Seattle’s first affordable housing high-rise tower in 50 years welcomes its first residents (and it’s on First Hill)

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

caption: Blake House makes up the bottom third of this affordable housing highrise on First Hill.
Blake House makes up the bottom third of this affordable housing highrise on First Hill.

This week, people who used to live outside began moving into a new building on First Hill. It’s the first new affordable housing high-rise tower Seattle has seen in 50 years.

It represents a different approach — in terms of scale and strategy — for addressing homelessness in the region.

Kevin Thomas Kiso smiles in a sunlit lobby, inside a concrete, steel and glass high-rise apartment building on First Hill. He has just finished signing his lease, and now holds a new set of keys.

“This is the coolest day of my adult life, and I’m 57 … I spent 20 years sleeping right out here, at the Stimson Green Mansion by the park … the mansion over here,” Kiso says as he gestures out the window. “I spent 14 years in my sleeping bag, with my laptop here. And then I would go to the library and read French literature, like Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean Paul Sartre, and Camus.”

Reading the French Existentialists helped Kiso get through a dark time in his life. He got addicted to heroin and spent time in prison. He’s been trying to stay clean ever since. For the last two years, he’s been living in a cubicle at a Salvation Army shelter.

“It was people milling around, and walking by, and rapping, and singing, and talking, and yakking, and you never got a moment of peace and tranquility,” Kiso said of living on the street. “And I know that that’s what I’m being granted here. And silence is going to be kind of frightening at first for me, I believe. The tranquility and … I’m not sure how I’m going to react without sirens blaring and incessant traffic and things telling me to walk and don’t walk.”

Homelessness is a problem with many faces. There are people who need help getting off the streets, and there are many people on limited incomes who need affordable housing, so they don’t get pushed into a cycle that can lead to homelessness. Experts say you have to work at the problem from both directions. The 17-story apartment tower in First Hill is therefore divided into two parts, each with its own entrance and lobby.

The bottom part is called “Blake House.” It provides “permanent supportive housing” for seniors and veterans coming out of homelessness. It’s run by a nonprofit called Plymouth Housing.

The top part is called “The Rise,” and it’s for people on modest incomes, such as teachers, nurses and other health care workers. Another nonprofit, Bellwether Housing, runs this portion.

Kiso is part of the first cohort to move into Blake House. In a few months, he’ll have 112 new neighbors. Above Blake House, another 250 families will live in the Bellwether Housing section.

The tower has a common area lounge with a view of the First Hill neighborhood, including its many hospitals. Paul Schumann uses the lounge as he studies from a medical textbook on his laptop. He moved into this top part of the high rise in March.

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Brief history of the NRA’s position on gun control

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Jim deMaine
Heather Cox Richardson May 7     Share   For years now, after one massacre or another, I have written some version of the same article, explaining that the nation’s current gun free-for-all is not traditional but, rather, is a symptom of the takeover of our nation by a radical extremist minority. The idea that massacres are “the price of freedom,” as right-wing personality Bill O’Reilly said in 2017 after the Mandalay Bay massacre in Las Vegas, in which a gunman killed 60 people and wounded 411 others, is new, and it is about politics, not our history.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution, on which modern-day arguments for widespread gun ownership rest, is one simple sentence: “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” There’s not a lot to go on about what the Framers meant, although in their day, to “bear arms” meant to be part of an organized militia.

As the Tennessee Supreme Court wrote in 1840, “A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.”

Today’s insistence that the Second Amendment gives individuals a broad right to own guns comes from two places.

One is the establishment of the National Rifle Association in New York in 1871, in part to improve the marksmanship skills of American citizens who might be called on to fight in another war, and in part to promote in America the British sport of elite shooting, complete with hefty cash prizes in newly organized tournaments. Just a decade after the Civil War, veterans jumped at the chance to hone their former skills. Rifle clubs sprang up across the nation.

By the 1920s, rifle shooting was a popular American sport. “Riflemen” competed in the Olympics, in colleges, and in local, state, and national tournaments organized by the NRA. Being a good marksman was a source of pride, mentioned in public biographies, like being a good golfer. In 1925, when the secretary of the NRA apparently took money from ammunition and arms manufacturers, the organization tossed him out and sued him.

