first steering committee members to organize and facilitate a meeting so Thank You Julie okay and I should tell everybody I'm recording this meeting so our holler committee cannot be here and I'm going to represent the questions today so I told them I would tape this so that they could have the feedback that we offer so just know that we're not free recording okay Alissa uh hi this is elise Eric and Eric from Hennepin County you're shy officer oh I guess everybody Joseph isn't Gatz Aleta you everyone Aleta here with recycling partnership Barbara Arvin Monaco MPCA data Stewart and statistician how's the weather out there in Oregon right now pretty all right but it's been beautiful the flowers are just going nuts and I've also had the worst allergies in my life mm-hmm yeah they're starting that way - here - Beth I'm hike Beth Calais Ted city of Northfield now hello everybody Bill Keegan from dem con companies sorry I can't be on video today happy Kathy Latham PCA Stan mr. Newton we some can't speak are you get something where you have to do chat hey there Dustin yeah sorry I'm in some microphone Ptolemaic Dustin from over time yeah you're a little you're a little spotty there's if you can't get that fixed and you want to do chats I'll make sure watch for you Emily good afternoon everybody Emily Berger city of st. Louis Park and I have huge make who is that did you say hey Jimmy yeah it's a huge me that's how are you Eggman hey Chris hey go okay Paul oh um bill can you not join us by video do you need a haircut or something what's what's going on my unshaved face and bald head janna hi everyone this is Hannah Keller from Washington County date afternoon everyone Jake to win specialize environmental technologies Julie hello how are you Julie Ketchum waste management John Mayall John Klatt rich with Minnesota waste price feelin okay water Callen I'm the green remember with Hubbard County Talent Kaitlin de Cielo Kaelin did you say Carver Kelly yes Hubbard County le LA kiss their chance nope her mic is not working Kelly kissed city of Minneapolis Laura hey yo this is Laura Horner with the city of Bloomington Lecrae hello Lori freak out Dakota County Maggie or good afternoon maniac with Anoka County oh and I skipped floor another lorry hello this is Larry rough with Camp Ripley Department of military affairs Mike Mike Robinson I think you're on my phone now you're unmuted micro you there I am begging you hear me oh yeah yeah yeah we can hear you everything good yep can you guys hear me yeah yeah hello okay hi everyone we're not whispering see Toby mark guys mark across from control agency good to see people okay whose operations hey it's Courtney saw stuck with the recycling Association of Minnesota Oh teach you how to change your name on there if you want to be incognito Rachel hey everyone Rachel at home with the city of Richfield great job thanks Jenny I'm for pointing that yeah it's uh it's my birthday happy birthday you don't think you really want all of us to sing it once on here I appreciate it happy birth I think a good moderator would sing for her though so get out you're doing some Rex time in sign language oh I'm soo you you soo-dong she's muted but I see her I will let us back to sandy oh sandy you're muted you're still let me see okay try it again sandy sandy Gundersen becker county wonder if that was soon what sue sue yeah all right oh you wanna introduce yourself yep sue doll Anoka County we could hear you sandy yeah because you're sanding could you hear me yes my phone okay all right I'm connected I'm connected to this phone okay Susan this is Susan Heffron from the Pollution Control Agency recycling market development Tara hi this is Tara 4th Ramsey County okay now I know I missed people because they added as I went through the list so who did I miss go ahead and introduce yourself hey it's Jenny from Dakota County oh we didn't even know we skipped you Jennifer going more from PCA hey folks this is so simple Ramsey County anyone else I see Jennifer down there in the corner Steve shuffle by under Public Services and I have Republic Services yes Steve did you catch it Steve shuffle line yeah did we get everybody neck of Scott County who was it from Scott County nicob Scott County Lynette Nathan did we yeah we had you at the beginning didn't we or were we just talking you have you introduced yourself to the group Nathan rambled from Polk Douglas solid waste in Alexandria and how's the weather up north it's beautiful got my garden in yesterday so I'm a little tired today so yeah so did we get everybody now it wants to be got great I think we'll move on to the MPCA and Kayla or Jennifer one of you to want to start with your updates and I think you're going to have barb do some things too I don't know if I have it in the order you want to go in sure I can start thanks Julie this is Caleb I'm going to leave my video off to maintain my internet connection here but I really briefly just want to mention three mpca grants I just put them links to all of them in the chat for everyone we have three grant opportunities that are open right now the first one is the prevention of wasted food and food donation grant and that is a new legislatively appropriated funding that we have available to us this year applications are due on June 12th the maximum award that you can be funded as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for that grant and the minimum is 75 we wanted to have the opportunity for some smaller grants in this round especially because a lot of this funding will probably go towards nonprofits or food banks food donation centers but this funding is also for any prevention of wasted food whether that be education at the household level or for software at the commercial level when you are purchasing food to help calculate more efficient purchasing practices so since this is a brand new grant there are a lot of questions and answers that you can see at the bottom of the page that have already been submitted and answered so I'd encourage you to go through that if you have any questions there's also an email listed for questions on any of these three grants you can e-mail grants pca at state MN us if you have any specific questions after you've read the request for proposals and I do just want to mention that this grant is specifically for actions at the upper end of the hierarchy still prevention and food donation and it will not go towards food to hogs or composting operations or anaerobic digestion the second opportunity our Greater Minnesota recycling and composting grants are now open and those are due July 7th so you have some more time for that eligible applicants are any political subdivisions outside of the Twin Cities seven-county metro area and if it is a city the city's population must be less than 45,000 people again questions and answers can be submitted to that same email inbox and this is a reoccurring grant this is not the first time that we've had the RFP out there so I think a few of you are more familiar with this one but if you have questions let us know and then finally the market development grants are also open right now and priority will be given to any projects that use or supplement markets for mixed paper glass and organics but projects using any type of recyclable material should also apply and that funding is $400,000 maximum award again and 250,000 minimum award 50,000 this is like the food grants this isn't a new RFP as well so there's a considerable amount of questions already answered on the web page and so I suggest you take a look at that and also at the RFP and so beyond the grants that we have available right now I do also just want to mention and Barbara will go into more detail about this our MuRF survey that we have been developing at the PCA and that will be looking at contaminant materials and asking Murph's what is processable and not I think you might be on you might want to mute I also think that so that murph survey that'll be coming out will be in June and Barbara will walk us through a little bit more of that but before I hand it off to Barbara there's also an email that I sent out or that Jennifer sent out to the group asking for any translations by the end of the day yesterday and so we have some extra funding from that the pca awarded to the recycling partnership to be used for translating of different recycling education materials that were used in the toolkit that is currently housed on waste wises website and we have leftover money in that budget item for translations so we'd like to extend the translations deadline until the end of the day today so if you had any materials that your city or county or hauler no matter you know who what type of entity you are we would like to take a look at different items that you might need translated and we will have a conversation with the recycling partnership to see how much of those resources we can get translated for you all and if there are pieces that are already out there that you're planning and using that you need a Spanish version of or you need a different version of we know that those are going to be used so we want