October 7, 2002 News Release King County demonstrates waste prevention, recycling pay off By reusing bus motors, eliminating 600,000 pages of paper and dozens of actions King County employees are leading the way in workplace recycling, waste reduction, and purchasing of products made from recycled materials. King County will be recognized as the Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program's "Partner of the Year". "King County's participation in the WasteWise program helped us to take a look at the everyday decisions we make and think about how they impact our planet," said King County Executive Ron Sims. "To help the environment we made several changes and, often, these changes also save money and made government more efficient. Employees have gotten into the spirit of the program and made a real difference." The award will be presented to Executive Sims on Wednesday, Oct. 16. At that time, he will recognize a number of employees whose leadership helped King County to earn the WasteWise award. Agency divisions to be recognized include: Transit, Facilities Management, District Court, Procurement and Contract Services, Surplus, Solid Waste; and Parks and Recreation. The award was based on King County's WasteWise evaluation report for 2001 that describes waste reduction and recycling-related efforts by County agencies. Those efforts included: The King County Surplus Program re-distributed more than 4,000 items such as binders, folders, file boxes, etc. to County agencies in 2001, with a total value (at 50 percent of original retail cost) of more than $1.5 million. King County Metro Transit purchased 100 new trolley buses without motors, instead choosing to reuse the motors from its old buses. With an estimated savings of $200,000 per bus, the total savings from this reuse project was estimated at $20 million. The County is no longer printing paper copies of most of its internal financial reports eliminating an estimated 600,000 pages of reports annually and saving the County more than $16,000. When the Kingdome in Seattle was demolished, the Solid Waste Division acquired the large garbage compactor from the Kingdome, at no cost. In 2001, this compactor was installed at the Enumclaw Transfer Station and converted to compact cardboard collected at the station for recycling. This compactor is reducing the number of cardboard haul trips, saving the Division several thousands of dollars in hauling costs annually. Through the County's employee-recycling program, a total of 4.4 million pounds of materials were collected internally and recycled in 2001 -- including more than 1.5 million pounds of paper. King County purchased an estimated $3.8 million dollars worth of "environmentally preferable" products in 2001. The total estimated cost savings from using "environmentally preferable" products in 2001 were $580,000. Environmentally preferable products are defined as those that have recycled content, reduce waste, use less energy, are less toxic, or are more durable. Most of King County's purchases were recycled-content products. The "Partner of the Year" award, which King County won in the Local Government category, is the Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program's top honor for internal waste prevention and recycling. More than 1,200 businesses and agencies are partners in the WasteWise program nationwide, including major corporations and large government agencies. For more information on the King County WasteWise program contact Tom Watson at tom.watson@kingcounty.gov or (206) 296-4481 see the Web site at: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/swd/wastewise. Related Information Wastewise Program Recycling for households Recycling for businesses News Releases

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