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By Finn Digman, Waste Reduction Education Coordinator for Asheville Greenworks If you haven’t seen our 5-minute reader, COVID-19 and Sanitation Workers: What You Can Do To Help, use this link to the short post, where you can read a quick summary of actions you can take to protect our community’s sanitation employees. This post will discuss ways local sanitation agencies and Asheville GreenWorks are working together to safeguard our sanitation workers. While the COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone, essential workers bear a greater burden than most. They touch more surfaces, interact with more people, and generally leave their homes more than the rest of us. So, to say thanks for their hard work, we need to do our part in keeping them safe. According to WasteDive, (a website devoted to sanitation-related topics) no cities besides New York have seen major outbreaks of COVID-19 in their sanitation workforce. To avoid a fate similar to New York City’s, we must take action. Here’s how: TRASH: Trash is the waste you bag up and put into your green City bin. The City of Asheville has their own sanitation department and collects trash using City trucks. Below is a list of what they’re doing to ensure their employees’ safety during the time of COVID-19.
Here’s what you can do to help your local City employees safe:
Here’s what Asheville GreenWorks is doing to help keep City employees safe:
RECYCLING: The City of Asheville contracts with Curbie to collect our recycling. Curbie is continuing as normal with a heightened awareness. Here’s what they say about how their employees are staying safe during the time of COVID-19.
COMPOSTING: One compost collection service in Asheville, CompostNow, picks up kitchen waste, which is different from yard waste. These are the steps CompostNow is taking to ensure their employees’ health during the spread of COVID-19.
Here’s what you can do to help your CompostNow employees safe:
Asheville GreenWorks is doing our part by:
Help your community the most by practicing the 3 Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. By reducing the amount of packaging and products you take in, you expose yourself and essential workers to fewer daily interactions. Reusing your products keeps them in your home and away from sanitation workers. The age-old adage, “waste not, want not,” applies now more than ever. Follow Asheville GreenWorks to learn repurposing and upcycling techniques that will turn your trash into treasure. Finally, recycle right. This means recycling only “grocery-store” plastic containers, glass, and aluminum; check out Curbie’s website for a complete list of accepted recyclables. Remember: when in doubt, throw it out! Our city’s sanitation staff are working full-time to keep Asheville clean and safe. Please do your part to protect essential workers by following guidelines, washing your hands frequently, and following the advice of the CDC. From all of us at Asheville Greenworks, stay safe out there. We’ll see you online! This article is written for the residents of the City of Asheville in partnership with the City of Asheville.
By Finn Digman, Waste Reduction Education Coordinator for Asheville Greenworks For the evolving situation around COVID-19, trash, recycling, and compost collection remain vital to the ongoing health of our area. Can you imagine what our homes would look like without these services? Do you want to? Us neither. So, let’s take a moment to consider the health implications of working in sanitation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, the City of Asheville’s trash and recycling services are occurring as scheduled. The City is taking measures to ensure their workers’ safety. You can read more about these measures in Asheville Greenworks’ post about brush collection and in our upcoming 15-minute Reader: COVID-19 and Sanitation Workers: What We’re Doing to Help. Continuing these vital services means employees for the City, CompostNow, and Curbie are more at risk when coming into contact with our waste. In the time of COVID-19, the potential for contact holds some obvious health implications, and we want to help keep workers safe. Are you with us? Here’s what you can do to help. Wash your hands frequently and properly. During the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping your hands clean is especially important to help prevent the virus from spreading. You should always wash your hands after handling waste or touching waste receptacles. For more information on proper handwashing, follow this link. Wipe down cart lids and handles with disinfectant. Most carts are collected with a touchless, automated truck. However, at times, waste collectors must touch carts to properly get the waste into trucks. Wiping down your lids and handles reduces the potential risk of exposure for everyone. All trash must be bagged and bags must be tied. Your green City carts contain trash destined for the landfill. By bagging your trash, you reduce the potential exposure for trash collectors and workers at the landfill. Tightly bagged trash also minimizes loose litter, so it won’t go flying through your neighborhood. Sign up for AVL Collects. Follow this link to sign up for weekly collection reminders and information about service delays or cancellation notices. Do not bag your recycling. Processors at Curbie are required to manually open recycling in bags in order to sort it. Eliminate this risk factor by filling your blue City carts with loose recyclables. Recycle right. Minimize contact for recycling processors by ensuring you are disposing of acceptable recyclables. Generally, glass and plastic jugs, tubs, bottles, and jars are welcome. Follow this link for a comprehensive list of everything Curbie accepts. And remember: When in doubt, throw it out. Never recycle medical waste. Medical masks, gloves, and needles are not recyclable and pose a serious risk to workers who are not trained to handle them. For more information on medical disposal follow this link to Buncombe County’s Harm Reduction page. Wipe down your compost bins before setting them out. CompostNow is working hard to ensure the safety of its employees. Help them by disinfecting surfaces workers must touch. Put all your compost in the bin and secure the lid. CompostNow cannot accept extra compostables left beside their bins. You can request additional bins here. Skip service if you are experiencing symptoms. By skipping service for at least two weeks after you begin experiencing symptoms, you can reduce the risk of exposure to CompostNow employees. Brush can be composted in your yard. For more information about managing your yard waste, go to this Asheville Greenworks’ post. We are grateful for our dedicated sanitation workers and the services they offer. In this time of social isolation, social responsibility means protecting the essential employees that keep our society functioning. You can do your part by following the instructions above, as well as adhering to the CDC’s recommendations. Be safe out there, and stay tuned for more great content from Asheville Greenworks. This article is written for the residents of the City of Asheville in partnership with the City of Asheville.