to prioritize translating existing materials for you all and we don't know exactly how many we're going to receive so we can't guarantee how many we would be able to translate but that is a conversation that we're gonna have with their cycling partnership about what's realistic for them and for them to get done soon so if you have ideas for that please email them down by the end of it hello this is Bill Keegan I have a question for you regarding the grant yes they you had said there is a priority I think for mix paper and glass but on the mixed paper side a mixed paper is very specific is that the intent or is it really any fiber in other words maybe cartons or some other grades of fiber news or anything else or is it specifically and only for mixed paper so those three priority areas are aligned with the different subgroups that the market development workgroups are focusing on but I'm not sure how that's being interpreted I don't know if Susan if you're still on the call if you have more information about that or better able to answer Bill's question um I don't know that I can answer that because I'm supposed to be on lockdown in terms of answering questions okay so he can submit that to that email then yes sorry bill no it's not a problem I'm not a problem it was it's not okay thank you I still I get in trouble I already in enough trouble okay I have a question related to the translation assistance yes hey Chris I'm just curious we are curious if that help we shared some existing pieces that we would like transition help with do you know if they are able to is the plan to just provide copy or text of the translated words or are they able to put a translated you know copy into the existing design and kind of finish the piece my assumption was the latter that they could do the design but I'd like if Aleta's still on the call she can confirm yeah yeah thanks so much for the question Chris and I did see your question come in over email and actually want to regroup with MPCA internally on it so that we can determine how would handle those I think it really depends on again the amount coming through and what we're gonna be able to handle so if there's a lot more it's gonna be more difficult to do that for all of them right but we want to make sure that everyone has the same treatment mmm whoever submits anything so I think it really just depends on that mm-hmm sure that's understandable sorry I forgot you were in the big group Polly that would have addressed that to you okay well we'll wait to hear some follow-up then yeah yeah certainly yeah so if anybody has any materials that they would like translated please send them to me by the end of the day today and then we can triage that with the recycling partnership and figure out you know how much we can we can get done and if or if not with including the design with it okay and if there are no other questions immediately about that I will turn the stage over to Barbara and Barbara we'll be presenting more about the existing kovat related closures map as as well as the merge survey so take it away Barbara awesome Thank You Kayla so I'm going to be sharing my screen and I will be talking about the joint project that was created with partnership between the recycling Association in Minnesota the solid waste administrators Association and the MPCA we were all talking about what's happening with the state of solid waste right now with both the emergency stay at home order and just the entire pandemic in general so as a group effort we we pulled together and we talked about what's the best way to capture this information and how do we publicize this how do we get the message across we're all trying to pull together and talk about how solid waste is still being managed during this time and that's where this application was created so this was a story map that was created by the MPCA that's being housed behind member portals both for RAM and sois and we are working on getting it together an email list of everyone that's not covered by that that needs to get this application so we're working on that to get this out for two folks but we have a tutorial video that talks about it but this is meant to be a tracking of solid waste management status across the state of Minnesota and there's three different levels of which we're tracking we're tracking at a high level County Lea we're tracking at a permanent facility and by permited we do mean MPC a permanent facility and then solid waste non-primitive facilities so these would be things such as ancient sub u sites recycling drop sites organic drop sites information that's being captured to try and understand what things are being impacted by the pandemic and we do have like I said we have the tutorial video which is how to use and then each one of these is hyperlinked to our individual websites so you can take a look at the information a tram sois and MPC a but we do want to stress that reporting through this application - just to talk about what's happening with solid waste is not a replacement for any type of regulatory flexibility from the MPCA if you need to request regulatory flexibility either for things such as delay reports ease of certain statutory requirements such as opportunity recycle different information regarding permanent requirements all of those need to go through this official request which is that regulatory flexibility which is the link here so if there are any questions about that feel free to reach out either to your permit engineer or to your solid waste planner at the MPCA or you can always email I think there's a link there as well so that's the tutorial video it's about six minutes long so it's not too ownerís but I'll give a quick rundown of how the application works this first part is by county and we have different questions that are being asked and this should really only be filled out by county staff that are responsible for solid waste so we are asking that if you do receive a link or if you are working in the application do not share this link outside your organization as we are working on maintaining as much data integrity as we possibly can so we're making sure that people are not sharing this outside as much as possible so that people don't go and update information that may not have all the facts so if we are to select a county to begin editing I can choose a tasket County and you can see that the blue is what's highlighted but I can then scroll through if I wanted to go to Kuching or if I cancel out I can do a better job clicking and just make sure I get a task ax but this is the information that we're asking we're asking about essential services reduced or cut services whether they have access to mature recovery facility and whether there's any challenging recycling materials we're also asking questions about their hhw facility and the status of their public offices and any comments that they'd like to provide so this is what we're asking at a county level and the idea behind this is that updates should be made as things change at the county information at a permanent facility status is very similar and the editing process is the same so if there is a facility that has information or updates that need to be made you can either zoom to a specific county or you can just zoom in on the map so if I choose big falls demolition I can enter in information it tells me the facility name their permit and then the questions that we're asking are things about what's the status of the facility date of the current status who's reporting by who's the reporter and then website information the legend off to the side will tell you what each one of these means so we're looking at normal operations open limited hours closed to the public or if there's anything else so there's this close to public active close to public inactive an example of close to public active are things like I believe Brown County sanitary landfill is no longer open to self haulers but they are still accepting waste that's at the permanent level and then at the non-permitted this gets a little bit trickier just from the standpoint of the MPCA does not have a database of non permanent facilities so we cannot plot the information for you and so if there is information such as looking at st. Paul these are all of the s som food scraps and so you can plot these points by adding this new feature or you can click on an existing point and make edits to the information that's here so we're looking at normal operations who was just reported by similar information to what we've identified previously and if there is a mistake with the position of the point you can do this edit geometry where you can change that position or if you made a mistake you can always delete it so this is the application in a nutshell if you have questions about the information Ram is the clearinghouse for all questions and they have a contact information form that's on the application itself so Barbara the question came up from Kellie Kish wondering if the information like the recycling challenges can be requested yes all of this data is public so all of the information is available in