his phone go ahead and do that and we can start with you brian if he's not ready if he's stepped out for a minute okay i i i sent him a text we'll see what happens um i'm happy to go ahead and get started um i don't have uh control of the sharing screen so if the host could oh okay kathy uh i see that bob needham is an attendee okay he's coming in now okay so um okay why don't we get started um why don't we get started with you brian sounds good thanks for sharing screen can everyone see yes yeah i can see i appreciate the opportunity to talk with you i'd

006like to talk a little bit about zero waste tonight um i uh as as steven mentioned and i think a lot of you know i'm i'm the ceo at uh recycle ann arbor it's a non-profit uh a community-based organization we're uh been around for about 42 years we did the first the fourth uh collection recycling collection program in the country and the first one for the state of michigan and have done curbside collections for the city of ann arbor since its inception we do uh we also are uh re-equipping the materials recovery facility so we can process our material locally and we have a 10-year agreement to process the city's recyclables um we have a recovery yard out in societal township where construction demolition material is processed and and recycled and we also have a

007lot of education advocacy that we've done since uh since our inception and and our reuse center uh just was forced to to close and we're looking at reimagining that but reuse is very much a cornerstone and a major component of recycle ann arbor so we're working to to reopen in some way shape or form so do a number of things i think everyone probably already knew that but i just wanted to say that for the record i think the other thing that you probably have seen before is a higher a solid waste hierarchy but i just wanted to show you um the current uh solid waste hierarchy um that's sort of an upside down uh pyramid this is this was created by the zero waste international alliance and that's a group that has been around

008for uh 20 25 years and implements worldwide a number of zero-waste programs new zealand all the major countries that do zero-waste programs they've uh they're very involved and very involved in the united states as well so there's they're well respected um this is uh the hierarchy that they've come up with and it much more accurately represents um the uh prioritization of of solid waste management in today's sort of infrastructure um and i wanted to say something that we all know but we don't talk about a lot and um it that's that recycling won't solve the weight the solid waste problem the bottom line we can't recycle our way out of this recycling is an amazing tool amazing tool and the impact that it has on climate change and other is just amazing but uh putting

009more trucks on the road is not the is not the solution so what i'd like to talk with you a little bit about today is um what i do think uh is uh gets at the root and starts uh solving the root problem of of wasting and that's zero waste and i'm sure a lot of you have heard the the term used and it gets used a lot interchangeably with uh circular economy and and good recycling and real recycling and a whole bunch of different things but zero waste is very different and as i mentioned this alliance is uh one that's uh uh put together a lot of uh tools um that more accurately address today's solid waste problem so uh i think the the what i'd like to propose tonight is um we look

010at uh this zero waste uh issue um where the investments that we're making in the city of ann arbor and and in our community um accurately reflect um our values and uh where we think as a more what we think is a more accurate way to address the solid waste issue so um we have in a lot of cases an integrated waste management system that's currently in place and i'll talk a little bit about the the difference between the two but sort of the the bottom line of zero waste is is that the investments and the the prioritization of redesigning systems you can see at the top there so we're not just sort of standing at the tailpipe but we're actually looking at redesigning and prioritizing and putting our resources toward redesigning and prioritizing as

011number one priority reduction and reuse we've been working a lot in the typical integrated waste management program and this is it's rare for communities to sort of look at things in this way but uh but it's becoming more and more common um not just uh very progressive communities but sort of uh communities that have been doing recycling for a number of years and and are seeing that there's not as uh haven't been as successful at actually getting at the core of what the solid waste issues are so i'd uh um challenge us to think about zero waste as far as prioritizing what the issues are that where our values are and not starting sort of in the middle of the pyramid so this is a little bit of a complicated slide but i think um

012the idea is that um the opportunities are different and the programs that are implemented are different with the zero waste perspective and a zero waste model versus an integrated waste management model so um there are a number of pieces here a number of opportunities within this zero waste model but um you know obviously a big one is is uh we get to stop wasting natural resources so you know seven billion people on the planet and um you know fresh water fossil fuel metals um all of those resources are limited and uh zero waste just helps us live within the planet's means by using the resources more efficiently so uh we have the raw materials for future generations and that's kind of the definition of sustainability is as having the resources that we need to to

013for future generations and making it a sustainable venture i think the other part um that is obviously missing from a lot of integrated waste management plans is the environmental justice so um i think a lot of people think garbage and the waste problem is sort of a technical problem in other words we might be able to invent a magic box or or a tool or a thing that would sort of we we could get out of this mess by with technologies but uh but the waste problem is it is not just a technical problem it's very much ingrained and very much embedded in everything that we do every every system every government every um system that we have put in place as humans is impacted by it so it's not just a technical problem there

014there's a larger web out there there's issues of health there's issues of equity there's issues of race power gender poverty all of those things play importantly into waste management or zero waste programs so we need to identify that and we also need to to in order to get to and achieve true solutions um all of our systems that we create need to take a close look and work to support those systems of of social and economic justice and ecological sustainability so we're not just looking at this in a in sort of a how do we get it off the street it really we're we have a clear understanding that this is like something that very much impacts every part of every every person's life talk to your neighbor about garbage and see how passionate people

015can get about it it's very much ingrained in people's lives so we need to make sure that we represent um those those things like gender like power like race in in our systems that we're creating i think a bit you know one of the biggest opportunities is reducing the climate impact uh zero waste is the fast is one of the fastest easiest ways climate action strategies that that communities can implement today to immediately re reduce greenhouse gases and we're you know we talk a lot about you know very very expensive very much all you know land or uh people are altering systems and very expensive systems but we have the systems in place now to reduce these green significantly reduce these greenhouse gases by implementing these strategies so it's uh it's kind of exciting but

016it's also daunting i think at the same time but if you if you look at it 43 percent 43 almost half of the greenhouse gases that are created from are created from from uh uh consumption emissions from the stuff we use and buy and and and deal with and that's food too so you know there's 43 of the problem for for climate change so there's huge opportunity there i think there's also this issue of you know energy intergenerational equity i think that's a an important issue every single one of us and our kids and we we all have um we all carry toxics toxic chemicals inside us and it's it's because of dirty manufacturing polluting landfills polluting incineration uh we just have those you know micro plastics there's just you know a host of things

017that we carry around with us and a zero waste model really redesigns those products and those manufacturing processes to make them less less toxic to make them less impactful to your future generations that's just an inheritance we don't want to pass on to our kids we want to create local jobs this is a big one you know look at what we're doing at the murph you know seven billion dollar investment in in a local murph all those jobs are going to be local jobs they're going to be union jobs they're going to be good paying jobs and if you look recycling creates 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration that's huge and that's right here in our community you know so so it's a huge opportunity there and i i think the the quality

018of those jobs is good for this community and they're they're they're set up for low and and mid-skilled workers which is the the priority for manufacturing um creating manufacturing jobs right now so they're the kind of jobs that we need to have here and uh you know strengthening the local economy by keeping those dollars local everybody's probably heard you guys are council members and stuff that that uh you know those those um dollars that stay in the community are you know eighty percent of that money is actually used in the community um versus when it goes away to a multinational where the the uh the benefits aren't as great to the local community so let's keep those dollars local whenever we can and let's keep the the uh the material itself the recyclables that we're

019creating or the material that we're creating let's keep that local and do good stuff with it we need to keep that circulating in our own community and tied a circle as we can so so there's opportunity there and then the big one i i'm sorry um uh the composting folks aren't going to be able to be here but i'll just mention you know on the healthy soil side of things the composting side it's amazing the the benefits of composting you know we have uh significantly depleted soils in ann arbor and and all around from pesticides from construction from you know poor agricultural processes things like that and keeping that compost local it replenishes our soils right here and what that means is the nutrients stay right here and that creates healthy soil right here healthy

020soil equals healthy food equals fewer pesticides less water used and most importantly or more as importantly compost actually sequesters carbon so there's this amazing benefit that happens there's these all kinds of really cool programs that are happening with compost to sequester carbon so the opportunities are huge and if you think about it from the perspective of like the the a2 0 carbon neutrality plan and you see how well a zero waste plan would enhance that it's it's exciting to think about you know i think i i need to mention a little bit about what zero waste isn't because i think there's a lot of misinformation it's it's confusing you know so i just wanted to sometimes it's easier to demonstrate what zero waste isn't and that kind of can help folks a little bit but

021it's not a hundred percent recycling or composting um actually a hundred percent recycling and composting it could actually perpetuate single-use items and and items that we don't want in the first place so you hear me bash and rece it sounds like i'm bashing recycling i'm not i'm looking at it in a more comprehensive way so and i think that's what we need to to start taking a a look at so so it's not a hundred percent recycled not just 100 recycling or composting again those both have amazing benefits but they're not the solution we really want to get to the root of the solution and get to the root of the problem so we can get to the solution um zero waste to landfills you probably hear that a lot subaru says that a lot

022you know zero where's getting close to zero wasted landfills it just means they're still using waste to energy incinerators things like that and and that doesn't get us to zero waste that's still a linear model where you use it and you burn it and it's gone and that's just not an efficient way and it's not it's not a sustainable way to continue so it's not zero waste to landfills um we want it's not circular in any way we want to create circular a circular model that that where that material gets used again and again and again and yeah you get a little bit of energy from it but then the material is wasted and then you have toxic ash so what do you do with it then you still have to landfill the ash so

023it's not not not a very good system but zero waste of landfill is a bit of a buzzword um absolute zero items are discarded that's another thing that people think is like oh my god it's i it means i'm only going to be able to generate a jelly jar of waste per year and you see that on youtube all the time where somebody's got just a little bit of yarn and some bubble gum and they say this is what i did for a year it's not like that you know even the the the institute this zero waste institute um talks about 90 being what's feasible today not even in the future today ninety percent using these zero waste models that that we can set up and ninety percent is darn near zero waste and that's