 Laura Anderson - Water Quality Coordinator Asheville GreenWorks is seeking applicants to fill two AmeriCorps Project Conserve positions to restore and protect Asheville's fragile ecosystems. We have two positions available: Community Forestry Coordinator and Water Quality Coordinator. Service terms would begin Sept 1st 2020 and finish up July 31st 2021. The deadline to apply is May 15th 2020 - applications are now closed What is Project Conserve? Administered by Conserving Carolina, Project Conserve is a National Service program in which members come from across the nation to dedicate themselves to serving critical environmental and community needs in western North Carolina. Members are selected based on skill, education, experience, passion and commitment to service. The program focuses on collaboration with nonprofit organizations, community groups and local governments to provide service throughout the region. Project Conserve individually places members in service with one of our host site organizations working to protect the unique natural resources of the southern Blue Ridge Mountain region. During their terms of service, members will promote conservation through education, volunteerism, and direct environmental service. Members participate in 1 to 3 required training and service days per month with the full Project Conserve team. Training may cover a broad range of topics including wilderness first aid, CPR/AED, conflict resolution, forest management, trail construction, invasive plant identification, environmental education, volunteer management, and disaster preparedness.  By Finn Digman, Waste Reduction Education Coordinator for Asheville Greenworks If you’re staying at home full-time, now is the perfect time to clean up the yard. You might be cutting back invasive species, raking leaves, or pruning your fruit trees. No matter what, yard work tends to produce some unwieldy waste. The City of Asheville collects about 8,000 tons of brush annually within city limits. But in order to ensure the safety of their staff and slow the spread of COVID-19, brush collection is on a delayed schedule for the duration of the pandemic. Trash and recycling collection are occurring as scheduled. So, why is brush collection postponed? The City wants to protect the collection staff from potential virus exposure for their health and to ensure the residents of Asheville receive the services they need to keep life moving. Jes Foster, the Solid Waste Manager for the City of Asheville explains, “Brush collection trucks require 2 or 3 people to be in close quarters in the cab of a truck all day. We are modifying operations and pulling in additional staff and resources in order to perform some level of brush collection while maintaining social distancing recommendations.” Modifications starting the week of April 13th include:
While brush collection services are running on a delayed schedule, the City of Asheville respectfully asks residents to ensure that any containers, bags, or piles are not obstructing sidewalks or traffic. You may be thinking, “What now?” If you’ve got yard waste and don’t want to wait for pick up, look no further! We’ve compiled an easy list of ways to use or dispose of your yard waste this spring. Leaves
This article is written for the residents of the City of Asheville in partnership with the City of Asheville.
Special guest blog post by the Biltmore Estate.
Best management practices are employed in Biltmore’s agricultural and forestry operations to prevent silt and runoff into waterways, receiving the River Friendly Farmer Award from the Buncombe County Soil and Water Conservation Service for these efforts.
Asheville Greenworks demonstrates values in alignment with Biltmore’s focus areas. Thank you to Asheville Greenworks and their great work to protect the natural resources of the mountains that surround Asheville for the benefit of both present and future generations.  Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year's holiday period than any other time of year. That waste amounts to 25 million tons of garbage, or about 1 million extra tons per week!