a drop-down here at the bottom and this can all be downloaded would you mind sharing the link in the chat honestly oh just from the standpoint of what I've already mentioned which is if folks are not responsible either for reporting on non permanent facilities or if they are not County members we want to keep the links relatively tight-fisted honestly it's the best word I can use okay so none of this is public and last week all of the data is public but we don't want to share the link to this application because this is all editable information okay I was referring to the public datalink that we that you want us to share so if you are a member of SWA or Ram the application is behind the member portals otherwise yes send me an email and I can send out the spreadsheet okay because I think we do have several that are not members of those organizations so if you want to share it under solid waste sites we would want to get that out are there any other questions about this I am assuming that if we see mistakes we should contact our County representative for the county that we see the area correct the counties are the ones that are ultimately responsible and again this is all voluntary information so it could be that there is information that is more up-to-date on their websites so we're also requesting that they put their websites up so we're trying our best to try to keep this as cohesive as possible but we do understand that because this is all voluntary and there's a lot of moving parts right now with what hope folks are up to that this may not be the number one priority okay I are there any other questions about this right now you don't see any I would just put in a request that if anybody how you're using this if you could kind of share it with the REC group at some point and what successes you're seeing with its use I think that would be cool for all of us so thank you Barbara yeah and then the next bit that I was asked to talk about is our mer survey Oh Ann Arbor I did I have one more question sorry from Kelly yes if people who aren't able to edit are able to get the queried list of material challenges I think we answered that didn't we from that it is all public data I'm maintaining that that application is going to be on lockdown but at the same time if there is a desire for any of that information you can absolutely request it it is all public we are just not going to share a view of this to the general public on earth like the empty CJ's website okay so that is not on the website so if we want to see that and we not one of the county people that the link then we need County or facility so again if you have a permanent facility those are also the folks that will be getting this so if we want to view it then we since that's not on the public live link we need to contact you our ramp Courtney what are your thoughts on that I'll leave that one for you um you can just yeah you can contact me and I'll I'll ship it through MPCA but since since Ram is a clearinghouse might as well make that consistent that way it's gonna be following up with you - excellent thank you so to change gears pretty much completely we're also talking now about acceptable materials so we're still working on a couple of edits to the survey but I think this has been through a few folks here at Rec people have seen this before and now this is the the way that the survey is going to be displayed and the idea behind this is that we're gathering as much continuous information as we can about what materials are acceptable what materials are posing challenges and then why these materials are posing challenges for material recovery facilities specifically and so this is going to be a email protected survey so we will have to have a email on file for the material recovery facility this way we make sure that folks that are not members of those facilities are not entering information so once you enter in your information it will take you to some very basic demographics so what's your facility name operator job title where is the location of your facility and then we start talking about what materials are acceptable and as you can tell this is also remembering my answers from a previous session which is what we want this to do is that when you get ready to take this the first time it'll be a one time lift of what materials are acceptable after that however it will remember the choices that you've made previously if you just need to make small edits or manor changes this should be a pretty easy data entry for folks so these are all what are known as um single responses so it should be one response for each one and the answers are acceptable acceptable comes challenges or do not accept and then the materials are listed off to the side by the category type so metal plastic glass paper if you do select that you accept shredded paper there are additional questions down here at the bottom that ask what should the shredded paper be prepared in order for your facility to process it we have the option of in a paper bag stapled shots otherwise if the answer is other than you would fill this information in and for all of the materials that you have listed as acceptable but comes with challenges or do not accept this next page will come up which will ask you why those materials are a challenge for your facility either there's no sustainable market damages equipment harmful to the workers or cannot be sorted due to size shape or color we're asking that you select the most important reason so that's where we're looking at gathering the information regarding which one of these three reasons is the most important reason why you don't want to accept that or it comes with challenges so give me just a second I gotta fill some information in highly scientific and then the last question that we're asking is regarding the top 10 or the top 5 most common or problematic contaminants and this is a drag and drop scenario so we have listed out all of the common contaminants that we've gotten either from haulers facilities or other folks that work in the field solid waste professionals and we've identified those and the way that this works is that you grab and rank so you would grab your top 5 once you reach 5 it'll stop you from grabbing any more and so once this is ready and you've ranked them from your most problematic to your least but still problematic we ask if there's anything else that you'd like to share and then you can submit this to the MPCA any questions on the Murph survey our target date is beginning of June what's the end date never we're looking to try and get as much continuous information as we can about what is being currently accepted by material recovery facilities what are the most common problematic contaminants and this is all going to be information that we can use in a variety of ways the most direct application is going to be the recycling outreach guide you're getting positive response on that excellent how do we get this information or is it just incorporated into the guide and that's how we find out in general just from the stand point if this was a request if anyone needed this information again all public information it would be exported out but otherwise it'll be incorporated with gyda that request would go to a random no this one would we go to the MPCA this is this is not not to put Courtney into more data requests can it be requested by a facility or is that is is it sort of like the data would be extra you know it would be here's a facility a and this is what they take here's facility B or can it actually be requested by saying what does this particular MuRF say at this point because of the work that's been done through wreck Anonymous information was not something that we had covered at this point and we were assuming that this would all be public okay so all information that would be requested would be it's tied to the facility itself great things because the goal is to get better education and outreach to people so we want to make sure that if people don't want a certain material so we're not talking about market share we're not talking about what kinds of things are you doing - like what kinds of technologies are you using or anything like that that might cause a discrepancy in market we're trying to make sure that we're getting that cohesive list about what kinds of materials are people looking for accepting and which ones are causing challenges so that we can maintain education how they wondered if this could be incorporated into the score reporting for the MuRF so it's required in David annually so interesting that you ask about score reporting so score reporting is specifically to county's annual reports for solid waste facilities that is for permanent facilities and so we've talked about incorporating this into the ANA report facility reporting but because we wanted this to be more than annual we wanted this to be anytime there was a change that was why we went the route of a separate survey specifically asking questions about what kinds of materials so that we could be a little bit more flexible about making edits or changes to the materials