024close for me that's a lot better than we are now so so we don't have to be so pure in our thinking and and then i think just sort of that integrated waste management model um it just that that integrated waste management model assumes there's always going to be garbage and you're sort of standing at the tailpipe and you're just saying all right what's coming at me and how am i going to catch as much as i can we really need to crawl up that tailpipe and take up a different approach to what's coming at us in the first place so integrated waste management also assumes that waste is inevitable and um instead of addressing on the front end like i showed you the reverse of redesigning and reusing so i'll just finish with this

025you know uh i i believe a a city-wide plan a city-wide zero-waste plan is needed in in ann arbor and uh and it i think it's very achievable i've seen it in many communities i know it's achievable um but it needs achievable and visionary goals for our community because every single community is different you can't just overlay okay let's bring in a zero waste plan that doesn't work it has to be tailored to our community has to be based on those guiding principles that the the zero waste institute and others have put put in place it needs to be centered on reducing and reusing and designing first and then worry about you know start putting resources toward other other items but we need to resource that part of what we're doing and it needs to

026be created in a collaboration because like i mentioned it's a living breathing organism it touches everybody's life in so many different ways so it has to be a collaborative model that brings in all the stakeholders and it's part of an overall sustainability plan if you look at the a20 plan there's a big piece of it there but we have a solid waste resource management plan swamp or shrimp or whatever what we need is a zero waste plan that addresses this stuff in a different way so that's that's about what i had on that that's i'd be happy to answer questions too if anybody has any questions okay well thank you brian um let's see if you have a question for brian please raise your hand um shannon oh shannon i can't hear you sorry having

027technical difficulties with my computer today i'm wondering brian if you've seen other communities successfully be able to um change industry in terms of packaging one of the things that just drives me nuts is is how you know just totally packaged things are in complicated ways and when you're a dedicated recycler it's like wow you know pulling apart you have to be really dedicated sometimes to pull the plastic off of the you know the the cardboard and you know to be able to figure out what parts you can recycle and not and um it just seems to me that boy it would be great to be able to actually shift how people ship things in terms of packaging stuff and i'm just wondering if you've seen any um evidence of communities being able to to influence

028companies that are making these decisions around design and not around not around um you know not around zero waste design or recycle every once in a while you get something like that but it's not the norm and i remember hearing something about prince edward island in canada um because they essentially were running out of landfill space and it started telling manufacturers that they wouldn't ship their products to their island if they didn't have a like a more sustainable way of dealing with their packaging and it just made me think like wow you know can we push back and and have you heard of other communities that have been successful and being able to move the needle on that i think that's a great question and you know it it it just drives me crazy when

029um i see uh ads on tv and i hear uh manufacturers say if you guys you you consumers of products would just work a little harder and recycle a little more we could get this done you know at some point it's not about us it's about the manufacturers being responsible for the products that they're generating in the first place and it the major concept that's got more uh i i would say more traction than i've i've seen i've been doing this 30 35 years and the most traction i've seen is actually legislatively as this year there's more uh extended producer responsibility legislation in the various state houses senates and and being introduced on a national level than than i've seen in my career and it is just it's difficult to track there's so much of

030it but the idea is that um producer pays and and maybe they don't pay at all but they share in the in and and and they make packaging that is recyclable you know i've got i got stuff coming in to the murph all day every day the materials recovery facility the recycling facility it's multi-layered plastic that's got cardboard and plastic around it and you know the resident puts it in there in good faith and says it's got plastic man it's recyclable but and and they know they're kind of wish cycling you know they're kind of like i really want it to be recycled man and i get it i get it but it's not it's just not and it just gums up the system and that's not necessarily your fault as a resident that's the

031producer's responsibility and they need to share in the responsibility so extended producer responsibility on a state level is what i see and um just like in a lot of other cases well with cigarettes and with many other things that uh people have had to work on um there's this mishmash of different states doing different things and it drives the producers crazy they're just like how can i keep up with this you know and so um what you'll see eventually is a national policy like they have in in canada and there's there is extended producer responsibility in canada and actually they do pay for recycling because right now you pay as a resident your taxes you pay for the all of the recycling and so those producers what they're creating that's not fair man you need

032to do stuff that's recyclable that that actually pays to recycle so it doesn't make it more and more and more expensive so so that extended producer responsibility and that read the redesigning of products that's at the top of that pyramid that i showed that's what that's a piece of it is lobbying and working on a state level but also on a local level i i lived in boulder for about six years and i also lived in in minneapolis and st paul and i mean yes st paul kind of a midwest city just kind of like a regular kind of city boulder kind of a progre very progressive city kind of like ann arbor is so two different models there but in uh in boulder you can't use styrofoam packaging in boulder you can't use bags

033in boulder you can't the uh the people can't just dump on you you know they that the city will push back and the same is with minneapolis and st paul and they have a little more cloud in doing it but but there's all these preemption laws where the manufacturers come in and they say no you can't do that you can't do that we're gonna preemptively say you can't do that but you're seeing that turn now with this new legislative session and and kind of what's happened there's so there's this tidal wave of stuff coming at them and they realize oh i gotta do something and even me on a materials recovery facility or recycling level um the producers are coming to me coca-cola is coming to me and saying hey man how can we make

034this work you know so um so i think you're seeing a lot of change but but we as a city can create a plan and push back together and that has the most power there's nothing scarier than a city that's got a clear vision did that answer it yeah no that's great thanks okay okay thanks rita you had your hand up next thank you um thanks i really appreciate the kind of the way you presented in the inverted pyramid because that's one of the my greatest wish i think is to extend our contribution to that inversion if you have you created or done any kind of auditing of our waste stream to know the percentage of what you consider good recycling from from things that are really totally wish recycling is there like a percentage

035like or where or where would you put us on that inverted pyramid also it's kind of what i'm trying to kind of two different questions you know one is um kind of what is the wish cycling versus the the uh recyclables and then the other is kind of where do we fit on that specter you know when ann arbor sort of fit on this on the spectrum but you know as there are some real good measures and we do a quarterly audit uh or composition analysis of the recyclables very rare for any community to do but it's what when you work with a non-profit recycler they just got different mission different vision different you know set of standards so so you got that so you know on once a quarter we go in and say

036what's in there and we call it residual the wish cycling is the residual and so some people they'll put 50 foot hoses in there and you're like dude i know you you know that's not recyclable so that's a little bit on this on the other spectrum of wish cycling versus hey man i just want to get rid of it and my recycling cart is close but um the there's not really a designation of wish cycling versus just residual but the residual and the wish cycling together um right now we're in we're in real good shape we're at less than 10 percent um just as a comparison just and that sounds high i know but that's no i think it sounds really good very good it's very good and it's because of the community we live

037in you know i'd say that people are very aware um but uh still 10 is a long way from where i came from which was two percent you know and so there's a lot of work needing to be done but uh but just as an example chicago's at over 30 percent of what they bring in is is not recyclable and and so we we really have to redouble our efforts and it's not just about educating people on what's recyclable and what's not but it's also educating them hey man can you avoid it in the first place you know can we look at like what can we preemptively get in front of you know and that's kind of your question about where do we fit on the on the uh on the pyramid and uh i

038i you know i i know you guys know this but you know ann arbor has been a very progressive community when it comes to to solid waste management and and zero waste issues for a long time but we lost some traction in the last several years so it's time for us to to re-up and to re-look at this and i'll tell you there's so much energy in the community about it and i would say number one there's kind of three pieces or three legs to the stool and and the first leg is to have a willing community and by gosh we got it i mean people are ready in ann arbor and they just need good a good system in place to to be able to to really support it and the second leg of

039that stool is to have a champion and um municipalities are amazing i mean providing service municipalities are great and ann arbor is no exception man my streets get plowed no matter what you know they plow my sidewalks and everything it's like amazing it's really good but when it comes to actually getting out sort of on the edge and advocating and saying we want you to do something new here you have an advocate and it's not just because i'm the the ceo of recycle ann arbor i've seen this everywhere i am if there's a champion no matter if it's a non-profit for-profit or whatever it is they push the issue man they're the ones that are pushing that envelope and that's what you really need in order to sort of move things forward and the the

040i think the third most important component is community engagement so it's not just hey we want to do this but we're ready to participate i mean the biggest thing that happened to me when i came to recycle ann arbor is i have a 15-member board and that board rolls up their sleeves and says all right how are we going to get this done they don't just talk about high-minded stuff man they actually do it and the university of michigan's the same way it's such a think tank there's such opportunity here to to innovate and move forward so i would say on that spectrum we're higher up than most communities because we're because we are who we are the nature of of kind of who we are and how we position ourselves in the world but

041right now we we just need that extra sort of guiding principles and plan so we can all agree and move forward together because it's not either or man it's and you know to move forward so i hope that helped okay thank you okay thank you um john mursky you had your hand up next and then lisa and then bob thank you brian uh first of all i would appreciate it if you would go back to your employees and tell them um all of you and raa are really a local treasurer um we we really appreciate what you do and um hopefully they they understand that a couple of a couple of things um the a to z guide that you have um is also a wonderful resource it's obviously on the raa site and now

042it's also on the city of ann arbor's page it's in some cases referred to as a recycling guide but i think i've seen it also on the ecology centers um some of their newsletters and things like that where they refer to it as a zero waste guide and i would hope that we can start to consider it that way in many regards it already is it tells um it gives guidance on how to you know reuse things or where where it can be taken um to be resold or things like that and so i would consider or recommend that you consider on how it can be transitioned to a like i said a zero waste guide and one other thing with theo i'm presenting soon i would hope that it would be viewed as not

043just an ann arbor resource but a washington county resource um and i recognize that that's gonna be a little bit difficult because um depending on on where you live in washington county even where you are in in the city of ann arbor um what you can do with your with your waste depends um you know like glass bottles um can't be recycled as far as i know still on campus um but hopefully we can get to some more unifying um guides on on how to do that um just um one one other comment um that i think um is maybe addressed to shannon um i worked in um the power tool division of my firm former employee employer so it's a consumer products division and it's interesting the culture in sales and marketing is what

