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Accelerating zero-waste implementation in Minneapolis
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WHEREAS:body
WHEREAS, Hennepin County has been a leader on solid waste policy in response to the environmental concerns with landfills and with the establishment of the Minnesota Waste Management Act in 1980, with each decade focused on a significant improvement toward meeting the goal to reduce waste and our reliance on landfills; and
WHEREAS, the 1980s included piloting recycling programs in Minneapolis, adopting the county's recycling ordinance (Ordinance 13) in 1986, making curbside recycling available throughout the county; the 1980s also included responding to the state requirement that metropolitan counties submit plans for facilities that would process waste rather than disposing of it in landfills, which resulted in the siting and permitting of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) with the City of Minneapolis, which began operations in 1989; and the county implemented waste flow designation that requires all haulers to deliver trash to be processed rather than landfilled; and
WHEREAS, the 1990s included a focus on removing hazardous items from the trash with the opening of the county's drop-off facilities in Brooklyn Park and Bloomington and first of its kind collections of e-waste and fluorescent light bulbs; and the state began distributing solid waste management tax revenues as SCORE grants to counties to fund recycling and waste abatement work, and early waste reduction education programs launched, and the last landfill in the county closed in 1993; and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned local flow control ordinances, which shifted the county to contract with waste haulers for trash deliveries to HERC; and
WHEREAS, the 2000s focused on diverting food waste with the county selling backyard compost bins, piloting citywide organics recycling in Wayzata and 21 suburban schools, and the county began providing grants to support recycling programs in schools, busin...
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