that are listed might be actually something that counties want to work with you on so that they can eliminate doing that and because this is a link that we can send people can embed this on their websites we're gonna embed this on the MPC A's website so that we can remind people that this is something that folks should be updating anytime there's a change to a material type and we're trying to make it as easy as we can um Chris Hagman would like to know if the trends are going to be dated so like if there's a change on the top I have problem materials in June of 2020 but now it has changed to this in 2021 so we've seen the improvement of one thing or something new come up if that is going to be somehow tracked we will have individual entries for each anytime someone makes a response will have that dated so if someone makes a response in June of 2020 and then they update that response in December of 2020 will have those two entries dated so we would know the different responses that they received and how well the besides just having a link on the website is req or MPCA doing any outreach to get people to take the survey the short answer is yes the longer answer is Jennifer if Jennifer went [Music] so yes we're gonna ask for members to help advocate and encourage Murph's to report especially if it's a MuRF that's in your community or someone that you collaborate with and they haven't responded you can talk about the importance of shaping up information that's consistent that we can use on our outreach guide in the end helping them reduce contamination so when we push this out we'll ask for you all to just kind of nudge your Murph's to have them fill it out we're giving them ten days to fill it out and then whenever there is a change we're asking them to do that voluntarily and we'll figure out a way to kind of remind folks on a quarterly basis but yeah I can see we can do an email yeah we can do an email burst every quarter or so to remind folks to fill it out but beyond that it is going to be a static link so if there are updates or changes for encouraging folks to go early and often mm-hmm yep that's great and hi little Luna Jennifer I would also encourage you if you're having worse that you're having trouble getting information from mm-hmm kind of reach out to us so that we know or we should be out to them yeah for sure won't be doing that are there any other question seeing none I mean was there another question all right yeah this is Laura from the city of Bloomington I'm just wondering if you've received any feedback from Murph's and also it might be something that that Haller subcommittee could help promote yep Jennifer here again yeah we reached out to a handful of Murph's to just show them the questions and they actually gave us some good feedback that we incorporated into this new version and so we've been talking to them and reminding them this this will happen and we've even checked to see if they'll be ok with responding in June just making sure that colvett response doesn't delay this work and a lot of them are very enthusiastic in filling it out and being a part of it and the holler subgroup which I'm part of will also be involved in some way or another in encouraging folks to fill this out okay thank you um it's any but I also have any questions of MPCA before we move on facing done we're going to preach tag with Courtney hi guys um the outreach guide subcommittee met on zoom' a few weeks ago and we didn't have a huge list of materials to go over but we're shooting for another summer review of the guide a new version to come out we discussed I'm changing making some changes to things like the batteries and textile collections that have changed in the past year we're also going to add some kovat specific information like PPE there were a couple new materials that gokigen brought to our attention that might be something that we need to add as well like it's mostly packaging because we're all you know with ordering from Amazon right now and we are also going to make it very obvious like on the front page of the guide when the last version was was published and I'm looking to hear from you guys if there is any specific materials off the top of your head right now that the subcommittee should be considering for the new edition otherwise of course we'll be watching the MuRF survey and the koban status map for any other submissions of problem materials but if you have something that you know of right now please feel free to are we putting it in the chat Julie let's say put it in the chat and then we'll just record those all unless you have something you want to discuss because the poll didn't let us do open-ended questions got it okay so yeah if there's something specific you beyond that's you know you're dealing with right now please feel free to put it in the chat or there's something that you'd like the your group to discuss please feel free to come off mute and always if you think of something and you can just shoot me an email and I'll include that in the next discussion with the subcommittee but based on the just handful of changes that we have on tap right now I'm looking at having a draft for the subcommittee to review and hoping to get a new version on the website um probably like at the end of June unless we get like a huge wave of new problem materials from the survey or the status map that's what we're looking at if you're on the phone so that you don't have to chat you can just take yourself off from you it can give your problem material list not seeing anything right away just hop in if you come up with something later or add it to the chat and we'll start the list otherwise please give your feedback to Courtney so that she can vote back to the group because they need our input you guys to make this complete we can't wait for them to do all the work and then come up with our list okay so Chris and John did you have anything else Courtney or is that it that'll do it for my so Chris and John the communications calendar Chris do you want to kind of talk about where we landed yesterday on that on the calendar specifically correct I was i I thought Sue was going to we had I can were we going to share Sue's latest rendition of that here today or just talk about it I know I don't know where we ended up sorry I think we can just talk about it the goal I guess was to kind of find a middle ground between being really specific on the calendar topics and not being extremely vague because I know I'm the third tab of the original calendar it was just our for contamination topics the Shred plastic bags Tanglers and batteries and it just for each of the quarters of the year chose one of those with the other three as alternative messaging so trying to land in an area where we were a bit more specific and everybody see it I put my whole screen won't fit on there but at least it kind of shows the Sun yeah I I think it would be best for Souter to speak to this specifically but I think you laid it out kind of well I think we were looking to kind of merge those two tabs and you know giving organizing some things that seemed to fit best for the time of year and you know still targeting our you know top materials and then you know reminding people that you know in that Dropbox in the tool kit or the list of all the ideas there is a wide range of material connected to a lot of these different specific materials it's to still with us I think we'll take that as a no the other thing we did touch on a little bit within the calendar group was just making this document linkable to TRPs resources as well as anything that gets housed either on waste wises website or rams website into the future so you can pull up this calendar see a topic and then click on a link so if it's plastic bags recycling and you need a social media post that you can use this document to actually click on a link and have those tools just ready and in your hand sue is still on the call so she must just be having some trouble she's not muted so we just must not be able to hear her well with that I can just provide a tiny update on the content sharing library as well we requested that you all upload different documents to that Dropbox or email them directly to me and we've had a pretty good outpouring of materials for that the one thing we are struggling with in terms of the number of the materials would be shredded paper so if you have any of your county city other educational materials surrounding shredded paper we'd love to build up those resources they just added during this meeting puddle recycling sticker that they're using in convenience stores golf courses etc so he did just add that so go take a look at that in the drop box and John do you want to put a reminder in the chat maybe of how people get to it yeah I'll throw the link in the chat and I know that not everyone has great access to Dropbox so if you also wanted to just email any of those resources directly to me that's totally fine and I'll get them uploaded also just take a look through those resources we've got an other folder as well as a Kovan 19 folder on there so if you're looking for content for