044is the shelf appeal of the product so they're really the culture there is not thinking um how can this product um be where the package be minimized or how can it be recycled they're thinking about what is the appeal to the consumer when they're walking down the aisle and they're looking for you know in our case um a drill and there's a whole bunch of different drills and um they they walk down and what's the packaging that looks the most appealing um and i think that's that's going to be difficult to change because that's what drives companies is what are their sales going to be not what what's going to happen after the purchase um and one thing that we might consider doing steve at some point is and maybe it's not the commission but

045maybe it's one of the other groups working on this is to invite people from the michigan state um packaging degree program from what i understand it's one of the best in the country it's very it's has a really really good reputation i mean when when i was in the power tool division in chicago we talked about it so it's not just something that's you know state pride it's really um recognized as a top level program and it would be interesting to hear from them um how this is changing and how we we you know as a municipality and even beyond that can can help change that and lastly i would um ask brian um where where was the residual rate only two percent i mean that's amazing it was in st paul st paul minnesota

046that was 45 years of education it is it doesn't happen very often it's also that way in boulder it's real low residual rate in boulder but yeah it we can get there we can get there well maybe if we put the a to z guide also on the stickers on all of our carts that would help as well i mean that's one of the problems we only have you know stickers on on our on our uh garbage carts we don't have them our trash carts we don't have them on compost we don't have them on on the recycling um or i say the other way around we have it on recycling we don't have it on what's trash and we don't have it on compost so there's an opportunity to i think it definitely john

047i i think to rita's point um resourcing that um pushing it up the pyramid and actually why don't we put more money toward education and outreach and less money towards solid waste so so we kind of flip that on it's on its head but but education awareness is huge part of this but it's not just up to the resident the resident can recycle until he's blue in the face and that's not going to get us to the solution so maybe when when someone's about to put that 50-foot hose in their recycling cart and it says look at the raa zero waste guide then they can go to the zero waste guide and figure out a way how they can fix that hose or how they can repurpose it or something like that thank you i

048don't know if you guys know or not i don't want to digress too much but uh the university of michigan has this thing that where they lock people and are these real smartypants kind of guys in the room and they have to invent something uh some application or something and it's a bigger you get the award and the the award winner last year came and talked to us and what he did is created a qr code where um they on the side of the bin you can you can turn it on and then you take a snap a picture of the recyclable item that's that is in question so if you took a picture of the hose and it would tell it would it has you know millions of images and it says now man

049hoses aren't recyclable so that that opportunity exists we just have to sort of flip that so we can resource that side of things and the other side yeah yeah thank you very much yep thank you i saw bob needham's hand before mine oh okay fleshy hand so okay all right yeah so bob and then lisa and then chris thank you lisa you could have gone um i just wanted to ask brian uh thank you for the presentation but um i'm having a hard time picturing exactly what would be in a zero waste plan and how it would differ from a solid waste management plan could you possibly send around to the commission um some examples of what you consider successful or solid plans and i take your point about each community needing to be different

050but i'd find it helpful to sort of yeah there's a boston that uh the city of boston has a pretty comprehensive plan other countries have good plans there's a number of them i can send you a couple i'll send them to stephen and he can he can shoot him around but just kind of think about it in this way you know you can with it's composting real simple example right so instead of um putting carts out for a year-round collection or or in also putting carts out for year-round collection why don't we resource also how to prevent wasted food and help people understand you know where that waste is coming in and how they might be able to change their habit and then and then backyard composting enhancing backyard composting um and then go to

051the curb you know if you can't do these other two things then then do the other things and then it resources it the salt the zero waste plan actually resources it and says look man you need to invest some money in this part and not so much in this part so that's just one stupid example but you get the idea it just kind of turns it on its head and says all right you know back up a little bit crawl up the tailpipe and and see what uh what we can do on the in the first place so but i'll i'll send that boston zero waste plan around and and if i can think of other communities i'll send those around too they're kind of long so just heads up okay alisa yes so i

052had two questions about working within constraints and so one is um in oh i'm sorry i should say this was a fantastic and really inspiring presentation and i do love that pyramid i want that pyramid i want it tattooed on my head um so the so in your in your conversation with um commissioner gibrano you said we as a city can create a plan and push back and you know sort of affect what we will and won't let companies bring into our community but it in my ex or not my experience but what i've learned is that there are a lot of michigan laws that don't let municipalities exercise the kind of sovereignty that it sounds like minneapolis and saint paul where i also used to live and boulder do so what do we how

053much could we actually say we're not going to take products that are encased so part of it has to happen on a state level lisa that's just the truth and and um it's called preemption laws and there's a bunch of them out there that's the truth and uh it comes from dart the styrofoam folks and the bag folks and other folks who've really been effective at getting those preemption laws in place but those are being overturned so so what i mentioned about minneapolis-st paul and and uh boulder was uh pre-preemption laws so it was before the big guys came in and moved everything around but what you're seeing now is there's such a big push from your average resident as well as your state senator and so on to make real change that you're seeing

054those preemption laws sort of overturn so that's an area where we can advocate through the michigan recycling coalition through uh the the swana folks through a number of uh folks who are already lobbying to to help them along but then also on our own you know you're probably as a council person in touch with a number of state senators and stuff and that's how it happens so um that that preemption thing is tough um but it's not insurmountable and i'm seeing them change around so it can happen i had one more thing because you put rightly i think an enormous amount of emphasis on education and also an enormous amount of emphasis on how open people who live in ann arbor are to doing this and i think that's particularly true of younger people people

055in their pre-teens and teens because they are seeing the future much more than we are who are their elders so they're doing a better job worrying and um one of the things that i'm very sorry about well one of the things i'm super excited about is that the murph is going to be back online in the fall but i'm extremely sad that the education program is not being funded by the source that used to fund it um and so i was wondering if you have thought about or identified any alternative funding sources and if there's any way people can be helpful in helping to get the grants in place i know that the pro the schools subscribe to the program but there but there is a an amount that you know needs to pay for

056the person who staffs it and you know puts the presentations together and i'm just wondering is there any way to bring that back um through other funding sources absolutely we have a million ideas um but the thing about education is it has to be ongoing and it's like uh from a marketing side john you know man that's it's that minimum five touches on a regular basis that's the way it's got to be so so it has to be ongoing so grants are fine to get programs started and to resource them to start with but long term you need a sustainable funding source and that's why a lot of municipalities put embed into their their contracts for materials recovery for processing of recyclables or for collection of of recyclables they embed an education program as well

057and i think that's you know that's the challenge we have in front of us is long term you don't want to set something up and then it goes away in two years because the grant's gone and you want to make sure that it's it's sustainable and it's ongoing there are ways that we can do that with the resources that we have right now it's just sort of shifting those resources around and and that's what i'm advocating for is that we create an agreed to zero waste plan that talks about here's how we're going to resource it long term instead of sort of taking it a piece at a time and that that piecemeal approach has found it you know they found it's not as effective as taking a comprehensive approach and saying here's where we

058need education here's where we need advocacy and so on and so forth so i i i have a lot of sources for funding there are many many sources to sort of get things rolling but i i think the challenge is that we work together to create something that's sustainable and long term for the on the education side okay um chris and then rita oh chris i can't hear you catching up with the mute button brian i'm really appreciating your revolutionary spirit i it seems like the time is right to step up in a lot of ways for example um i'm suspecting elaine and i are recycling many materials that don't actually get recycled and i mean by that packaging carry out materials i we cheerfully put our those materials in the recycle bin and fill

059it up but i'm guessing they're going to landfill um that brings back lisa's um really important requirement that we do a whole lot more educating we've been doing so that even someone who started recycling when you are down in south industrial where the low-income housing office is now sorting glass into four different bins and taking our stuff down there back in the late 70s or even late 60s um who've cared about it a long time or doing the right thing it seems like a lot of that packaging ought to go in the trash bin absolutely it's so complicated and there's there's a lot of green washing that happens where people just stamp a recycling logo on the bottom and how are people supposed to know if it's recyclable or not it's and the packaging the

060multi-layer packaging and everything is getting so complicated it's just like what do i do i like i said i've been doing this 30 years i still look at stuff and i say is that or is that not so man education is so important but here's the thing man chris i i so appreciate this question or this line of thinking because um first of all we can feel guilty because we haven't uh we don't have a degree in packaging and we don't know if that's recyclable or not but the the true the truth is that there needs to be truth in recycling and i think that we've lost faith you know in some cases and people some people just give up you know people whole communities have said i don't want to recycle anymore man because

061that's just it's expensive and it costs i don't even know what i'm doing so so i think the the the challenge is um do you have a recycler that is authentically recycling and who will transparently talk with you about what's recyclable and what's not and tell you the hard truth that that hose isn't recyclable because it's awful easy to say yeah put it in yeah go ahead put it in because that's what you want to do sometimes with your customers you're just like i want to i want to say yes all the time but the truth is that erodes trust in recycling and that's really prevalent now but you know the cool thing that we have and again i'm not just saying because it's rea it you've got a non-profit recycler and that there is

062100 transparency there they're not going to blow smoke man they're going to tell you if this is recyclable and if this isn't and it's gonna sometimes it's gonna feel like they recycle less now what the heck no we recycle real you know we don't just say go ahead and put it in the bin you know if it's not recyclable we're gonna tell you it's not and that's that's first and you've got that the city has that to start with you know the next thing now is to have those manufacturers those producers of that material and this is one of the funding sources lisa that we talk a lot about is like that they need to help us you know help the public understand so to chris's questions do i need a math degree here to

063figure out if i put it in the recycling bin or not we need help with that and there are industry groups like the recycling partnership like the closed loop fund and others that are industry funded who can help us get started we can open that education center back up you know when over over at the murph i hope and that's going to be one point of contact but there are a number of other places where we can do it but it's just it's really frustrating people give up but i would just say if you get constituents that say that just let them know that you know we got a recycling program you want to see how it's recycled go look at it it's right down the street down there on pratt street go look at