Here are four easy ways to reduce your waste and go green this holiday season:
 Saturday Sept 16th - BRING OUT YOUR DEAD.... batteries, electronics, appliances, lawn equipment and MORE to be recycled here in the US. Our partners will be accepting: styrofoam, toner carts, books, scrap metals, electronics, appliances, batteries of any kind and spent cooking oil. The Asheville Humane Society will be there to receive donations of pet food, cleaning supplies and items for the office supplies. The Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity is accepting working appliances, clean furniture and building supplies for their ReStore. Pro recycling tips:
Collection location Madden Ace Hardware 2319 US Hwy 70 Swannanoa, NC 28778 Time: 10am to 2pm Download the event flyer here: http://www.ashevillegreenworks.org/hard-2-recycle.html   The High Line in NYC: The High Line is a public park built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan's West Side. Photo by: Shutterstock Guest blog by Dee Dee Clark Is it possible that our urban open spaces will become just as important as our national forests in supporting wildlife? It’s a concept that seems implausible especially here in Western NC where we are seldom more than an hour’s drive from numerous national parks and “wild” spaces. The land mass of the United States is so vast that, admittedly, our perception has been that no matter how many plots we subdivide, farmland we cultivate, or roads we pave, there will always be endless acres of undisturbed natural habitat for animals and insects to flourish. But is that still true today? If I asked you how much land you thought we humans have taken for our own use in the United States—what would your guess be?
Are We Running Out of Room for Nature?As of 2011, we had converted over 468 million acres to managed urban and suburban landscapes or cropland (USDA). That’s close to 7 times the area of Colorado. From 1982 to 1997, the greatest percentage of increases (2.6 million hectares or 58%) in developed areas were here in the Southeastern region of the U.S. (White, E. M.). Throughout these residential, urban, and suburban areas, we have decimated the native plant diversity that historically supported our cherished wildlife friends. Photo Source: Meritpath.com  Our Love Affair with GrassAdding to this destruction is our love affair with pristine and manicured lawns. It’s estimated that over 32 million acres of land in the U.S. has been converted to European and Asian turf grasses that are essentially useless to most of our native insects and wildlife (Tallamy D. W.). However, many birds, bugs, and butterflies could live sustainably with us if we chose to design both our public and private living spaces with diverse and native plant species. Less Mowing, More Pollinators Asheville Greenworks is making this city friendlier to bugs and birds by developing a template for turning low-use municipal park areas into native pollinator meadows like this bee and butterfly garden in Portland, Maine.  If you visit Lake Julian, you will see Greenworks’ Pollinator Meadow testing site along Fisherman’s Trail. In May, GreenWorks coordinated with geocaching expert Graeme McGufficke, Buncombe County staff, and about 30 volunteers to lay plastic, cardboard, and mulch at the testing site. Next spring, we are hoping you will see this area filled with a growing array of milkweed, tickseed, sunflower, wild bergamot, aster, goldenrod and other hardy perennial wildflowers. What's Wrong with Grass?Although Greenworks is currently determining the most cost-efficient and effective ways to kill turf grass and install perennial wildflowers native to this area, this isn’t a war on grass. We can appreciate the benefits of grass for dog parks or as a perfect picnic setting. In fact, evolutionary psychologists even theorize that humans have evolved to be attracted to large open grassy plots because our ancestors wanted to be able to see potentially dangerous animals coming their way. However, grass has some major drawbacks too. Lawns must be mowed regularly. About forty million lawnmowers consume 200 million gallons of gasoline per year and one gas-powered lawnmower emits 11 times the air pollution of a new car. Another downside of grass?... I have discovered that my lawn is a breeding ground for the Japanese beetles that have been turning the leaves on my bean stalks into something that resembles lace doilies.  This summer, I have been working as a Fellow of UNC Asheville’s McCullough Institute in partnership with Asheville Greenworks to document various methods of grass removal and to research which native perennials are both easy to grow from seed and will survive in a sunny meadow with minimal maintenance. The McCullough Institute for Conservation, Land Use and Environmental Resiliency aims to be a nation model for blending environmental study with business and sustainable economic growth in urban and rural landscapes.
Reference Sources: USDA ERS - Major Land Uses https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/ White, E.M., et al., Past and projected rural land conversion in the US at state, regional, and national levels. Landscape Urban Plann (2008), doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.09.004 Tallamy, Douglas W. Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. Timber Press, 2007. |