newsletters social media posts whatever it may be it's likely that there's something in there that you could at least draw from and get inspiration for and Jenny said Dakota County is going to be adding a bunch of strength so you're getting thanks Jenny are there any other comments has anybody been using the information in the Dropbox or having trouble getting into the Dropbox let's start with has anybody use the drop so maybe as we start to use the calendar I would encourage everybody between before our next meeting to use check out the Dropbox and to use the calendar items that can kind of be our next steps tasks that we accomplished from this meeting if that sounds good to everybody additionally shameless plug for webinar tomorrow trp along with waste wise will be hosting a webinar on social media how to be most effective utilizing social media tools and refresher on how to access their toolkit and pull content directly from that to just plug and play into your platforms whether that's I think we're gonna be highlighting Facebook but it's all applicable for Instagram Twitter all that good stuff so please join us for that one as well and they can go to your website at waste wise I'm sure if they did not already receive a link or count I know yeah we can send out another email following this with the link to that webinar any other questions of our communications calendar committee or our content sharing library this is Laura Horner with the city of Bloomington I always love getting reminder emails telling me what I should be promoting so just a suggestion of maybe a monthly email with what the topic is and maybe a photo attached would be helpful just to keep us continually all sharing that same information um-hmm hi this is Chris sir I see a note from sue she's having audio trouble again she did want us to ask related to the calendar and to try to get some more feedback on really what are people's expectations and I think Laura you just added good idea for some help there but are there are specific things that people are looking for our ways that it would be most useful or easy to use then we can work to you know lay out the calendar and topics or you know have it available or that you know if there's anything specific related to that we'd like to know um we did get the question of where we find the calendar where is it located for people and also Nate mentioned he we need to develop more visuals on know favorite plates plastic utensils in the recycling and I do want to make note John tell me if I'm wrong I believe when you're in the Dropbox you can create a new folder so Nate for example if you have a lot of material that you want or you have some you I believe can create a folder of a new topic area correct John correct yeah and that's happened a couple times already so I appreciate the folks that have done that it's kind of a guide for new stuff that were in need of so that way Nate you could start that folder and then it would kind of be a note to people as they're going through that material that they should add material to that category just a quick note this is Johnny sorry Laura this is Jenny from Dakota County off of Laura's great suggestion I usually do my next month's social media and enews if I'm good two weeks on for the next month if I'm not so good usually like a few days before the next month so anything if you do end up doing like a reminder monthly email it'd be helpful to at least do like a week or two before the month because if it's the first week of that month I've already done everything and maybe a lot of people have to so just for planning and then for I always use waste wises Flickr account for great images and I'm wondering John if there's a mechanism to send you or someone newly taken images so we can keep adding to that we would love that and I think we could do that kind of the same way that we've been doing it with all of this other content either via the Dropbox or you can email them directly to me I know with images email gets a bit restrictive so Dropbox is probably the better way to go on that one but we love new images especially kind of the high-res studio-quality stuff and we've been organizing that as we go as well thank you I will kind of ditto Jenny I know that there are some people that do not they're not allowed to do their own social media they have to turn it into their communications departments so if they do reminders the more advanced notice for those groups because often times they're ignored if they're wanting it today yeah I think that's great input I know the calendar right now isn't really a finished product so I honestly don't know where it lives for everyone to access it but I think it's a great idea to send those reminders out maybe middle to late in the month to get people encouraged to post about specific things for the following month hey Jon couldn't we just put it in the Dropbox for now yeah I think that works until we find a permanent home for it maybe it can go in there and then it can be kind of a still a fluid group you know I know yeah that definitely works any other questions or comments or wishes and okay um I know Jeff Wiest couldn't be with us for the holler engagement subgroup and he did request that somebody from his group report and he did not think any was going to be there or hear that it is somebody on here that can report on that group otherwise I will go through it a little bit I I'm here Jennifer I told them that I couldn't do it just in case I'd have a screaming child but she ran away for a second so we'll see how I can do so the holler engagement sub group met to talk about different priorities and how we can align messaging and education and really make sure that all hollers are being consistent on enforcement in in order to reduce contamination and so a lot of us decided that multifamily is the Beast that is really difficult to overcome as far as contamination and so we'd like to focus on that as something that we can do as haulers and I think there are some questions that we wanted to have a discussion on do you want to pull those up and then we can just start talking about those I think you're muted Julie Julie you're muted I'm just trying to get my screen ready to show okay yes so I was I was only Malusi hurry oops and everybody see that so this is a open discussion of like what folks think because we're trying to figure out the best way to coordinate this work and initially we talked about having the communications calendar subgroup kind of create and some materials that would work specifically for multifamily and the communications calendar group thinks that you know the the message should be consistent amongst single-family homes and multi-family so eventually there will be educational materials that can be shared over so the first question is what are the basics of a good apartment building recycling program feel free to shout out ideas would say signage and a quick capacity well labeled dumpsters yeah location specifically collocation with trash I think good education among the the building and kind of targeted specific to that building so that the residents are seeing on numerous occasions what to put in there and I think one of the challenges that we should try to address with that is how you get after that individual accountability because I think that's that's where we get a lot of the contamination is nobody has that individual accountability so it all gets consolidated together I personally think a photo guide is super helpful too if you can have the posters especially in the multifamily buildings that have separate facilities it might be a little harder when it's just stumped stirs out back but if they have a room they often have room that they could put big posters of of pictures of items both that you could take and you could not take I was just at my daughter's apartment in Mankato and we were pulling out pizza boxes and it's it's written small on a sticker but when they're bringing it in there they're not reading that so the room is completely open if they had a big nice poster I think it would be really helpful I would add just good good communication between the apartment property manager and our owner and either the city or the hauler to have good communication about problems or issues to help them be addressed in a timely way something else you guys to add to this to think about for brainstorming is because I know Jeff mentioned last time that one of their big problems is those properties that do not have an on-site or active property managers that's the biggest problem they see so it might be those four plexes that actually just have containers out back so if you have a good brainstorming on that I know they could use that I would add education just like translated signage and if not that just clear images of like goes where Lori roof of Camp Ripley said they have where does it go posters on the back doors of their buildings for commingled organics trash cardboard dumpsters and they've been working well I mean management waste management is actually working on a door hanger we have already done door hangers for apartment