064it and go talk to those people and find out if your stuff's actually getting recycled or not so we we have that in place now which is a good component of it i'm sorry i went on okay thank you for the statement i'm i there's three other things bothering me one is the two big picture things bothering me one is that the way the oil and gas industry are going to compensate for declining fossil fuel using transportation and heating is to make more plastics the infrastructure they're building now is extraordinary they're not going to miss a heartbeat in keeping up their industry uh the big picture thing is we really need to combat that another big picture thing is that um uh well let me go to the local one will we have another reu

065center soon yes good i know ann arbor is difficult about businesses that have outdoor storage and and you know semi-industrial things happening with the planners and zoners here really would really rather have doctor offices and right and you know clean environments but we need for guys like me that build gardens and landscapes uh places to do business that isn't quite so clean well we have another vu center we will we will have another reuse center we have a a whole committee that meets monthly and it's made up of board members and council not council members but a number of different groups and we call it the innovations committee because uh reuse may not be furniture this time it may not be clothing it may be something else but reuse is like you saw on the

066on the reverse uh pyramid there that's cornerstone to zero waste and so uh it's an ethic of recycling arbors and it's an ethic of this community it's best one of the best reused uh communities i've i've been in and um it so it it can definitely be supported we had um 12 employees and 20 000 square feet and they were all union paid and they were all um they were all better than uh it really worked on the bus route in the community that we actually serve it was amazing you know it was amazing and and the only thing that stopped us was covet and and uh we weren't able to negotiate the landlord wouldn't negotiate with us so we're going to find another place and we're going to find a uh we're going to

067do reuse and i don't know exactly what it'll look like but the ideas that are being kicked around if you enjoy that sort of inspirational discussion it's fun to be part of those meetings and talk about and and hear about all the ideas that are being kicked around so yeah absolutely chris he got my commitment man and i think you have uh recycle ann arbor everybody that's working on this project's commitment that there will be so the other big picture thing is is placing the responsibility for recycling upon the manufacturer not upon the consumer and that changes the world and it's not ann arbor who says that's how things work but ann arbor can hopefully begin to step up and start lobbying angling for that kind of world absolutely agree you know that i know

068that everyone at this table knows that but uh we really need to get there just to put a finer point on it we need a plan we need a shared vision that has all the stakeholders involved once we get that plan in place man i have absolute confidence that uh that this community is is ready to move forward but i i think you hit the nail on the head on what the next steps are as far as focus areas of focus thank you i don't want to steal anymore at least theo's time but thanks you guys i appreciate it i i could talk about this all night i i really appreciate it okay wait brian rita has a question and then i have one okay we'll close okay okay thank you um this is really

069really fun and uh interesting discussion um i guess what comes to my uh mind is um feedback to people who are involved with waste that you know we produce and whatever and is there um so i if i have missed it then i would like to know where to seek out the reports of the quarterly um audits that you do on our waste i think that would be very educational um for me and but maybe for other people as well um yeah no uh i i think it's public but i don't know you'd have to talk to city staff and see what's public and what's not and all that stuff we're a contractor to the city so we provide we provide that information to this to the city staff i think the the uh requirement

070of the contract that we negotiated for which is odd you know it's good it's a lot of work but um it's it's our ethic um is that uh it's once a year twice a year that we have to do that so that might be all that the city staff is it can can supply and i i don't know you'd have to talk to eileen and those guys about how it gets supplied and everything but it's there and um i'm sure i could share it too you know that information too so if you can't get it through city staff and that they might want to present it in a certain way and and it's their information so they i'd talk with them first but i'm happy to supply it if that's okay okay all right thanks

071all right um okay griswold i just want to mention to brian that one opportunity is to better coordinate the non-profits that are involved in um reselling i i was on the uh the board at kiwanis and now i work with the ann arbor thrift shop and um there's also share house where i take some of the things that we don't sell um at the ann arbor thrift shop and so we try to coordinate between the different non-profits but it would really help if someone like your organization helped and got the word out in terms of what's accepted at the different organizations sure yeah that's that's great and there is this that's such a community kiwanis and pto and and uh all those guys they're amazing it's an amazing it's been around for a long long

072time it's really cool but but that needs to be resourced kathy that's what we you know we can we can track that we can capture that we can get that information out we can even you know convene meetings and stuff like that so that we all kind of work together i think the interesting thing about that is if we're already in touch with them as the city um then why is there a way to capture what's actually being reused how many tons how many sofas how many shirts how many whatevers and actually quantify that as as recovery and have the city actually support that and instead of supporting the curbside program which is great i appreciate it and we do the curbside thing so i'm not talking myself out of a job but i i

073do think the reuse is so much higher on the hierarchy why don't we quantify this why doesn't the city work maybe with the the different folks and say we sold 60 sofas this month and then that gets quantified into actual um greenhouse gas uh emission savings and toward our 820 uh plan but to answer your question specifically yeah we're happy to do it just needs to be resourced it's not something it's it requires a lot of sort of handling and and work to make that happen okay i'll follow up later because we've made some attempts at doing it but we never there there's it just it's not continuous you know a person leaves and then it falls apart so we need to institutionalize it so okay thanks and that that should be part of that

074zero waste plan too it's working with all those groups on the reuse side of things okay um okay are there any other questions okay i just have one and it'll be quick and that is that um you know when my son was in fifth grade we took his i was uh i went with him on the tour to the murph um and i we took his cub scout troop on a court tour of the murph and i thought you know this is this is something we did in north carolina too with sun shares and i think that is a is a very good educational tool and i was wondering if you'd engage the public schools the ann arbor public schools with um educating them about recycling because i think you know they'll they'll know something

075about it you know otherwise it's it's all opaque to them you know they absolutely love the door and they'll go home and talk to their parents about it so that's interesting you knew about sun shares man they're one of those uh uh sort of founding organizations like like uh recycle ann arbor and ecocycle and that sunshare's amazing yeah i was chairman of the board for two years amazing company i'm sorry they're not around anymore a lot of those folks went away but but yeah yeah we have talked to the schools now you know the ecology center has an agreement and a contract with the city to actually teach um in the in the schools so there's a connection there and then um we've reached out you know obviously dan ezekiel and and that group is

076very interested in sort of starting those tours back up again the challenge we got right now is the elevator doesn't work and the elevator doesn't work because it doesn't meet ada anymore it's too little and what we're going to have to do is a bricks and mortar campaign and we're going to have to figure out how we're going to get this thing back up and running again and there's there's actually a group of folks at ecology center and and our and recycling harbor that are got their heads working on how to get that funded and and who to bring in to that so we gotta get we gotta have a space first but there's so much cool virtual stuff going on right now that how we could engage that murph and how we can have

077amazing tours we got some great ideas yeah absolutely gotta gotta engage the schools okay uh well thanks brian um thanks you guys let's move on to theo eggerman hey theo hey everyone i'm theo argemont thanks for having me um i'm here tonight to talk to you about warmup i'm going to share my screen here or if galen could put up my presentation one or the other it won't allow me to share right now you got the uh oh you've got the permission now theo oh thanks all right thanks um so empty agroman i'm the public works director at washington county um i'm here to talk about warmup since we started um or at least gathered the group together to form the authority and ann arbor was a part of that they had a lot of

078input as one of the stakeholders so let me give you a quick overview of who warma is i'll talk a little bit about um what our strategic plan is where we're going what kind of things we're working on um and then we've got a grant coming up this summer which is going to take up a lot of our focus and it's going to provide it's a the basis for a lot of our direction and how we're going to leverage that and i'll talk a little bit just about some of the challenges that we face as an organization so we formed in september of 2019 under public act 179 which allows us to can you go to slideshow um yeah slide slideshow mode yes thank you is that better great uh so we formed in 2019

079under public act 179 which allows us to form a solid waste authority or oddly enough a dog pound apparently those needs formed at the same time and we don't have any ability to tax residents or create special assessments um so we're financed by membership fees and for the first two years last year and then uh this year the county's matching those five thousand dollar membership fees and then this year since we won a grant uh that was worth somewhere around 230 thousand dollars the vast majority of our funding um is based upon grants um and i'll talk about that grant specifically uh so we serve mostly central and um eastern parts of the county cities of lean nypsilanti dexter townships of ypsilanti scio and arbor in pittsfield right now we're about 150 000 residents um

080and then obviously you know that february first dan ever passed a resolution to join um there's a number of steps that we have to take for ann arbor to actually be a member uh the first one is our warm award has to um unanimously approve of that um so we're we're in that process right now we're we have a delegate um who took a different position in a different township um so we're we're waiting for a delegate for that so that we can pass a unanimous approval we're anticipating or hoping for that to happen next month and then all the legislative communities will have to pass the changing of our articles so you could expect to see that in ann arbor first since we want to make sure that in our verb abides by the

081terms or the articles of incorporation before we send it to the rest of the communities our outreach right now or our focus is on education and outreach um sounds like you talked a lot about education in the prior session um but the epa did a study a number of years ago that said you have to spend about a dollar per household per year just to maintain a recycling system at the current rate if you're if you're trying to do something new or to improve things you probably want to spend closer to three dollars a year since municipalities haven't typically funded this over time we're we're seeing really high levels of contamination um you know you heard you're around the mark uh we're hearing from some of the murphs which also serve outside areas outside of

082washington county and outside the warmer members that we're around that 30 mark so we're really high so we're we're actually looking at this grant um and the education outreach to reduce the contamination by 40 percent which will put us much closer to where ann arbor is so education outreach and really focusing on decontamination of recycling are some of our first steps we also have support from many members and there's growing interest in some kind of collaborative solution to replace the drop-off station since as you know that's the current drop-off station is not a long-term solution it needs to be replaced so we're both at the county level as well as through hopefully through warm-up either as a whole organization or as a group of some municipalities who adopted opt-in looking to figure out how to

083support um a replacement so since we're a new organization we're not at the point where warmer would say yeah let's take that on so we're we're monitoring and supporting um that drop-off station and the the change that would happen um over the winter uh we got together and formed a strategic plan and this is available on our our website at warman.org you can find it by looking following that path on the bottom so our short-term goal is primarily to increase the quantity of quality recycling so both quantity and quality we're doing this through the recycling grant and then long term analyzing and pursuing contracting services as a group as well as monitoring and the regional drop-off station so when i say pursuing contracting services what we're looking at there is depending on what point in

