Tag Archives: environment

Seattle Public Utilities will roll out one free battery pick-up a year in 2026 — And is sorting out how to include apartment dwellers

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The aftermath of a June 2024 trash fire on Capitol Hill started by an improperly disposed battery

Seattle households should consider a new tradition in the new year — keeping an old battery bag.

Seattle Public Utilities has announced an expansion of its Special Item Pickup service beginning in April 2026 it says will make it easier for customers to safely dispose of items that are hard-to-recycle or require special handling.

Importantly, SPU says it is working out ways to make the service available to apartment dwellers and residents in multifamily housing.

“Currently, SPU customers can schedule on-demand pickup for items such as batteries, small electronics, mattresses, and appliances,” the announcement reads. “While this service is available today for a small fee, the new program will introduce one free annual pickup as a benefit to SPU residential customers to help make proper disposal simpler, safer, and more convenient.” Continue reading →

Seattle considers reining in SEPA ‘until citywide planned-for growth is achieved’

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The Seattle City Council will step away from 2026 budgets Friday as its land use committee takes up legislation seeked to help the city further rein in Stateā€™s Environmental Policy Act review in hopes of speeding more development of housing.

The bill sponsored by council member Mark Solomon would exempt “infill” residential development from SEPA review except in areas near shorelines, environmentally critical areas, or “historic locations.” The proposed exemption would be in place “until citywide planned-for growth is achieved,” a presentation (PDF) on the legislation explains.

According to the presentation, the legislation would align the city with “state guidance for streamlining SEPA environmental review” while also doing more to “speed housing production and encourage transit-oriented development.” Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Northwest School part of $4.7M in Seattle building decarbonization grants

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The Northwest School’s rooftop sports field above Pike and Bellevue (Image: Northwest School)

The city has announced $4.7 million Building Decarbonization Grants for 2025 including funding for work at Capitol Hill’s Northwest School.

“These grants will cover design or retrofits to reduce climate pollution and help buildings reach Building Emissions Performance Standard targets,” the Summit Ave private middle and high school said in a statement on the grant. Continue reading →

Seattle 2025 smoke season: ‘moderate’ and hopefully short

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Source: Airfire.org

Seattle appears set to get through with a relatively mild 2025 smoke season.

Smoke from large fires burning in the eastern Cascades that poured into the Puget Sound region over the weekend should let up, U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program forecasters say, as an inversion layer fades and winds shift. Continue reading →

Earth Day 2025 in Seattle: A plan to update its Climate Action Plan… next year

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Weather, as measured by monthly highs and lows, has grown more extreme in Seattle (Image: ClimateCheck)

(Image: City of Seattle)

Mayor Bruce Harrell and Seattle city officials spent Earth Day like many of the rest of us — promising to do better.

Tuesday, Harrell signed an “Earth Day executive order” directing city departments to “respond to Seattleā€™s current and future climate challenges with a focus on building resilience, growing a green economy, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from transportation.”

The order’s most significant element sets Seattle on track for updating its key Climate Action Plan by the summer of 2026.

ā€œClimate change is impacting more parts of daily life than it did a decade ago. Hotter summers are making living and working more uncomfortable and often dangerous,” Harrell said in the announcement of the order. “Severe storms are damaging infrastructure and flooding homes, pollutants are worsening air quality, and much more.”

The update will be the first for the plan since it was formed in 2013.

The average global temperature in 2013 was 58.3 F. Continue reading →

Toxic politics? ‘Supportive housing’ project targeted by Capitol Hill mayoral candidate in line for state cleanup

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The Capitol Hill business owner turned candidate for mayor fighting a Belmont Ave supportive housing project from the Downtown Emergency Service Center has already cast herself as a Republican.

Now we’ll see if Rachael Savage is also an environmentalist.

Washington’s Department of Ecology may be wandering into a neighborhood hornet’s nest as it begins the public process on the Stewart House Cleanup Site under its affordable housing grant program.

The DESC and the department are entering into an agreement on a state funded cleanup of the site where decades of waste from oil furnaces has accumulated. Continue reading →

Seattle sorting out what to do with recycled glass after closure of local bottle manufacturer

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A Strategic Materials facility (Image: Strategic Materials)

Seattle Public Utilities is looking for new solutions and encouraging residents to continue collecting cleaned jars and bottles after a major customer for recycled glass has shut down in the city. SPU says there remains a “strong demand for recycled glass nationally.”

Ardagh Glass Packaging, “the major glass bottle manufacturer in the Seattle area,” announced it has laid off 245 employees and permanently shuttered its E Marginal Way facility citing “ongoing pressure from low-priced imports,” SPU says.

“This recently announced closure has created unprecedented challenges for glass recycling in Seattle and neighboring jurisdictions,” SPU said this week about the shutdown.

SPU says it will continue to collect glass as it looks for new partners and the city and the county have convened a “a Glass Recycling Roundtable” with “regional and national industry partners and municipalities that is meeting regularly to develop short- and long-term solutions for sustainable glass recycling.” Continue reading →

Styrofoam bans and the thick grocery bag loophole: Happy Earth Day 2024, Seattle

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Inside a Seattle sorting facility (Image: CHS)

Earth Day 2024 in Seattle brings some hopefully material changes to the waste we create — and a few ideas for some garbage loopholes we might want to tighten up.

In Seattle, styrofoam takeout containers have been banned since 2009 but you still see the cheap but hugely wasteful packaging in use. The Seattle ban is now about to be taken more seriously as the rest of the state is finally catching up with a prohibition on single-use foam coolers and styrofoam coffee cups and clamshells going into effect this summer. Continue reading →

Hollingsworth’s first co-sponsored legislation passes full council

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(Image: SPU)

It wasn’t her legislation but District 3’s representative on the Seattle City Council marked a milestone earlier this week as the first bill from the committee she chairs was passed by the full body.

Joy Hollingsworth joined here eight council counterparts Tuesday in approving legislation that will allow the city to undertake ā€œecological thinningā€ and a limited timber sale inĀ its highly protectedĀ Cedar River Watershed east of the city. Continue reading →

You really shouldn’t throw away a battery in Seattle

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Seattle Public Utilities

You shouldn’t throw batteries in the trash anyhow but now it is against the rules in Seattle. City officials are scrambling to get the word out after Seattle Public Utilities quietly put new rules into place banning batteries from the garbage to start 2024 to address an increase in dangerous fires, environmental, and cost concerns.

The new rules ban trash disposal of common household batteries, more powerful batteries for vehicles and tools, and embedded batteries found in electronics, toys, computers, monitors, and e-bikes,

It’s an honor system. Continue reading →