Tag Archives: environment

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

Posted on by
3

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 Seattle’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.

“Climate 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

Posted on by
47

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

Posted on by
3

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

(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 “ecological thinning” and a limited timber sale in its highly protected Cedar River Watershed east of the city. Continue reading →

You really shouldn’t throw away a battery in Seattle

Posted on by

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 →

With renewed focus on equity and ‘Just Growth’ agenda, Capitol Hill EcoDistrict makes move to growing Seattle Urban League

Posted on by

A building acquired by Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle for affordable housing last fall

A REVIVAL market at Capitol Hill Station (Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

The Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, one of the closest organizations the neighborhood currently has to an independent community group representing the area’s neighborhoods in the city’s growth and development process, is moving under the wings of Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle with a renewed focus on equity.

“This next phase of partnership with the Urban League is an opportunity for the EcoDistrict to co-create a future for equitable community development at scale,” EcoDistrict executive director Donna Moodie said in the announcement.

The Capitol Hill EcoDistrict took shape more than a decade ago as it as formed by what was then known as Capitol Hill Housing. The developer and manager of affordable housing across Capitol Hill recognized its shifting focus to a larger citywide mandate with a change of its name to Community Roots Housing in the time since. Now the community-focused organization it helped create to address environmental and social concerns in the area’s development is ready for a larger mandate.

The Urban League is growing. Last week, it announced plans to move from its Central District headquarters at 14th and Yesler to Rainier Ave as part of a major development to create both a new hq and around 300 new affordable apartment units.

Continue reading →

Group slams mayor for ‘pressing pause’ on climate change legislation targeting emissions standards for city’s buildings — UPDATE

Posted on by

CORRECTION: The proposed standards would be applied to existing buildings, not new construction as CHS originally reported.

The REN apartment tower (Image: REN)

Environmental advocacy group 350 Seattle is criticizing Mayor Bruce Harrell for “pressing pause” on what it says is key legislation to address climate change in the city through improving requirements for energy savings and more in existing development new construction.

Harrell rolled out his administration’s version of the Building Emissions Performance Standards legislation this summer with a press conference touting his commitment to addressing greenhouse emissions and climate change. Buildings represent the fastest-growing source of climate pollution in Washington. While new construction is already guided by regulations and programs that cut emissions, older stock isn’t currently held to these kinds of environmental standards.

But Harrell’s office failed to transmit the proposal to the Seattle City Council before its August recess which would have allowed the bill to be voted on September. 350 Seattle says it doesn’t want to see the administration further weaken the effort to put the new standards in place: Continue reading →

Four Capitol Hill and CD locations part of Seattle’s small boost to plans for more public electric vehicle charging stations

Posted on by

(Image: City of Seattle)

With 75,000 electric vehicles already on the road in King County and a requirement that two out of every three new cars sold in Washington must be zero-emission vehicles by 2030, drivers need more options for charging up.

The Seattle City Council this week approved legislation allowing City Light to lease private property to install and operate city-owned public EV charging stations while opening up access for companies to lease City Light-owned property to install and operate additional charging stations.

Seattle officials have been trying to add enough public charging stations to meet demand as new development has also helped boost the number of chargers here. Continue reading →

Time to prepare for 2023 Seattle smoke season

Posted on by

Canadian wildfires will burn through the summer — this week, the winds could bring smoke to Seattle — You can view this fire and smoke map at ospo.noaa.gov

This summer began with the East Coast getting a taste of smoke season. Forecasters say the Pacific Northwest might also soon experience the haze and smoke from wildfire burning across Canada — mixed with smoke from new wildfires in Washington and lingering from Tuesday’s 4th of July celebrations.

Wildfires burning in Alberta and British Columbia and shifting weather conditions that are expected to bring winds from the north could lead to “smoke impacts in Washington this week. Continue reading →