084time we're talking about short term i think the group through the grant we're going to have a lot better data on our recycling as well as our well our recycling and our contamination and we're looking to change that to greatly improve it we want to leverage that to create some kind of long-term contract uh with a murph so that we can say hey if we give you this really clean stream for 10 years with all this volume can you give us a discount on that so we're looking to reduce some of the costs because we put a lot of effort education to create a really good product so that's short-term long-term you know we might look at putting out collective bids for trash because with economies of scale with the members that we have in

085that volume to put out some kind of long-term contract um could could produce some cost savings for residents as well and then we can put those cost savings towards something else and that might happen for recycling as well but again this is going to be an opt-in process and members will be able to put their terms on it so if you have specific requirements such as like a living wage for ann arbor or union labor or whatever that is the members would be able to put those terms in those contracts because they'd have a part in that process let's see so within this we have some specific objectives a lot of those are fulfilled by the grant and i'm going to talk about that next um we want to continue to educate and promote a

086common collected list of recyclables so what are the things that are commonly accepted through all our member municipalities and then putting that together and then educating the population hey here's what's recyclable here's what's not because we we do have a lot of work to go to zero waste but we also have to start because we haven't done that education for so long um trying to clean up our stream so that's our first step uh in the process um i mentioned um collecting some of our metrics so we're doing audit this summer as part of that grant and then marketing our recycling as a block of high quality recycling so i've alluded to this brands a lot we got a large grant for through the recycling partnership to reduce contamination it's called the quality improvement grant

087they partnered with eagle um and we're one of the larger uh recipients of that county also received this and they saw about a 40 reduction in their contamination um we're doing the process in a very similar way and then canton is also going this summer they're right before us so the the general process of how this works you send all your materials or a sample of your materials to the murph and you take an audit of those so you find out you separated into like i think there's 37 different categories of materials that they sorted into and one of those is um contamination or trash residuals things that are not recyclable so you collect all that baseline data and then you put out your treatment sending out education materials what's recyclable what's not recyclable letting

088people know that this program is going on and then we do a feed on the street program where we coordinate with haulers as well as we contract out people to go ahead of those recycling trucks pop open the lid just look at what's in there they look at what's on top and they say oh you know this isn't contaminated or this is contaminated and then they give a warning to say oh you know you had something in your cart and they mark what that was let people know that if they do that again the recycling cart actually won't be picked up and then they do that three more times and if they track it so if the same house receives um what would be a second warning um they actually reject that load and they

089mark it and they put an oops tag and they say hey correct this um once you correct it we'll pick it up next week or two weeks if there's every other week um service and then we do another audit on the back end to find out what changed um so it gives us a lot of data one thing that kent county found they actually increased participation so you think that you know how people are rejecting my cart people get kind of mad and they actually found that people put out their carts more often because not every house puts out their cart every week and by doing this they actually saw more people putting out their cart so they've had a lot of positive results and we're looking forward to um to see if we can

090achieve the same thing um let's see i also mentioned i'd talk a little bit about challenges um one of the biggest challenges is we're we're a new organization you know we just formed in 2019 um so we're still learning how to work together um our focus is um rather narrow we are focused on recycling um and education um and then drop-offs so i think it's going to take us a while to to demonstrate to the communities that we we have value that we are a an organization that can get things done um and it will take down more and more as time goes on um so and then also we we have a long ways i shouldn't say a long ways i think we have some some building to do in order to to get

091to a place where we'd have full buy-in to say yes let's have warm-up um be the owner of the next drop-off for example or coordinate that through someone like recycle ann arbor to be the owner of a facility like that so i think being a new nascent organization is probably one of our biggest challenges that we've we've got to demonstrate some success first before we take on more and bigger things um our funding stream is obviously membership buy-in so once we take on more and bigger things we'd expect our budget to grow so with that i'll uh open it up to questions steve you're on me yeah thank you theo so um um let's see do you want to take down your shared screen so that we can all see each other and um would

092you be available for questions for a few minutes yeah absolutely okay so um john mursky you have your hand up i'd like to follow my question before about the recycle guide is warma considering using the raa recycle guide and its education and outreach and could it potentially help fund its expansion and its let's say targeting to all of the warmer members yeah so we're through the grant we're also going to release an app uh which is um an app of what's recyclable where um so that'll have a number of things um it's kind of like if you've ever seen like a recycle coach or there's a waste wizard uh one of those things so we'll be marketing that this summer um and then i'll also mention that um through the county uh we've had an

093intern for about the last year working on our our trash to treasures guide so we'll we'll be directing through warma to those different resources so we'll link to the available things that we've got okay anybody else well i have a question theo um you know what the the um state's next cycle initiative yeah absolutely there's funding available for uh for small business startups is my understanding and so are there any is there any local um niche that you do you think an entrepreneur uh would be very likely to uh succeed in in washington county um yeah i think there's a couple of different things it's it's hard for me to say what exactly you know i'm i may be one of the less innovative guys of what uh what would be the particular thing to

094have but um washington county has a sponsorship uh program that we opened up pretty similar you have a sustainability sponsorship fund we partnered with next cycle to allocate up to 50 000 of that per year to a next cycle recipient that would look to to locate in washington county so there's also some some clear development goals that fit within that so there's some some other connections and we've made some connections with spark so there's we're getting some interest in that already for people just hearing about it finding out oh there's some additional funds you can qualify for next cycle funds as well as for county funds it might be something that ann arbor would want to consider as well to try really incentivize and market development because that that makes it um makes it so

095much easier it's efficient we can save on a lot of transportation and it drives up the market makes those products more valuable um so we've seen some interest there's a glass foam [Music] creator who's looking or at least like seeing what what level of glass is available in this area i think there's also i think there's always a need for more compost i think that's one of the low-hanging fruits the challenge there is always the the transportation picking it up hauling is really expensive so i think that's one that's right for some kind of incentive structure where if governments can help provide some assistance to get over that initial hurdle it might make the the difference okay all right well thank you um anybody else oh well lisa yeah i wanted to hear a little

096bit more about your app um about what's recyclable where is are you going to include what's recyclable in ann arbor even though we're marginally a member um so it'll be focused on the member communities since it is through the grant so it'll be on the individual's websites if you want to check it out um an example of this you can go to sakura that's the recycling authority in southern oakland county um and they have this up on their website so it'll give you an example of what kind of thing we're we're looking at i think they use the the waste wizard um as their particular app okay but it's also available on your phone i've just used it on the computer well i'm just trying to think because where we we've been thinking about resurrecting

097this sticker program but if there's an app that could be easier than getting permission from everyone to stick things on their containers we could just go around and hang a door hanger and say get this app um so yeah so but so i mean so since ann arbor is a member community we would be included in the app or we're too late for this round unfortunately too late uh we applied for the grant um in early 2020 um so it was at that time because it's funded through the we tried to get you um for we were thinking of forming in early um 2019 and we had a meeting with everyone for warm on uh the city said um move on ahead without us so yeah yeah that was unfortunate um anybody else okay well

098thank you so much for your time theo and um yeah thank you um i'll mention one more thing just because i it came up with brian um with extended um producer responsibility uh one thing that i'm interested in creating through the the county um is there's uh something called pink care and it's been initiated through i think about 10 different states but it's initiated through legislation and it's a company that puts a surcharge on paint when you purchase it from like sherwin-williams or home depots or anything like that um i think you pay something like 60 cents per can for a gallon and then it's like a dollar or something for five gallons and then that goes towards the disposal costs and since we operate the the home toxic center it's it's almost half of

099our expenditures go towards paint there's just a it's it's expensive um where you know you can pay 10 to get rid of a gallon of paint um so it's it is expensive and something that would be great if we could see it's it's something that would have to happen through the state legislature but it would also create a lot of different places for drop-off for paint so that's something that i'm interested in working through like the michigan recycling coalition as well as since we have a home drop a home toxic drop-off uh working with other drop-offs throughout the state uh since we do there's a round table that happens on a regular basis to see if we can you know rise up and uh get some support um but it's something that um paint producers

100have actually started to get on board with um because they pass it through to their customers um so it's it's something that if it's operated on a large basis it it doesn't um it's a level playing field because you're not facing competition from well if you buy this paint it's more expensive for this paint it's more expensive um it's all across the board yeah that's fair okay um any other i guess chris has a question so here i am a consumer not understanding about paint i would guess that oil-based paints are a problem are latex paints a problem about recycling or disposal the answer is yes and no so if latex paint is dried it is no longer considered hazardous so if it's completely dried um then it's fine to throw away if it's not

101dried so say you just um if you had a full gallon of paint and you had the cap on it you put it in your trash and then that went to the landfill and then that that can would obviously get compacted and then it would ooze out um it's gonna get lots of other water et cetera on it and then it's gonna become part of leachate and other streams and so it's it's hazardous because it never dries whereas if you dry it out completely you know we we recommend you can mix it with kitty litter that really speeds up the drying process um i've had cans that have you know just like an inch or two left in it and i've just opened it up and left it in my basement for a couple of

102months and it dries out um but the oil-based paints yes are always hazardous because it's oil-based um and so you can't dry those out and have them be non-hazardous um so so if i'm not patient about drying out my latex paints i've tried to give up oil-based paints but when you put even the latex paints with urethane in them on trim it's not the same thing as an oil-based paint insofar as its durability and wear and tear if i'm if i don't have patience then what you're saying is the cost is ten dollars a gallon even for latex paints in order for someone to handle them uh but and that's like not even including um the labor involved um it's just like our disposal cost it's it's around there so yeah it's it's pretty expensive