buildings but now we're doing a second wave right now and we'll be translating those into Somali and other languages so we see a need for that and again it gets back to Chris's point on having that relationship with the property manager so that if the salesperson cannot they probably can't physically go into the building and hang these door hangers so with the property management engage the manager can actually do that use use a property manager to carry out that activity this is Chris I'm sorry if it's been mentioned before but I would I would add you know adequate capacity that there's you know recycling carts and/or dumpster you know best-case at everybody location where there's trash disposal will help a lot I think another thing too is a really clear whether this is signage or in the lease or other communication a really clear explanation of what to do with other things that can be recycled like electronics and legally can't go in the trash because we here and I think our multifamily properties see a lot of you know electronics and especially in the recycling carts I would just like to add commitment from the management the property management if they are all in and they are willing to put in the work to provide resources for their residents and that that commitment goes a long way awesome any other last thoughts about the first question okay so I guess we've heard what's work what has worked but what hasn't worked that you may have tried to increase recycling or reduce contamination at multifamily buildings oh there's the carrot and then there's the stick and for us I think having a minimum requirement capacity requirement per unit has been effective it hasn't been it's something that we've largely enforced on a complaint basis but when we did our original inventory we found that you know the vast majority of properties were in compliance and by that I mean like 70 ish percent but I think it's something that is worth considering because it gives a baseline for those of us on the regulatory side for an expectation versus you know you have to 160 or 190 gallon cart 460 units that's just not the interpretation of what is sufficient capacity and state law is not super useful Emily what is your guideline on capacity per unit our requirement is 20 gallons per unit but the easier translation is 1 cubic yard per 10 units essentially roughly translated I know in the facilities I've seen having a separate container for corrugated has seemed to be helpful because the corrugated really does fill up the containers and what's their full people either stop using them or start piling junk and then property managers get upset and I think that's what turns them off of the programs so encouraging that separate maybe larger container that will hold corrugated especially for move-ins and mu outs I would I would like to add signage without education doesn't really work if the party managers are doing the least of just putting up signage and not really doing the outreach and the good work that needs to be done in informing their residents and educating their residents I think that's a big I guess another question would be how do you how do you get property managers to engage in that process because with my experience working on the multifamily program with Eureka we were one holler and we had all of our contacts and we the contact but a lot of folks are really more concerned about making sure rent was getting paid for them and making sure they can operate the whole facility but how do we get them to care about recycling and really to make sure it's not just a regulatory reason why we're trying to get you well group of crickets here not much feedback no and that's a tough I know we don't have a lot of apartment building programs here in Shorewood so I kind of go by programs that I have seen in either where friends or family live and so but just thinking is almost having some sort of reward for the property managers because I really think they probably are like all of us right they're overworked and underpaid and they're constantly being asked for one more thing and they hear more complaints than praise so I wonder if it's something either counties or States or municipalities could have some sort of a recognition and reward program maybe a you know an event that they attend and they're recognized something that that offers these people something that makes them feel appreciated that they're going this extra mile for us on this but that's just some brainstorming I think painting recycling is something that tenants demands that it's expected of when they're looking for new tenants can help be a motivator and also pointing to two other multi-unit properties that are doing this and seeing other people do things is always motivating perceived as the norm yeah I I agree with Android that's that's an important area aspect to be thinking about is the the you know engagement will come from a tenant and can spur conferring provements or you know communication among neighbor neighbors in that or just you know kind of bugging the property owner and our manager you know or even you know offering to assist in things but they can be a valuable you know asset in that in the effort if the property manager or others are kind of moving slow okay so I'll share with Mike Robinson's comments on chat because he must be a musician so he said we feel the same as Eureka but it's like that old question how do you get to Carnegie Hall practice practice practice we keep going back to them with more education and help to get the recycling program going it does not always work what we have to keep addict Oh persistence you I would just like to add resources also help going to these property managers knowing that they are like overworked and underpaid but showing up with resources and letting them know that we have free signage some money available to help them out is always a plus and also the more recycling becomes a commonplace and the more pressure that they feel from their residents or the more they see recycling as a plus is always helpful when folks have you know they can use the decadence of armored unit recycles as a way to entice people to move in I think that's also helpful and lastly just you know letting them know that they can save money if they recycle and how how recycling can really be a way for them to cut down their costs and time I think just being patient and then you know working with property managers and hopefully like you know keep keep that communication open and keep they showing up and giving them resources that they want and in time hopefully yeah oh sorry go ahead yeah this is Emma Lincoln I one of the challenges when we did our ordinance process with you'll save money part of the conversation that we struggled with I think it's an easier conversation to have with owner-occupied buildings like condos because you don't have as much turnover the reason that the you can downsize your trash conversation is hard in regular apartments it's because you have so much turnover that at the end of every month no matter how good of recyclers our residents our residents are during the week or during the rest of them still have couches and shelves and stuff that they all just wait to the last minute and pitch it in the trash so one of the reasons that this I don't want to downsize their trash is that they have to plan for those days that one day of the month that one weekend the month when everybody's moving and so that has been a harder sell for us with with the kind of regular apartments but it's definitely something that the multifamily properties or those that have a really good bulk program set up and that's I think another key piece maybe going back to a good the basics of a good apartment recycling is like in Hannah and Hannah's having a really good bulk collection on a say recycling but both disposal programs so then you don't have all that material going in the trash so then you can promote that economic piece more and not have it be just the property owners stuck in that space if we've got this one weekend a month where we just have to plan for a full eight yard thing of trash because people aren't gonna donate their furniture or whatever Laurie said at Ripley we check dumpsters for contamination and volume we record - we record C by unit example 94th Calvary then we report who is the best and who's the worst - leadership really good efforts get an article in the quarterly environmental newsletter a higher ranks really get into it everyone wants to be best no one wants to be on the naughty list might be an interesting concept to introduce to multifamily units you so recognizing multifamily apartment complexes in newsletters we know the competition for rent is very high so doing articles about those that are doing a great job might be some free easy press okay awesome mm-hmm so the next two questions are really about sustainability with the multifamily program I think I'm gonna lump them together but any other ideas on how we can make this education on this work more sustainable I think it's important to know what makes it and maybe bill or Julie if