WLSSD Hosts Earth Day Courtland Street Block Party

DULUTH, Minn. — WLSSD hosted its Courtland Street Block Party today in honor of Earth Week.

Friday was all about focusing on how the community can help protect public health and the environment.

The Product Re-Use Center was open for people to drop off toxic household items along with old medications that need to be properly disposed of. The Center works to re-use as many of the resources that are brought into the center.

This allows for the public to buy old paint, learn about hazardous waste, and even make do it yourself cleaner kits.

“At WLSSD what we find is a lot of people care about doing the right thing, but it can be confusing what to do. We’re here to help. If people are not quite sure what to recycle or how to dispose of stuff, give us a call and we are happy to walk them through that process and help them do what they want to do to do the right thing,” said Ryan Ihrke, Environmental Program Coordinator.

Friday was also the first day that the yard waste facility was open. They combine their yard waste with food scraps from local restaurants and stores. The compost that’s made is sold locally for use in gardens.

Dori Decker talks about why it is important to separate yard waste from the landfill.

“It’s just a great way to keep both food scraps and yard waste out of the trash, out of the landfill. They’re kind of troublemakers when they’re in the landfill. They slowly decompose without oxygen and that creates methane which is a greenhouse gas. So we’re just trying to divert some of the organic material from going into the landfill and coming here to be composted so it can be reused productively and recycled back into the gardens in the community,” said Dori Decker, Environmental Program Coordinator.

WLSSD is doing its part this Earth Day by working with the community to educate and to keep the environment clean. If you want to learn more or have questions visit the WLSSD webpage.