103to get rid of of paint this is not so i'd say between five and ten dollars for per can um that we get in wow i'm getting educated so it's expensive and i think it's something that um we can we can offset those costs and right now we do fund it we get um our funding comes from the landfill um but the landfill is has a lifespan on it and our washington county landfill is going to fill up in the next you know seven or eight years so we we want to be working towards replacing that funding but also if we can reduce our costs while still creating additional drop off sites to make it more accessible because the the sherwin-williams and home depots of the world may become drop-off locations for those paints it

104becomes more accessible and so then people are more apt to do it let me ask another question let's say i just put my paints in the garbage bin they go to the anne over landfill which has a clay cap on it so not much moisture is getting in it has a liner underneath now and a leachate connect collection system um how expensive is that and where does that leachate go and how is that dealt with and what's that costing sure so i i don't know all the details of that um but i i will say the first thing is that um leachate does leech um it's not always 100 contained uh the landfill has had um leachate um get out um in the past so obviously it's it's not foolproof um and the more toxic

105the substance is the worse it is obviously like mercury would be one of your your number one things we're always hyper cautious of mercury um but um they they truck it off site and i'm trying to think of what and then they process it off-site i'm not sure what they do in that processing so that's a level i'm not familiar with but they i imagine that they [Music] try to get all the water out of it and then treat that as um like a the leachate is a very hazardous substance once it's a smaller amount of mass i i'm going to continue asking questions oh you on me oh okay so um any more questions for theo thank you yeah okay thanks again theo thanks for your time okay so we pass on to the

106first public commentary on the agenda um [Music] this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id two 957-7066-1216 seven this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and again the phone number is 1-888-788-0099

107and enter meeting id 957-7066-1217 and please be patient there's a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection can be established anybody on the line yet galen there's no one on the line at this time okay let's wait another 10 seconds or so steve i have a question about the order of the agenda yeah by putting public comment after the presentations we're now an hour and a half plus into the meeting it seems to me it's a disincentive for a public to engage with us and share opinions i mean we're going to have public comment now and then i don't know how much the rest how much longer the rest of the meeting will take and then we'll have public comment again energy commission meetings we have public comment um right up front at

108the beginning of the meeting and i know we've done it this way a couple times in environmental commission meetings but i'd like us to consider moving public comment back to the front of the meeting again okay yeah i'll put that on the agenda for the next meeting maybe we can discuss it um all right is there anybody on the line galen there's no one on the line okay okay well now we'll pass to the approval of the minutes uh the minutes of our february 25th meeting were posted and uh do uh uh does anyone do i have a motion for consideration of the minutes um john keller and uh lisa seconded um any any discussion does anybody wish to amend them okay who who votes to whoever votes to accept the minutes has written please

109raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed say no hearing no one um the minutes are approved unanimously um in terms of unfinished business the next item on the agenda is unfinished business um remember that we uh that john had a first reading of an ordinance uh proposal or a request to staff i mean not an ordinance uh for considering and uh uh for evaluating uh the costs and opportunities for bi-weekly trash collection so we've had a lot of commentary from the community there's um so i think what we're going to do is um table it for for a short time until we get more um opportunity to have a have a good conversation with members of the community about this okay um so there any comments about this oh um uh kathy

110then john uh for anyone that's interested uh ryan stanton of m live had a a pretty good summary article i'm on the topic so i would suggest that that people take a look at it and uh one of my comments were that it's a great aspirational goal but we really need more education something that we've talked about tonight to better understand what is recyclable um be before we move forward with uh any reduction and it was clear that the community um has a lot of emotional attachment to weekly pick up for whatever reason yeah okay john callaway yeah my understanding of what we were doing was moving it forward to do an analysis to understand it and i'm concerned of putting that off and having dialogue that is not informed and i think that was

111reflected in my bias a good number of the comments that i read over the past couple of weeks about what was actually proposed so i'm wondering is there still a way to move forward with the analysis that could inform a discussion because i hesitate to kind of continue a discussion that's not informed yeah i think um no yeah okay um let's move on to i think rita had her hand up and then lisa oh sorry sorry got it um uh i understand well first off um if if we set this aside i feel like we need to make a plan that um that allows us to continue the discussion in some way just so that we have something to proceed on um possibly as john calhoun just mentioned um so that's one thing but i

112also heard that there was a similar kind of analysis done about 10 years ago and i have not seen it but i think we should seek that out at least it looks like four years ago okay sorry thanks lisa um but we should look it over i think um as a starting point um so that we don't restart redo something that we don't need to thanks okay thanks i'm lisa that was exactly what i was going to say that the city did a study of organics in 2017 and it found that we need a lot more education and outreach on composting and recycling it found that there's limited capacity for more composting unless you find money for more trucks and routes it found that multi-family recycling and comp and commercial compost and recycling are the

113biggest challenges and it found that people people perceived a move to biweekly trash pickup as a service cut and they would expect a tax relief for that so it is not framed for them in terms of the goals of carbon neutrality which is the way we would want it to be friend so that says a lot of i think what we would find again just four years later and i think that given all the talk we've had tonight about the need for education and outreach and the need to coordinate among other groups that are doing reuse and the need to get out there in the community and either get stickers on people's carts or tattoos on their forehead but something about what's recyclable and how can you have more success composting and do you you

114know if you don't need to if your can isn't full and the weather isn't hot you actually don't need to put it out it's not an obligation um people don't know that you can actually put bones meat bones in your composting i am not a person who consumes them but uh you know to know that i you know i think we're not taking advantage of the services that we have and rather than putting money into a study putting money into some of these education and outreach activities would really be fantastic because what they would take is a core of volunteers who are willing to go out and disseminate some of this information um so that's that's kind of where i am i feel like sometimes we study too much and we don't implement and then

115we do another study you know and so let's implement the things that we know yeah yeah mom okay uh kathy yeah i i agree with what john and lisa have said i think one of the lessons to be learned is that we really lost control of the message and we weren't able to to respond to it and so moving forward we really need to not only educate but control the press release or what gets communicated out so that people don't feel threatened yeah i'm going to step in here for a second and i agree kathy i mean i read that m live article and i was surprised that it was all couched in terms of just a service cut and there wasn't anything in there until the end about how this was just to provide

116some extra funding to finance some education and you know enhanced services in other areas and so i found that very disappointing and i think that was the takeaway message a lot of people had so i think though that it's probably a good personally what i would like to do is i'm going to contact people that actually spoke out on you know the facebook ann arbor politics page and on next door and i'm going to just ask them what their concerns are and just have a have a face-to-face conversation as far as we can right now and just you know get more information about what their concerns are and uh and try to see what can happen and i think i think i'm not i'm not i don't personally believe that we should uh forget about

117this i think that we should just reach out a little bit and have more of a community conversation about it before we bring it back um i don't know does anybody have any other suggestions well a question so does somebody have a copy of that study that was done four years ago because it sounds like there's some overlap but it's not sounds somewhat different in focus at ephesus so i think it'd be helpful to to have that and i don't see why we can't continue to look at this ourselves right and maybe not move forward with a with a resolution but still be one of our priorities yeah i agree i have um i might have a copy of it in my computer here i remember there was a discussion on council back in 2017

1182018 about it um and it was something that was the staff just dropped um so i think there was also some funding attached to it that was never used by the city staff so i'll i'll dig it up i'll i'll talk to eileen i'll talk to members of the city staff and get to get the official version and then i will uh disseminate it to the uh to the rest of the commission okay that's one of my action points from this meeting um okay john risky and then chris graham um so one disappointment that i had was that um it seems to me nobody actually read the resolution um had you know ryan actually had a link to the resolution um and had people really um read the way the resolution was constructed they would

119have understood that it was not and never intended to be a cut in services but rather an ability to be able to use money that for a service that maybe maybe and that was what the feasibility study and analysis was supposed to show maybe was unnecessary in its current form that could be used for other solid waste purposes so that's obviously some of the messaging we have to control we also have to understand i think how the media operates and this is not you know this is media in general but especially social media but you know even m live and that is it's based on clicks and outrage and controversy um and um we need to do a better thing i think we did learn a couple of issues that maybe certainly i didn't think

120about possibly just because um where i am with my family in life we don't have pets and we don't have babies in the house anymore um and so you know that's obviously a concern um the food waste and this talk of maggots is you know the whole idea is that we want um food waste to be diverted along with all the other organics and that would continue to be collected weekly as far as the study that lisa's talking about i think it was the organic study and i'm almost positive i have a copy of that i received earlier this week an analysis of trash that was done in 2012 from jenny patoski um and i'll send that out i don't know how represented it is anymore um you know certainly the way we deal with

121the packaging has changed in those almost 10 years but i'll send that out and i'll also send out it may not be the newest one but it's relatively new i checked i have a analysis of recycled materials that was done at an audit in i think 2019 or 2020 um by ra together um with the company that was doing our processing in ohio and so i'll i'll send that out and if i have the organic study i'll attach that too so everybody will have all that in one email thank you hey thanks john um chris when the animal news closed 12 or 13 years ago we nearly totally lost the ability to have reporting about community discussions in our city next door has not replaced it because many of the participants are not well informed

122ann arbor.com has not replaced it because they have one reporter who has many biases doing the reporting about our city uh we have a shortage of of public information reaching the public in ann arbor and it's not just here it's across the country the new york times and the washington post still are going full speed ahead for national and international news but local reporting is in big trouble i would suggest that the place that we still have that can be unbiased and in depth in these kinds of matters is the ann arbor observer they're also doing an online edition now maybe once a month or every couple weeks um it's not enough but at least that might be a place to go if we would like to reach every property owner in their mailbox once

123a month a newspaper this is a really big problem folks and communicating with the public is has become extraordinarily difficult especially with unbiased information and we have to fix this somehow i can remember i forgive me for digressing but i used to advertise for job for employees in the annaber news for a week's ad it cost me 800. at the end of of the classifieds at the anime news they cut the rate by half for no good reason other than that craigslist had arrived and everybody had switched to craigslist craigslist for nearly free job employee advertising the classified advertising in newspapers was an obscene profit center for all newspapers in the united states for 100 years it supported journalism and good reporting and in the matter of a few years it completely crashed the anime