NRA officers insisted on the right of citizens to own rifles and handguns but worked hard to distinguish between law-abiding citizens who should have access to guns for hunting and target shooting and protection, and criminals and mentally ill people, who should not. In 1931, amid fears of bootlegger gangs, the NRA backed federal legislation to limit concealed weapons; prevent possession by criminals, the mentally ill and children; to require all dealers to be licensed; and to require background checks before delivery. It backed the 1934 National Firearms Act, and parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act, designed to stop what seemed to be America’s hurtle toward violence in that turbulent decade.

But in the mid-1970s a faction in the NRA forced the organization away from sports and toward opposing “gun control.” It formed a political action committee (PAC) in 1975, and two years later it elected an organization president who abandoned sporting culture and focused instead on “gun rights.”

This was the second thing that led us to where we are today: leaders of the NRA embraced the politics of Movement Conservatism, the political movement that rose to combat the business regulations and social welfare programs that both Democrats and Republicans embraced after World War II.

Movement Conservatives embraced the myth of the American cowboy as a white man standing against the “socialism” of the federal government as it sought to level the economic playing field between Black Americans and their white neighbors.

Leaders like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater personified the American cowboy, with his cowboy hat and opposition to government regulation, while television Westerns showed good guys putting down bad guys without the interference of the government.

In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Movement Conservative hero Ronald Reagan took a stand against gun control. In 1980, the Republican platform opposed the federal registration of firearms, and the NRA endorsed a presidential candidate—Reagan—for the first time. When President Reagan took office, a new American era, dominated by Movement Conservatives, began. And the power of the NRA over American politics grew.

In 1981 a gunman trying to kill Reagan shot and paralyzed his press secretary, James Brady, and wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and police officer Thomas Delahanty. After the shooting, then-representative Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation that became known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, or the Brady Bill, to require background checks before gun purchases. Reagan, who was a member of the NRA, endorsed the bill, but the NRA spent millions of dollars to defeat it.

After the Brady Bill passed in 1993, the NRA paid for lawsuits in nine states to strike it down. Until 1959, every single legal article on the Second Amendment concluded that it was not intended to guarantee individuals the right to own a gun. But in the 1970s, legal scholars funded by the NRA had begun to argue that the Second Amendment did exactly that.

In 1997, when the Brady Bill cases came before the Supreme Court as Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court declared parts of the measure unconstitutional.

Now a player in national politics, the NRA was awash in money from gun and ammunition manufacturers. By 2000 it was one of the three most powerful lobbies in Washington. It spent more than $40 million on the 2008 election. In that year, the landmark Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller struck down gun regulations and declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Increasingly, NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent $13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns.

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A little more behind the ears please

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Sybil-Ann

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In Berkeley, a Library Protest Is a Fight for Anthropology in an A.I. Age

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Jim deMaine
Five students stand near a floor-to-ceiling window. To the left are shelves full of books. Long white tables are in the foreground.
At 67 years old, the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library at the University of California, Berkeley, is set to be closed to save costs.

Thanks to Mike C.

By Tim Arango May 2, 2023 in the NYT

BERKELEY, Calif. — To kick off homecoming weekend last fall, the University of California, Berkeley, held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new data sciences building, known as the Gateway. At a cost of over half a billion dollars, the 367,270-square-foot building, with “extended sightlines and natural light-filled corridors,” is being billed as a hub for research in artificial intelligence, data analytics and machine learning.

That may represent the future, but the past is just a short walk across campus in the stacks of the anthropology library. For decades, the repository has served generations of scholars in a space as modest as the Gateway is grand: a 1,500-square-foot corner on the second floor of the anthropology department’s building, with a cozy reading area of armchairs and computer terminals along one wall.

For days now, the library has become a scene of occupation. Students have filled it with tents, sleeping bags and air mattresses in a last-ditch effort to save the 67-year-old institution dedicated to anthropology, which encompasses the study of humanity, societies and cultures. The university is preparing to move the collections of archaeological field notes and books — about 80,000 volumes in total, on subjects as varied as folk tales, Black culture and Mexican American social movements — to a nearby warehouse and the main library, saving $400,000 annually.

For the student occupiers, the fight is as much a battle over a library as it is over humanities and social sciences in an age when the world is obsessed with technology and seems eager to replace the physical world with virtual experiences driven by A.I.

“It’s about fundamentally writing a different story about what education is, what the university is for,” said Jesús Gutiérrez, a graduate student who works at the library and is writing a dissertation about folk art forms of the African diaspora.

Jesús Gutiérrez stands behind a desk that has a laptop computer on a stand. Piles of books are to his left, and signs about checking out books are in front of him.
Students hold signs and march to protest the closure of the anthropology library. One man with a light-colored button-down shirt holds a sign that says “Save Our Anthro Library! Fight for Knowledge.”

