Zero Waste Washington pilots projects to help test concepts and help prove concepts.

Here are some of our recent piloted community projects:

Zero Waste Hackathon

This new five-week virtual competition provides online seminars, learning tools, coaching resources, collaboration sessions, and cash prizes to accelerate the pace of Zero Waste innovation by student entrepreneurs across the Pacific Northwest.

Learn more here.

Fix-It Fairs

Zero Waste Washington is partnering with The Tacoma Tool Library, the Tacoma Housing Authority and others to create Fix-It Fairs. The idea is simple. Residents bring their broken items, sign in, wait for their turn, and then a fixer repairs their electronics, jewelry, toys, furniture, and clothes among other items, for free. These are a great opportunity to build community, to meet neighbors, and to learn more about waste prevention.  We hope to help spread Fix-It Fairs or similar repair cafes across Washington. Learn more here.

Testing and Developing a Litter Assessment Protocol

We need to fill a big data gap: quantifying the amount and sources of plastics getting into our waters and flowing down into our Sound and ocean. Zero Waste Washington is working to support the many community science groups, nonprofits, scout troops, school groups, and other civic groups that do litter cleanups and creek monitoring. We are working with the US Environmental Protection Agency to help test a new litter assessment protocol across the state. The goal is to robustly identify the types and amounts of litter in many different locations so that litter can be quantified as a pollutant under the federal Clean Water Act.