Salem Recycles committee meeting
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Present: Lynn Murray (chair), Jennifer Percy (secretary), Erin Huggard, Julie Rose, Tony Keck, Penny Neal, Robin Faulling, Nancy Gilberg
Absent: Marcia Lambert, Liz Vago, Susan Yochelson.
Guests: none
Old Business
Debriefing meeting on Textiles event: We agree it went well. Folks are asking about another one. Julie passes around printout of a PowerPoint presentation explicating details of the event, that she will present to regional DEP meetings at their request. We have the potential to have some advertising funded the next time we hold this event. Bill from Goodwill suggested that maybe a spring event might be larger than just textiles, like a “spring cleaning”.
Green Salem website update: Lynn—Our ex-intern, Megan, did a lot of work for this in December. Currently the website contains info about Christmas tree recycling. Julie will include Lynn on emails about the planning for the Green Business Challenge so she can put this info on the Green Salem website. This Challenge is kicking off earlier this year so that winners can be announced at the Green Fair May 19th. We will try to get the domain name GreenSalem.org and route this traffic to GreenSalem.com.
SalemRecycles Facebook postings: Nancy has been posting occasionally and we have a couple of discussions that ensued. It is getting off the ground and we hope participation will increase. Julie suggests that we post suggestions for ways that folks can reduce their junk mail. Nancy will also send a copy of this posting to Lynn to put on GreenSalem.com.
New Business
Insert for Licensing Board: We will table this for a later meeting, perhaps March.
Educational Sessions for the public: Megan and Susan were working on this but Susan is regrettably not here tonight. Megan did research on how items were recycled and put into new products. Julie has reached out to the AP science teacher at Salem High looking for another intern for the summer to continue work on this research as well as presentation work.
SalemRecycles recommending that the city use the free recycled glass crumbles as aggregate in paving projects: Much glass aggregate is wasted at the materials center in Andover and it seems a shame to our committee. Right now it is our understanding that Salem cannot use this material because the state does not allow it. We would like to recommend to the Mayor that Salem push to be allowed to use the glass, but we are not sure of any protocol for that recommendation. Reportedly our surrounding states including NH and Vermont are using this so it seems to be weather-stable. Julie will be seeing Brooke Nash, chief of Solid Waste, soon; Julie will research details on how others are using this material. Perhaps include statistics on how much glass waste we create, and how
much is spent on gravel and other mineral aggregates. We will discuss this further next month.
March 10 Book Swap—Goodwill? Logistics? We have a draft flyer for this event and it is passed around for comments and corrections. This event will be at the Senior Center, a new location. Julie passes around a signup sheet for us to work at the swap. Got Books has been our partner so far but we have had some interest from other potential partners, notably Goodwill who has offered to come pick up the books after the swap on that same day, which at the senior center would facilitate their using the room immediately for their own programming. Goodwill is a nonprofit and our consensus is to try using them for this next event. Julie will contact Bill LaBelle about scheduling this. Nancy wonders how the Senior Center parking lot compares, and whether we may
block out some parking spots near the door for drop-offs for the swap. Julie will look into the feasibility of this. We have consensus that we will offer “early entry” to folks who drop off on Friday evening, to encourage this. It makes it easier at the swap if we have more books in place from the start.
Spring Textiles event? See above. Julie will alert Bill of Goodwill of the next date we are planning, which is May 6th and will most likely in conjunction with CleanSalem/GreenSalem. We will try to keep “textile recycling” as part of our promotion even though we will be collecting all manner of unwanted items (as we have at past CleanSalem/GreenSalem events).
Continuing Business
Gazette Articles and press releases: Lynn is writing an article on 2012 resolutions for green habits. She suggests a small subcommittee meeting to brainstorm groups we can link with for synergy in messaging. Nancy is working on an article about spring recycling tips.
Door Hanger subcommittee: Meeting is Tuesday Jan 17th at 6:30 at Lynn’s house. She will send an email reminder with some jotted notes to get everyone’s thoughts in motion. In addition to writing/designing the hanger, we will need to plan how to distribute them thoroughly and keep track of where they have been handed out.
Other business
Julie has received more than 1 email about MIT’s Tuesday “choose to reuse” swap event. Maybe a couple of us can visit this when the weather is nicer to see how it is run. Penny has a contact in Chapel Hill where, similarly, they have a yearly “Reuse Rodeo”.
Julie wonders about ways to encourage the Planning Dept. to encourage companies to include recycling kiosks in their plans.
Hard Plastics recycling event: Penny has created a flyer that we discuss and make minor changes to. The event is ongoing and begins January 7th. Hard plastics can be dropped off at North Shore Recycled Fibers during their normal business hours.
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