In the past five years alone, the number of Berkeley undergraduate students choosing to major in anthropology has dropped by about a quarter, part of a generation that has struggled to pay student loans and flocked toward science and engineering in the lucrative shadow of Silicon Valley.

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Posted in Advocacy, Education, Essays, History | 1 Comment

A Guide to Aging Well

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Looking to grow old gracefully? We can help. (from the NYT)

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Be prepared!

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Jim deMaine
Celebrities Pick Their Favorite New Yorker Cartoons | The New Yorker
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For those slippery grab bars

Posted on May 5, 2023 by Jim deMaine

These are easy to apply to your grab bars which are, at times, slippery with soap or water. I found them to be inexpensive on Amazon. Also, they’re good for those sliding throw rugs which are, as you know, a risk for falls. Please comment and recommend other safety tips.

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He bearily survived

Posted on May 3, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

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I think I can, I think I can . . .

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Rosemary W.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Memory Hub activities – May 2023

Posted on April 30, 2023 by Jim deMaine
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Meanwhile, in Florida

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mike C.

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A point of view

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Jim deMaine
The world is just.

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Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul

Posted on April 28, 2023 by Jim deMaine

by David Brooks in the NYT

Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.” I thought it was a marvelous slogan because it captured the idea that we’re in the middle of a moral struggle over who we are as a nation. In the video he released this week launching his re-election bid, he doubled down on that idea: We’re still, he said, “in a battle for the soul of America.”

I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because I think it illuminates what the 2024 presidential election is all about.

What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden is not using the word in a religious sense, but in a secular one. He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul.

Whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God is not my department. But I do ask you to believe that every person you meet has this moral essence, this quality of soul.

Because humans have souls, each one is of infinite value and dignity. Because humans have souls, each one is equal to all the others. We are not equal in physical strength or I.Q. or net worth, but we are radically equal at the level of who we essentially are.

The soul is the name we can give to that part of our consciousness where moral life takes place. The soul is the place our moral sentiments flow from, the emotions that make us feel admiration at the sight of generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.

It is the place where our moral yearnings come from, too. Most people yearn to lead good lives. When they act with a spirit of cooperation, their souls sing and they are happy. On the other hand, when they feel their lives have no moral purpose, they experience a sickness of the soul — a sense of lostness, pain and self-contempt.

Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do. Hawks and cobras are not morally responsible for their actions; but humans, possessors of souls, are caught in a moral drama, either doing good or doing ill.

Political campaigns are not usually contests over the status of the soul. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally, is the embodiment of an ethos that covers up the soul. Or to be more precise, each is an ethos that deadens the soul under the reign of the ego.

Trump, and Trumpism generally, represents a kind of nihilism that you might call amoral realism. This ethos is built around the idea that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Might makes right. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can because if I don’t, the other guy will. People are selfish; deal with it.

This ethos — which is central to not only Trump’s approach to life, but also Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s — gives people a permission slip to be selfish. In an amoral world, cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory and arrogance are valorized as survival skills.

People who live according to the code of amoral realism tear through codes and customs that have built over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation. Putin is not restrained by notions of human rights. Trump is not restrained by the normal codes of honesty.

In the mind of an amoral realist, life is not a moral drama; it’s a competition for power and gain, red in tooth and claw. Other people are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and worth; they are objects to be utilized.

Biden talks a lot about the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At its deepest level, that struggle is between systems that put the dignity of individual souls at the center and systems that operate by the logic of dominance and submission.

You may disagree with Biden on many issues. You may think he is too old. But that’s not the primary issue in this election. The presidency, as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”

One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of living through the Trump presidency was that we had to endure a steady downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing behavior. We were all corroded by it. That era was a reminder that the soul of a person and the soul of a nation are always in flux, every day moving a bit in the direction of elevation or a bit in the direction of degradation.

A return to that ethos would bring about a social and moral disintegration that is hard to contemplate. Say what you will about Biden, but he has generally put human dignity at the center of his political vision. He treats people with charity and respect.

The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite.

Posted in Advocacy, Government, Justice, Morality, Politics | 2 Comments

Thoughts from Emerson

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Ed note: I’ve just ordered the book, Three Roads Back by Robert D. Richardson. Have any of you read it? It’s about how Emerson, Thoreau and William James responded to the greatest losses of their lives. Please comment!

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Collected Poems and Translations

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Book bans

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Mary Jane F.