124news in the matter of a few months laid off 250 very well paid well-benefited employees to the streets we don't have adequate ability to communicate with the public anymore and we need to do much more if it's not the honorable observer we need to do much more within the city somehow to reach out and speak about these things across the community in a well-informed way speechifying that's fine chris uh i'm sorry that's fine no it's getting later this is an important problem but i'm not sure what the commission's gonna do by itself to deal with it um i'm doing everything i can personally but uh it's worth the public discussion all right um okay um i think it was kathy and then rita had your hands up maybe we could put this topic on for

125a future meeting but as a council member i want to assume complete responsibility for the lack of accurate and complete information coming from the city of ann arbor we know what the problem is we have the resources but we don't seem to have the political will at this point our communications department focuses more on what nap is doing than on what city council is doing and it's simply reprioritizing and because i think the community wants to know and we have a crisis right now in this community there is very little confidence in city government and some of it is because we're not communicating we're letting other people communicate for us and and they're doing it in bias ways and and their job is not accuracy they're they're for-profit and i would say that we should

126not rely on the ann arbor observer because i believe that they're actually more biased than m live and uh ryan stanton while he's biased he tends to to sort of capture the sentiment of the community uh what i'm hearing so i would like to at a future meeting discuss how we can better communicate what's happening on the at least within the environmental area and and make a formal request to the city of ann arbor for that because it's it's just a matter of political will and i think john john mursky realizes this in terms of what what we what we need to be funding and where we need to be focusing and the last thing is the county has started uh communicating through social media on their resolutions and their county business yeah yeah i've

127seen those um so rita uh actually kathy just said very well just what was on my mind that we have a city communications department and i don't in my brief time on the commission um i haven't felt linked to it and if there's something that we need to develop that would be great um and it could have avoided some misunderstandings that i think happened um with this resolution that we considered last time well if people had just clicked on and read the resolution in that m live report that might have that might have helped you know it's something i learned in college that you always go to the primary source when you can and i know and with hyperlinks and everything it's become a lot easier to do that you know compared to the old

128days so um yeah let's uh let's i i i take these suggestions in stride here and let's uh let's schedule a an agenda item for this in the near future about just discussing communications okay i think we can do that if everybody's comfortable with it okay i don't hear any opposition so uh let's see let's um are there any other points people would like to make on solid waste specifically um is there anything any any concerns right now or any discussion anybody would like to have okay uh well i don't see any enthusiasm for that so let's go move on to reports from committees other commissions council and chair so committees on natural features chris um we're getting closer on amendments to the udc um it's been very tough to um really modernize them and

129do it in a way that um works in code last time around we were looking at vacant lands primarily this time around we're looking at the rest of the city which will undergo much redevelopment over the next 30 years and the code needs to change to reflect that and um at the same time that we are thinking about changing our zoning regulations to increase density um that might mean that we cut down more trees and if those are native trees and native forest fragments um that might be a collision so we'll see how this works out um but uh we're getting there it's coming soon to you thank you okay thanks chris um um zero waste working group okay we had a a fun-filled meeting on monday i think it was no it was tuesday

130and we are we divvied up some action responsibilities um john callaward and i are going to work with jenny patosky to write up a metrics grant um to next cycle if we can craft something that persuades matt nod that it it will be something that results in more diversion to uh more diversion from landfills and i think one of the things that i felt is that we heard tonight from the presentations that we heard are that i i i'm going to put this in a way that i don't mean it as a criticism but it seems like in the a20 plan the contributions of composting and solid waste generally are kind of underestimated because of the metrics that are being used and i don't mean that as a criticism i think there's a specific philosophy

131in a20 around counting things that can be assessed and some of the stuff that you get at through a reasonable zero waste program hits on things that aren't being counted and so brian mentioned the idea of we should be counting that 13 couches got got sold by the kiwanis club or whatever and so that that's something that um we're going to be writing up a grant because i think it's important because if it if it seems like it's not going to register then we're not going to get the resources into zero waste and so i think it's important that we have the proper metrics that give it the proper priority that it deserves steve you are still working on the c d ordinance and hopefully you will find some partners that you need or you

132will you know enlist anybody you want i can help too in seeking grant funds as well because i think that one is ripe for it um jenny and i met today with sustainability ambassadors who want to work on a composting pilot for multi-family housing and they want to do at least three different kinds so they want to do an affordable one they want to do a mid-range one where they actually have connections and they want to do uh not affordable as in affordable um housing coalition housing but you know less expensive i don't know how to put this but anyway it would be like heroin in my neighborhood where the housing is certainly affordable but we're not dealing it's it's not um it's not ann arbor housing commission housing it's it's so we so it's

133very well spread over the of markets and multi-family people so we're going to work uh we're going to put together a sustaining ann arbor together grant for that and it'll be public education and outreach um and then we are um al hajj and sam mcmullen and i are meeting with jenny on monday to write a grant to next cycle for a uh to to bring reusable food containers to as many businesses are interested in using them again this is something that chris mentioned tonight that and i think we're all experiencing we're getting this take out food and we're not really allowed to ask them to use containers that come from our house and so you know i have this big stack and you know i don't know i guess i'll make christmas ornaments out of

134them but um so lots of grant writing activity to make possible some of these things that aren't funded um in this city's solid waste money right now um and yep and that's that's where we are for for now and we're we're just you know next week pens are going to be put to paper or fingers to keyboards oh thanks thanks lisa um so let's move on to other commissions how about planning planning commission shannon um there wasn't a whole lot uh in the last month that there was more on transit oriented zoning and i took back the feedback that we got that i got from you all last time um because uh the planning staff had only focused on the um the transit oriented zoning along uh state and eisenhower and you all had said

135why not why not other places and so the staff actually put together kind of mapped out some potential districts along uh plymouth and stadium and washington as well and nothing is set in stone but they did the exploration of it and so i'm grateful for all of you for the feedback that we got so that we could take that uh we could take that back to them so that they could then rework um their their kind of initial concepts and studies around that that was also feedback that came from the public too but i think it's great to have feedback coming from other commissions as well so thank you all for speaking up about that last time and otherwise it was things on accessory dwelling units and changing some standards around getting kind of smaller

136scale site plans through faster none of which are relate really strongly to environmental commissioning business okay yeah thank you thanks shannon um john the energy commission yes um our last meeting was dedicated to two presentations uh one was on the michigan legislative environment related to energy and we had valerie braider present she covered the franchise agreement that ann arbor has with dte and put it in perspective of the foot act which is an act that came after that franchise agreement which says that franchise agreements cannot be perpetual however because ann arbor's franchise predates that foot act we have a perpetual franchise with dte we can however have a second or multiple franchises so that leaves us some opportunities and we'll be talking about what kinds of things we can do within that framework uh the

137second presentation we had was on community choice aggregation many of you will most likely recall that the a20 plan calls for attempting to change legislation at the state level um to enable community choice aggregation we had a gentleman dial in from boston massachusetts who's head of a nonprofit and does consulting on community choice aggregation he's written a lot of the the legislation in other states uh it's now in sort of its third iteration and anyone who's interested in either of those topics i encourage you to go to legistar and look at that next month we will have most likely two presentations one on the green belt and what potentially we can do on the green belt to basically enable a20 um so obviously part of that would be bio sequestration but we're also going to

138explore what opportunities we might have in terms of solar or other renewable generation on the green belt um and we'll get a report on that and understand what we can and can't do or if that's something we want to pursue what would that be what would require to enable that the other thing that we're likely going to do is uh have a presentation by an ann arbor based startup called may mobility main mobility is a company that is developing autonomous ev shuttles they have done pilots in columbus ohio and in grand rapids to be honest with you i don't know if they're running right now given covid but post covid hopefully something like that could be really interesting because they would run obviously fairly economically they could connect different kinds of transit nodes and run

139along routes that wouldn't be economical by using a large bus where you also have to pay a driver and schedule drivers and everything like that and you could potentially even use it on some major routes and just increase the frequency a lot so that people could get on every five minutes instead of getting on every 30 minutes so i think that should be a really interesting uh presentation so both of those are scheduled for our meeting in april and then in may we're going to be talking about the solar faithful model that some of you may be familiar with it basically is a ppa model where investors invest in solar put it on the roof of a non-profit take advantage of the tax credits that the nonprofit can't and that can be done for schools

140it could be done on a public school it could be done at greenville school it could be done on a government building it could be done on a church that's why it was called solar faithful and we're going to be talking about um the potential application of that and expanding that across the city so that's what's going on right now with um the energy commission okay thanks john um let's see mike apple's not here from parks so we'll skip over that um we'll move on to council who wants to go first okay uh kathy um one thing that i have been working on and is my absolute top priority right now is um the gelman plume and having a viable cleanup plan um and we talked earlier about communications i i think that what's happened

141with with gelman definitely highlights the lack of good communications um but i just want to give you uh an example of what's happened in the very last week and then um a meeting that we're planning to have so um i've been working closely with the legal staff last thursday congresswoman debbie dingle had a meeting with all the interveners eagle the epa trying to get everyone on the same page again because what's being said in lansing by the head of the ag's office and eagle is quote we're not all on the same page for over a year we heard well you need to have the litigation a consent judgment or some type of litigation in place before the governor will request epa superfund evaluation and that was was absolutely false and finally the congresswoman woman was

142able to get the epa to put out a frequently asked questions post on their website um in order to get that clarified um monday judge connors had a hearing he denied gelman's motion to reconsider gelman once again tried to delay the process uh judge connor said that he will be having a hearing on may 3rd he will hearing hear both sides and he wants to get a proposed solution through the courts um and in one of the important issues is that the state now has um a different criteria than was in place previously when it was now i think it's 7.2 uh and it's important that that that uh be enforced as well as um realizing that we're continuing to clean up under consent judgment three so again the public has this idea that nothing

