Zero Waste Plan action planning work groups

Work groups that include a broad diversity of community voices, industry stakeholders, and subject matter experts are currently working to identify and recommend actions that will accelerate Hennepin County to a zero-waste future.

More than 160 people registered to join a work group. Each work group has at least 20 members that includes a balance of community members, stakeholders, and experts.

Work group themes

Action planning work groups have been formed around the following themes. These themes were developed based on the priorities, challenges, and ideas for solutions we heard from the community and industry stakeholders during the first phase of community engagement.

  1. Equity and access: This group will consider topics like increasing ease of participation, expanding availability of services, ensuring communities benefit equally, reducing burdens, and offering incentives.
  2. Policy: This group will consider topics like incentives, funding, mandates, bans, data and reporting requirements, local ordinances, producer responsibility initiatives, and state policies
  3. Neighborhood solutions: This group will consider topics like incentives, community engagement, multifamily settings, school programs, litter reduction, community-driven solutions, and drop-offs and events.
  4. Advancing circularity: This group will consider topics like increasing reuse and sharing, reducing waste, conducting education about consumption, salvaging building materials, reducing single-use items, and finding options for textiles, plastics, and other hard-to-recycle items.
  5. Systems and infrastructure: This group will consider topics like hauler contracts, public-private partnerships, end-market support and development, recycling and organics recycling processing, HERC/waste-to-energy, and landfilling.
  6. Green streams: This group will focus on organics recycling and consider things like increasing access and participation, developing solutions for multifamily settings, expanding processing capacity, implementing requirements or bans, supporting community gardens, and reducing food waste.
  7. Blue streams: This group will focus on recycling and consider things like improving recycling for all residents, businesses and schools, analyzing hauler-provided services, improving upstream packaging design, addressing hard-to-recycle plastics, establishing drop-offs, and implementing requirements and bans.

What the work groups will do

Each action planning work group will:

  • Learn about Hennepin County’s solid waste system and the challenges and opportunities to achieving zero waste
  • Review and propose actions that will accelerate the county’s path to zero waste.
  • Finalize recommended actions for inclusion in the county’s Zero Waste Plan.

Learn more about what the works groups will do in the Zero Waste Plan action work groups charter (PDF).

Meeting schedule

Each work group participant will attend four, 90-minute virtual meetings held on Zoom. The first and last meetings will be joint meetings with all work group participants, and the second and third meetings will be with individual work groups. Participants will be asked to complete small homework assignments between meetings.

All meetings will go from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the following dates.

Meeting 1: All work group participants

Tuesday, July 19 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Meetings 2 and 3: Individual work group meetings

Workgroups 1, 2, and 3

  • Tuesday, August 2 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
  • Tuesday, August 16 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Workgroups 4, 5, 6, and 7

  • Thursday, August 4 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
  • Thursday, August 18 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

Meeting 4: All work group participants

Tuesday, August 30 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

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