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What’s Age Got to Do with It?

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Dori Gillam: Monday, May 1, 2023 – 12:00PM to 1:00PM. Online event from King County Library System

Description: Dori Gillam takes a lighter look at aging while showing how ingrained ageism is in our society through birthday cards and advertising. Let’s start being positive and proud of every age!

Please register by clicking here

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Librarians with a sense of humor

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Jim deMaine
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

If you’re happy and you know it, . . .

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Jim deMaine
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I Hate To Break It To You But If You Recognize Any Of These 32 Pictures You Are Officially Old

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Bob P.

Ed note: For viewing all 32, click here.

A bowl of candy
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They May Be Just Acquaintances. They’re Important to You Anyway.

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Jim deMaine

by Paula Span in the NYT

Thanks to Marilyn W.

The people at the dog park, the bank teller, the regular waiter — these casual relationships may be “weak ties,” but they’re also a key to well-being.

Four dog owners, three with their dogs, kneel on a grassy patch of a park on a sunny spring day.

Victoria Tirondola and Lam Gong first struck up a conversation last spring at the dog run in Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, N.J., when they realized that each owned a dog named Abby. Ms. Tirondola, 65, an insurance sales representative who lives in nearby Cedar Grove, has a tiny bichon-poodle mix. Mr. Gong’s Abby, older and portlier, is a terrier-beagle.

They chatted about dogs at first. Then they learned that they both cooked, so “we talked about food and restaurants,” said Mr. Gong, 67, a retiree living in Clifton.

“And how much better my cooking is than his,” put in Ms. Tirondola. They were sitting on a bench, as the dogs dashed around on a warm spring afternoon, with a third member of a growing collection of regulars: Pattie Marsh, dog walker for a miniature Australian shepherd named Ollie.

“All of us live alone,” Ms. Tirondola said. “My mom just passed away in July, and we were very close. Lam lost his wife a few years ago.”

“It gives us companionship” to meet at the Bark Park, said Ms. Marsh, 55. She and Ms. Tirondola, who bonded as born-again Christians, come daily. Mr. Gong joins them once or twice a week. So does Lee Geanoules, 69, a part-time restaurant server from Clifton, who soon arrived with Charlie, a pug and beagle blend.

Psychologists and sociologists call these sorts of connections “weak ties” or “peripheral ties,” in contrast to close ties to family members and intimate friends. Some researchers investigating weak ties include in that category classmates, co-workers, neighbors and fellow religious congregants. Others look into interactions with near-strangers at coffee shops or on transit routes.

People who cross paths at the dog run, for instance, may recognize other regulars without knowing their names (though they probably know their dogs’ names) or anything much about them. Nevertheless, impromptu chats about pets or the weather often arise, and they’re important.

Such seemingly trivial interactions have been shown to boost people’s positive moods and reduce their odds of depressed moods. “Weak ties matter, not just for our moods but our health,” said Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist at the University of Sussex in England who has researched their impact.

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Posted in Aging Sites, happiness, Kindness, Pets | Comments Off on They May Be Just Acquaintances. They’re Important to You Anyway.

One to another – good feelings

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Sybil Ann

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30 Most Breathtaking Pics Of Architectural Wonders Around The World, As Shared In This Online Group (New Pics)

Posted on April 24, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Sybil Ann

Ed: To see all 30 pictures, click here.

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“Seven hundred days of listening, then one day of success”

Posted on April 19, 2023 by Jim deMaine

The remarkable Good Friday Agreement – essay by Heather Cox Richardson

I love Northern Ireland. I love the people. I love the place. They’ve been extraordinarily generous and hospitable to me and my wife, my family,” former senator George Mitchell of Maine told Jill Lawless of the Associated Press today at Queen’s University, located in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.

Mitchell, who is 89 years old and is being treated for leukemia, has avoided public events for three years, but he traveled to Belfast this week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that he helped to hammer out in 1998. 

This anniversary is no small thing. 

In April 1998, after 30 years of violence that became known as “the Troubles,” Mitchell helped to broker a peace between the British government, the Irish government, and eight political parties from Northern Ireland. It was not an easy negotiation. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland became an independent state in 1921. From the 1960s until the 1990s, Northern Ireland was torn between those who wanted it to stay part of the United Kingdom-—mostly Protestants—and those who wanted it to join the rest of Ireland, who were mostly Catholics. 

The conflict between the two looked much like a civil war, and more than 3,500 people, mostly civilians, died in the violence.

