To the editor:

Bainbridge Island Zero Waste is an all-volunteer program that serves the Bainbridge community by running special recycling collections (Styrofoam this July!), staffing waste stations at island festivities to compost and recycle 70 to 90 percent of the discards, maintaining a tableware lending library and educating about recycling with a newsletter and farmers’ market booth.

One ZW event that “breaks the mold” is the Trashion Show. This past Earth Day, a sold-out crowd was wowed by youth and adult-created outfits fashioned from repurposed material such as curtains, afghans, swimsuits, and blue jeans and from recyclable items like toilet paper tubes, newspaper and bubble wrap.

Huge kudos go to our co-chairs Naomi Spinak and Michelle White, as well as our sponsors, Bainbridge Disposal, Windermere realtors Diane Sugden and Patti Shannon, IslandWood, Port Madison Enterprises, Sash Mercantile, and Alchemy Goods.

Bainbridge Arts & Crafts recently displayed many of the participants’ pieces, some of which are now on view at Esther’s Fabrics as designer inspiration for next year. You can also see winning ensembles at bitrashionshow.wordpress.com.

This event raised money to install new face plates on the downtown Big Belly recycling containers. Alas, current contamination levels are much too high (drat those coffee cups!), and we hope that better signage will attract only bottles and cans. Reduce, reuse, recycle!

DIANE LANDRY

Coordinator of BI Zero Waste