you're still on there on here what what is it that makes it in your eyes as a whole or the lease what makes it not sustainable is that the contamination only is a participation this is Bill just just a comment on this and maybe it touches on your question but it's not from the Halling perspective but you know this is a tough nut to crack right I mean if we're able to figure it out on this call that's amazing because this is what we've been struggling with and I don't I don't say that to say that we shouldn't attempt to chat take on the challenge but this is difficult by design and I think it comes back to the fact that a lot of two things in my opinion drive the quality of these recycling one is individual accountability you kind of know what you're bringing out at the curve but if you have flag someone's ban or getting books tag on your bin and all your neighbors see a pink tag hanging on your bin there's that public accountability and that has proven to be very successful and then the other is just a culture of recycling right and whether it's you feel that need and you realize that inherent value it's not a monetary value but you know the environmental and social elements of that I think that latter one is tough because that that takes time and it takes generational change in ways of thinking and it's harder just a continual left and continual effort I struggle with how to get accountability at the apartment buildings and I think we've had a lot of good comments around that but that's kind of what I see in what the the largest concern I have as an operator is just quality than from those environments right seeing more contamination especially at times when when contamination is a significant challenge for our industry yeah and I'll say that because of the nature of transient residents it makes it really hard to feel successful because you have to continuously update and educate folks especially because as humans we don't really absorb information with what we need folks to remind us all the time and so it's we'll have to have that collaboration and commitment with property managers and residents to make that change I'd also like to add this is Beth Matisse and over at Republic when it comes we talk about the transient population of a lot of our multifamily units but also there's what I notice which gets kind of frustrating for me is I can be working with a property management manager who's very committed to recycling and then they go somewhere else there's so much movement of property managers I mean you get someone in three months later you call them and it's somebody else there's just a lot of movement with property managers themselves and that in itself is just one more piece of difficulty for us to overcome is some really care some will find the resources some don't we have in some properties they have caretakers if they have a caretaker that's on site generally they can monitor and really help out a lot but a lot of these a lot of these properties have caretakers and maintenance folks that float from one building to another within their organization and that becomes more difficult as well so those are some of the things that that I think we struggle with in helping property management companies reduce contamination and increase education but I'm finding that these property managers move around a lot and and that's difficult for me I would this is full simplemente Connie I would also like to add that a lot of how recycling has been approached in the past has been slowly working with households instead of multi units and now things are shifting to to multi units and how a lot of the things that we have in our wheelhouse are frameworks that have come from like recycling in in housing and just like homes individual homes instead of the community living so I think a lot of how we do things also kind of need to shift a bit when we're working with multi units and recognizing that you know the world is there so there's so much that goes on with people and recycling such a small thing that you know that they have to be concerned about and really you know accepting the fact that we live in a complicated world and not a fair world and some folks have fewer resources than others and really doing our our you know our due diligence and understanding that before you know just showing up and expecting a lot of residents that are digging so many other things to accept recycling and have that be their focus when they have other things going on long-winded but absolutely Filson I agree there's a lot of inequities within multifamily versus single-family homes and there's a huge gap in wealth and access and education and all that and we do have to acknowledge that before we just come in and and kind of force people to recycle but the same token I want to make sure that they feel included too because that sometimes I feel like multifamily is just kind of under the rug but then there's a huge population of folks that were excluding and not making sure that we're keeping them together you know to come along with this environmental it's definitely a balance this is Steve shuffled by on Republic Services I would pulls this on I don't know the answer I think I do but I wondered like this the the type of apartment if one's better than the other for recycling so I guess I think of what I live like in multi-story apartments that had the shoots on every floor where you could recycle you know it's harder to throw bigger items down the chute that sort of thing you didn't have to carry the material all the way to the parking lot so I wonder if the contamination is less in those styles than the ones where people have to kind of collect the recycling in their house and then take that bag out to the recycling bin you know every couple days we're that outside recycling bin is openness on secured anybody can just dump in there from you know the public to that renter who may not care where it goes type of thing so just throw it out there I don't everybody seen the difference between the style of multi-level if there's a difference not on the street this is Laurie from Dakota County we have talked about this quite a bit that the current model of having dumpsters in the garage or the parking lot where people have to bring their things and put it in there is is really not working very well for the multifamily so we're trying to figure out you know we have organics drop sites that there's a code that people have to punch in the code to get into the dumpsters and our materials are very very clean now those people participating in organics they are that is really important to them because that's a very unusual step for people to take so it's not really comparing an apple - an apple but the concept of a different model is something that we've been talking about I mean I think Emily brought up you know the bulky waste that seems to be the big issue with with the dumpsters that people just dump anything in them so it's like you need to have some kind of bulky waste if we're going to continue with this model to have the dumpsters just available for anybody to put something in we do have shoots in our our CDA housing and we're doing that test right now to see if that makes a significant difference if people are don't have to go and bring their materials a lot of that older apartment dwellings don't have those shoots but we're hoping that more and more we'll have the new ones that are being built so it's a it's a good I don't know I'm glad you brought that up because I think that's something we haven't talked about a lot is what model would work best for this environment does anybody have any other feedback that they want to - the holler engagement group exponent while we're on this topic I just wanted to mention that Ramsey and Washington counties this recycling program recently expanded to include multi-units so now we're making grants available to property owners and managers to improve their recycling organics infrastructure programs Filson is one of the leaves on that she's also on the call um sorry oh this is Chris out I'll just add I mean I I agree with Bill you know i we've been talking about this a long time and if we had the feel end-all here then be phenomenal but I think you know the thing that we've been struggling with and I'm thinking other communities in terms of making this sustainable is you know we had an issue with and again we're all facing and you know just enough staff you know understanding that the program's needs extra attention and you know we've we've had to you know put a bandaid on things for a long time with extra grant money or you know Green Corps people or others in terms of those extra resources for us to get out in the community you know to make it really solid and sustainable it'd be great if we just were able to of you know solid you know staff and other resources just embedded as part of our overall program so it's not as piecemeal isn't as I don't mean it to sound that way we're all making very good strides and putting good effort into our outreach in that but it took for us it's just a common denominator it's it's just there all