‘We really need to look upstream to reduce the waste,’ says Sonoma County’s zero-waste champion

Leslie Lukacs is the executive director of Zero Waste Sonoma (formally known as the Sonoma County Waste Management Agency), which oversees household hazardous waste, recycling, organics and zero waste programs for the county.

As a joint powers authority (JPA), her agency helps the various jurisdictions comply with recycling legislation being implemented by the State. She has worked for 25 years in solid waste and resource management and as an industry consultant.

Lukacs is excited about the opportunity that local refill and zero-waste stores give our community to live a life with less packaging or no packaging at all.

“Refill stores play one of the most important roles in getting to zero waste because they focus on two of the three Rs— the ‘reduce’ and the ‘reuse’ vs. just the recycling,” Lukacs says. “We really need to look upstream to reduce the waste we are generating and then reuse when we can. The reality is we are not going to recycle our way out of our waste management issues.”

Zero Waste Sonoma recently did a waste characterization study, looking at what trash is making its way to the landfill, by 71 material types. About 56% of the overall Sonoma County waste stream can be classified as: divertible from the landfill, potentially divertible from the landfill, or compostable.

The study also found recyclable materials in disposed waste decreased significantly, from 26% of the single-family waste stream in 2014 to 13% in 2022, mainly due to reductions in recyclable paper and plastic. (See zerowastesonoma.gov for more on this study as well as to download the 2022 Zero Waste Guide “for a healthy environment and healthy communities.”)

Many of the North Bay refill stores opened in the last two and a half years.

“Maybe that was one silver lining of the pandemic,” Lukacs notes. “Because of all the Amazon deliveries and take-out food while sheltering in place, we were much more aware of the waste we were generating. My family saw our home becoming a wasteful place, so the refill shop in Windsor, where I live, became very appealing.”

All the sustainable store owners acknowledge that educating the public is a big part of their mission.

“When you show business people, and families, how you can save them money on the front end with their sustainable purchasing and on the back end with recycle and reuse, it works for their bottom line and for the environment.”