Welcome to the
Waste Wise Program

WSU Waste Wise Volunteers are citizens of Camano and Whidbey islands who are learning how to reduce garbage and teach these techniques to others. They receive four weeks of classroom training and then share what they've learned in volunteer outreach at schools, fairs, information booths, businesses and other settings. Their work is important because:

• We have no active landfill in Island County
• Our drinking water comes from underground
• We live in a beautiful place and want to keep it that way

Island County is made up of islands. Most of our drinking water comes from a sole source aquifer. To protect our drinking waste, Island County closed its Coupeville landfill in 1992 and converted it to a transfer station. All solid waste is transported out-of-county -- in fact, to south central Washington!

On Whidbey and Camano islands garbage is collected at five transfer points, called drop-box facilities, located at Camano Hill Road, Oak Harbor, Coupeville, Freeland and Bayview. It is trucked to a railhead on the mainland, where it is loaded aboard trains and transported to Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Washington, for disposal. This is expensive and cumbersome.

Waste Wise Volunteers are headquartered at Admiralty Head Lighthouse at Fort Casey State Park and administered by Washington State University WSU Extension for Island County. For additional information, please call or write:

Janet Hall, Waste Wise Volunteer Program Manager
(360) 678-7974
halljn@wsu.edu
WSU Extension - Island County
PO Box 5000
Coupeville, WA 98239-5000