143is happening while we're waiting and that is not true there is cleanup going on there's been action in the courts and and also actions communicating with the epa staff in chicago so that was on monday the next day on tuesday the ag's office had scheduled a meeting with the attorneys to talk about moving forward this was a confidential meeting however some of the interveners decided to attend as well because we thought it was important that we're all on the same page and previously we were being told the lawyers were saying one thing and the interveners were saying something else we we think now that everyone is on the same page however the governor has not sent her letter we've had the motions uh the resolutions you know all the documentation in place with the governor

144since december so what is being planned is a grassroots citizens rally at the capitol on april 13th at 11 30 if the governor has not sent the letter um at this point we feel like we need to communicate directly with the governor because we're we're just getting uh miscommunication when it's going through the different levels of government so and i apologize for being uh somewhat direct but i had my second kovid shot today and so i i have an excuse but if if anyone has any questions um i'd be willing to answer them but just just know that there is a huge group of community members who basically have been fighting for this every day for the last couple of months thank you for your perseverance and passion yeah oh you're you're welcome it gets

145me in trouble sometime but sometimes i'm i'm not going to give up we're almost there no thanks a lot kathy oh you're welcome and i probably should summarize that that the plan is to have uh the courts address this and an update to the stricter cleanup criteria in the short term and then the strategic direction is to bring in the epa and so the the dual path is definitely possible uh what's that question right now is whether the epa will get in here before something is finalized in the courts or not but uh it's important that that we continue the pressure thanks okay thank you kathy um lisa you wish to add anything i can't really think of anything that we've been doing that would be of particular interest i might be forgetting something but

146um and uh yeah i want to really give a big thanks to kathy who's just been you know i think dropping everything especially in these last three weeks because there have been a lot of urgent last minute you know many scrambling communications and she's done an amazing job so yeah yeah okay yeah kathy can i just say on a positive note i have made so many new friends even though we're in a pandemic through zoom so uh and and i feel like we're all working together now the county the townships and so um there is some positive energy there yeah it sounds like there's good momentum finally yep uh john i just want to say thanks to dan mcnelligan he's been yes he we thanked him in the last meeting and we will keep on

147thanking him because he's still doing a great job well yeah and the entire card group with roger rail and everybody right and yeah dan has been a wonderful advisor i mean he he's allowed me to be more confident in my advocacy and we will be planning another honorary probably resolution as as well as an event for card and i don't even know all the people who worked on card when it was first founded but we we want to make sure that we do recognize everyone okay thanks oh chris did you am i i'm not muted so kathy and lisa and shannon serve on this commission after they already have served on council and planning commission i can remember one or two p a.m nights on the planning commission when i served on in the 90s

148the chores there are extraordinary and i'm so appreciative that you three come here as well shannon every planning commission meeting agenda that i've watched over the last several months has included a change to the udc which means significant staff time and planning commissioner time to discuss those changes i'm astonished at the pace of change that's going on right now it's way more than it was in the 90s we have a udc which has all of the development code packed into one 250 page document i'm very sympathetic with the staff person that has to take each change and plug it into this gigantic document and renumber every page and try to make them fit i i'm very thankful to you three and to the others that serve with you i sympathize for the energy it takes

149and genuinely appreciate it thank you yeah thank you chris so let's move on uh just time for the chair so i'm just going to mention that uh um um hold on steve oh do you want to do pollinators oh yeah i'm sorry yes pollinators how did i forget i don't know i had my second covert shot yesterday no go ahead gabby okay um and you can tell me if i missed something but we are just continuing to work with the ambassadors from the a20 program and we are focusing right now on supporting them and working with them on education and outreach and really strengthening um the resources that are available on mostly the nap pollinator website since that is already there we're just trying to make sure that that resource um is up to date

150and reflects the latest um initiatives that are going on rather than making a website from scratch and we are with that webpage our goal is to make it also a place where all the different pollinator initiatives happening in the city can go to to learn about each other and to connect to um and anything else that i'm missing um no i i think that um just i'll say that um it's been fun to have the ambassadors join in um with their enthusiasm and um i think that um as steve has mentioned to me just recently that um we'll have some information to present you all i hope um in an upcoming meeting that will give you an idea of the direction that we're going um but we're hoping to make a bigger effect in the

151city to support polyneics so you'll you'll be the ones to help judge okay um john mursky and then chris graham i learned earlier this week that the wolf pack apparently has a group that's working on pollinators i have no idea who's on it or what they're doing but you might reach out to them to see what uh they're doing and if there might be some collaboration that would be productive do you have connection information with that group because i do not uh i would talk to um so the person that told me was tom porter he leads a group that focused on climate and energy and mike garfield is i believe in the same uh group but either one of them would know i assume you could definitely reach out to uh to mike i

152mean if you want me to i could do that but um you tell me um i think gabby aren't you um working in the ecology center right now i think we might have an easy way to reach to mike garfield ah okay yeah he got me he may not know directly but he could ask somebody i'm sure to find out it may be that it's not an active group but apparently they have um five or six different groups working on different things line five things like that and pollinators is supposedly at least one of the groups and when i heard that i thought well maybe there's another opportunity for collaboration thank you so okay chris so the wolf pack is a cooperative effort between national wildlife federation and its ann arbor office and the league

153of conservation voters in michigan and its goal is to raise serious money to intervene in issues and those interventions they call hunt teams and one of those is for pollinators and the principal effort over the last year has been to try to get the folks that are working on the border to border trail to plant native plants instead of european grasses in the disturbed areas along the pathway that they are developing across the county and the hunt team has been very successful at doing that um i to whom should i send a contact um some of you might want to become members of the wolfpack it's 500 bucks a person a year um they were the ones the hunt team about line five were the ones that paid for the underwater photography under the straits

154of mackinac that showed the uh gas and oil lines coming under there that are 70 years old bouncing up and down as they transmitted oil and gas in open water under the straits of mackinac radically changing the discussion about whether those things were really a good idea or safe or not and it's populated by a very interesting group of people so i will let me know who i should send the contact information for about pond rita i will thank you very much that's thanks and i'll um make sure to get it to the rest of our team thanks um those are very helpful and i know that um john mursky has also raised some suggestions for us to um think about for um our larger areas um and i may reach back to you john

155to discuss some of those thank you okay all right thank you um so the chair report i just like to remind everybody that we have two members to replace and um and two youth commissioners so um if anybody out there would like to apply to the environmental commission um we're still open for applications over the next month so uh go look at the city's website and you can apply for uh to be a member of the commission um let's see rita did you want to talk about the government plume um i i would we'll just say that i am so pleased to hear what kathy just told us um and that the um intervening groups have come to kind of a coalescing of the orientation toward moving forward it's really gratifying it may be the

156first time i've felt a little more optimistic in recent years so um i just really want to thank as as others have tonight just thank all those efforts that you've made kathy and any anyone else who's made any even small effort to advocate for our clean water in town okay yep and i'll keep april 13th open on my calendar right so um so the only other thing i want to mention as a chair report is remember that on march 31st um osi has a forum on solid waste so go look at the a20 website and check it out okay and uh it's going to be online of course but it's good it should be an interesting community discussion um so let's see um so the next item on the agenda is a report from staff

157galen okay uh it's a pleasure you know just to hear about the work that that the ambassadors are doing you know i'm really excited about that you know because these are residents you know so we're engaged in residence so i love to hear that but um right now um earth day is currently planned for april 25th at 1 p.m it's going to be a virtual uh event um it's going to be on ctn as well um and then last friday osi donated 250 energy efficiency kits to meals on wheels to distribute to their members so it was a good day for us and that's my report well that's great galen okay um the next item on the agenda is action items so these i'm going to recite the ones that i have and um anybody

158can uh chime in afterwards if i missed anything the first one is that brian eukana is going to send um let's see it's going to uh distribute is going to send me uh the zero waste plans that other cities have in place uh particularly boston's and i'll distribute them to the rest of the commission my number two is that uh i will um i will see about getting um eileen i will ask eileen about the quarterly audits the waste stream audits and uh see about um see if i can communicate that to the rest of the commission the third one is galen will put me my email contact on the meeting announcements because this was a request that there needed to be some contact information on each of the meeting announcements so i've suggested that

159we just use my email and i can i can i can screen them okay and then send them to the rest of the commission if they're appropriate otherwise we don't have to all you know be bombarded um fourth one is um ask about the staff study um i'm gonna ask eileen about this uh staff study on on organic waste that was mentioned and john says that he has he has them all in his files and i may have them in mine my own but i think it would be good to get them directly from the city staff so at least the ones that are new at least know that they happened and that where they are and that we have official versions okay so i think i'm gonna do that um and then um i

160i'm thinking about inviting i'll have discussion with the msu packaging degree program and also the msu has another department called doma which does a lot of work with green housing and and they're also involved in cnd construction and demolition ordinances and things like that so i i think i'll invite them to come and give a presentation to the commission at some time in the future um the next one is uh this uh next item for our agenda in the near future would be uh we'll have an agenda item about the city communications department and about how to better manage communications you know about uh city actions and then the seventh one is that uh chris graham's gonna send wolfpack information to uh the rest of the commission okay you know including gabby and lily so

161you might as well send it to everybody um did i miss anything okay so uh our next scheduled meeting of the environmental commission is april 22nd so we passed to the second public commentary period [Applause] this is an opportunity for persons to speak up for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 957-7066 this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or

162background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments again the phone number is 888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 957-7066-1217 and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established steve while we're waiting if i may comment briefly uh i we do this uh i do this at the beginning of our energy commission meetings we're asking that commissioners or all members of the commission remain on camera during the meeting the intent is is that these meetings should try to approximate in-person meetings and we also know that communication is not just verbal it's also through body language and things like that so if you can remind all of us to do that in the future that would be

163great that seems like a good song a good suggestion yeah um let's see does anybody else have a comment related to that on rita oh un unrelated to that um i think that's a good idea um but i just want to acknowledge um galen hardy and all his work on the ambassador programs and i can say that for the pollinator group um it's been a great joy to work with these enthusiastic people who are you've really gotten them started in a great way thank you galen yeah you're here so um so galen do we have anybody on the line uh there's no one on the line okay then okay in that case i declare this meeting adjourned at 9 34 pm all right