the time to add to what Chris is saying I think from all the years we've talked about multifamily do you think that's where we get back to why multifamily has so often mistakenly then just piggybacked on and treated much like our single-family residential is because we don't have the staff to create an implement and follow up on complete new programs and so oftentimes it's just kind of a piggyback effort and that's probably where a lot of confusion I mean ideally a simpler program for people who are more transient and then a different program for condos where the people are more permanent but it's all about staffing and follow-up and property managers being there so I think that all affects the sustainability so does anybody else have anything on that I know Laura corner and was in a little private conversation with Nate here I mean it was public but private about the recycling partnership multifamily grant and he did share that Pope Douglas is adding two more independent assisted living facilities under the multifamily recycling program and they're working on an updated county ordinance that will require recycling at all multifamily and trying to determine whether they should target duplexes and triplexes in there I did share on there with him that in our recycling programs here duplexes and triplexes are part of the regular residential program but almost if they went in almost if they was already required so I'm sure some of the counties down here could provide you with quite a bit of information on that Nate but is there any other information on some of those multifamily grant programs and how they're going you this is Laurie from Dakota County we have a grant program that's a couple of years old now we did a pilot first and actually I think it's going really well with the contamination fees for a lot of the multi-family we've been able to reduce those contamination fees just by all of the work that we've do we have a lot of different resources just like everybody's talking about educational resources etc and different mechanisms and then we recently put multifamily requirements into our county ordinance and into our community funding program so cities are able to apply for funds to do the multifamily work that we've outlined in their in their grant program and this year we've got five different communities participating in that and so then hopefully they can become really good experts at working on that and we can have more cities participate Alyssa from Hennepin County shared that they did a pilot program to have a volunteer of resident of a building go with county staff door-to-door to distribute materials and they think that went well and they've also used the master recycler composter volunteers to help with outreach in those buildings so that kind of helps a little bit with the resources if you have that available to you Kelly mentioned duplexes and triplexes are are much easier than the large buildings so Nathan I would say that means target those they're much easier Nate also why if there could be a program where we could build that we could build with local businesses to get volunteerism supported now neat did you mean and you can just give me a thumbs up if you can't do it by voice but did you mean having them help with multifamily volunteers or - with business recycling multi-family I think this is Natalie and I think it was me that post oh it was Natalie you're right just a chime in since Nate's probably confused I do mean working with local businesses here in the marketplace that have a you know initiatives around sustainability and volunteerism and potentially working with them to build out programs that would be supporting education amongst consumers whether it be in multifamily houses I know school education is an area of opportunity as well but you know I I am from seventh gen so I represent the business community and I just wonder if maybe there is a way if resources is part of the challenge if there's a way that potentially the business community could help just food for thought great I think especially in some of those communities that have strong strong business community leadership with strong downtown's and things that that would especially be valued coops and some of the folks you know some of those different organizations they're there in the mix of it there is definitely an opportunity to see there and most of the time their employees are very engaged in sustainability and in recycling practices any other comments how to recycle logo on products was suggested those are awesome and only everybody would do it yeah yeah the and keeping the recycling logo off those things not recyclable would be nice too to be honest having a video any other comments or questions in regard to this were okay and I'm so I'm going to put a challenge out there for our three outreach groups and I know Jennifer was dealing with something so she might not be able to represent the holler group but I would like each of the groups to give their next step or something that they want us to for sure accomplish within the next two weeks out of this meeting so not only before the next meeting but what is the one thing that would help your group if all of us over the next two weeks we put it on our calendar as a to do so let's start with that calendar group so you can all three get of your own if you want to john court upload something to dropbox upload something is that reset to the Trotta so within the next two weeks every single person on call please either send it to John or upload something to share with the group to the drive hey John on that are used did you see in the arm news we have a Google Drive folder with a bunch of code related stuff specifically I did not see that but I'll - if you go in your life it's been in the last week three arm emails just because I it's like near the top and it's under a section I call kovat resources and basically we put together kind of essentially like what you're doing only for Co vid stuff and there's I don't know six or seven different things in there some of them are emails some of them are social media posts and feel free I think I actually did it where I saved them less like image files or PDFs and uploaded them so I can email you those too but just in case there's some that would be useful from there they're all public stuff anyway so you could yeah it looks like I have access so I'll dig through there and Adam to me the Dropbox did get a message from sue and her comment was I believe I'm sorry I'm getting lost here calendar and let us know what's missing from there if there's topics that are not featured on that calendar that you believe are important let us know and we'll adjust accordingly I can send out a copy of that calendar in a follow-up email to this for those who might not have it for some reason and I'll also upload that into the Dropbox it's all free oh good idea okay Courtney Adam like just if you have any problematic materials that have been on your mind if you can send them my way please do otherwise that's all for us and I would guess the holler group just if you have in or is there anybody from the holler group is on here that wants to share this is Steve Julia from bullock services i think of the fact that we just went through this whole brainstorming session i think we have a lot of good information to work off just from that great and steve may be a good idea for you guys is to gather the brainstorming and to then send it out to us to do substorms off of each of those you know what I mean yes Julie could you send the link when it's done yes yeah I'm going out the link thank you so are there any other things we want to discuss any any other topics that people would like to cover before we go you no I want to remind everybody regardless of where you live what organization you're in or what your job is - please add the green Corps member application period to your LinkedIn to your social media both personal and business let's get as many applications in there as they can and let's make this be the thing people want to do so I want to really encourage that and I will be sending up these follow-up things for all of us to do our homework before the next thing and I went to tell everybody that heading this group was painless I was a little nervous about the technology and if it would hand out so when they come to you next time and ask you to do this I would say just don't hesitate just do it it wasn't hard at all so if there's I'm looks like Nathan is just thinking he's gonna do it next I can just tell so if there is nothing else I think we're going to go ahead and and just a little bit early and everybody just have a great week stay healthy good luck making it through this and working at home and I know some of you are gonna be transitioning back into your offices keep us posted on how that goes wear masks according to Nate especially at work if you're not in your own office don't rub your eyes according to Courtney oh that was so remembering all those things so everybody enjoy try to get out and go on a walk tonight bye bye thanks Julie thanks everyone take care really