In 1995, Mitchell had just retired from his position as Democratic Senate majority leader when then-president Bill Clinton asked him to become a special envoy to Northern Ireland. For the next five years, Mitchell would chair three separate sets of peace talks. “It seemed like 50 years at the time,” he told Lawless. “But we persevered and prevailed.”

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Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the people who fought back

Posted on April 19, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Relatives share family stories of loss and survival during the Holocaust and the monthlong fight against the Nazis in Warsaw, Poland.

Click here for the full article.

By Dana Bash and Anna Brand, CNN

Published April 19, 2023 – Thanks to Pam P.

On April 19, 1943, a group of Jews living inside the Nazi-created Warsaw Ghetto in Poland began an armed uprising against Hitler’s occupying forces. The monthlong fight represented the largest and most robust retaliation against SS troops who were systematically murdering millions of European Jews.

As part of the Nazis’ plans to annihilate the Jewish people, they created ghettos, forcing thousands of Jews into small, cramped parts of major cities and limited access to food and supplies. The Warsaw Ghetto, bound by a 10-foot wall and barbed wire, was the largest — sealing 400,000 Jews inside its 1.3 square mile area by 1942, according to the United States Holocaust Museum.

After the Nazis began liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, sending tens of thousands of Jews to be murdered in concentration camps, a group of Jewish resistance fighters began a plan to retaliate, gathering arms from anti-Hitler forces in the Polish military underground.

On the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, there were between 50,000-60,000 Jews in the ghetto. About 700 young Jews began their fight against SS officers the day after the Jewish holiday of Passover, 80 years ago today, and it lasted almost a month. It ended on May 16 when the Nazis leveled the ghetto, ultimately bringing the Jews who did not die in the battle to concentration camps where they would be killed.

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WA lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastic in hotels, but fail to reform recycling

Posted on April 17, 2023 by Jim deMaine

Thanks to Diana C.

Workers pull plastic bags out of recycled items on a conveyor belt on the presort line at Recology’s Material Recovery Facility in Seattle. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2021)

By Vonnai Phair and Isabella Breda

Legislation intended to reduce the use of plastics and boost recycling is seeing mixed results as this year’s legislative session enters its final week.

Democratic lawmakers failed to pass ambitious recycling proposals, but successfully passed a bill that could help reduce the use of single-use plastics.

The Plastics Reduction Bill, championed by freshman Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma, is on Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk.

Once signed, the bill requires water bottle filling stations in new buildings, eliminates single-use plastics for personal care products in hotels, and reduces pollution from foam-filled floats and docks.

It faced relatively little opposition in the Legislature. The bill could make “a big dent in our constant and ongoing efforts to reduce plastic pollution in the environment,” Mena said.

A recent poll conducted by Oceana found 92% of Washington voters are concerned about single-use plastic products, and 91% say they are concerned about plastic pollution and its effect on the environment. The vast majority of Washington voters (87%) support local and state policies that reduce single-use plastic.

The bill, extremely popular with youth advocates, Mena said, has also provided an avenue for Washington students to engage with the legislative process.

“It’s something I get a lot of emails about from youth. Anything we can do to engage youth in the process so they can learn that they do have a voice and a place in our government is going to pay dividends well into the future with a healthy democracy and future leaders,” Mena said.

But another bill attempting to better regulate waste in Washington died an early death.

The Washington Recycling and Packaging Act was an ambitious pitch to put some of the cost of recycling on the businesses making the packaging. It didn’t make the first cutoff.

“That was the biggest bill that was considered this session” related to the environment, said Rep. Beth Doglio, D-Olympia. “It’s the first time that the House had contemplated such a significant change to the way that we recycle in the state.”

The bill would’ve helped ensure every household has the same understanding of how to increase their recycling, and expanded recycling services to more than 300,000 households.

Those changes to the system would have been funded by businesses that produce paper and packaging through payments into a producer responsibility organization. And the bill would’ve added incentives for consumers to recycle.

In 2017, King County’s recycling rate was around 52%, according to the state Department of Ecology.

Doglio said she’s excited to revisit the bill next session.Vonnai Phair: 206-464-2757 or vphair@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @vonnaiphair. Vonnai Phair covers morning breaking news and enterprise for The Seattle Times.Isabella Breda: 206-652-6536 or ibreda@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @BredaIsabella. Seattle Times staff reporter Isabella Breda covers the environment.

Posted in environment, Health, Law | Comments Off on WA lawmakers vote to ban single-use plastic in hotels, but fail to reform recycling