One seat out of three (three-year term)
The Town of Wellesley elects a Board of Public Works consisting of three residents who each serve a three-year term. The Board has the general duties of road commissioners, surveyors of highways, superintendent of streets, water commissioners, and sewer commissioners.
Question 1. As you know, Town Meeting passed the Select Board’s Resolution to Address the Impact of Climate Change in 2020. How do you envision this resolution being carried out by the Board of Public Works during your term? What additional actions will you champion to ensure that the Town meets its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Jeff Wechsler-
Long term, I believe the biggest impact we can have is through promoting changes in the buildings in town - private homes, and commercial and town buildings. I believe a long term shift to energy efficient structures with on-site energy production is not just a nice idea, but is necessary for climate resilience, for local control of critical resources, and for cost control.
This means taking advantage of solar and geothermal on-site and on town owned land and buildings.
This means insulation, air-sealing and newer construction methods to achieve net zero or passive structures throughout town.
This means focusing on conversion to electric only buildings.
And this also means focusing on how we adapt town infrastructure to handle and support and promote these changes.
As a Public Works Board member, we also sit on the Municipal Light Plant Board - and through the areas of responsibility for these entities combined, this Board role can greatly help move us along the path to such a future. A future that significantly reduces our greenhouse gas emissions.
But we're not there today, so here's the pathway to bridge the gap:
- Continued prioritization on accessing renewable projects in New England that come online on the New England grid.
- Continued prioritization on investing in in-town projects that reduce greenhouse emissions (like solar on the roofs of several larger buildings in town).
- Continued lobbying for more renewable resources to be built in New England, and the acceleration of various pending projects (like the many slow moving offshore wind projects).
- Continued work to improve the emissions of our town equipment and fleets, including a continued focus on purchasing EVs and Hybrids when possible in the DPW and MLP fleets and continued investment in battery powered landscaping equipment for the DPW.
- Continued work to promote re-use, reduction and recycling in place of trash - both at the RDF and more generally as well (many residents use private trash and recycling services).
- Continued effort to promote and incentivize a shift to more energy efficient appliances and HVAC solutions - in particular things like air source heat pumps and heat pump hot water heaters.
I feel fortunate to have been helping the town move forward in these areas over the last six years, and am excited to continue to help us move further down the path towards the vision of a self-sufficient town running on local resources and doing so with extremely low to no greenhouse emissions. It's a long path but a necessary, and exciting, journey.
Question 2. Waste contributes approximately 6% to our Town’s carbon emissions. What new measures would you consider taking in the coming term in order to increase recycling of both non-organic and organic materials at the RDF, including food waste?
The scenario for recycling and waste diversion has been getting bleaker and bleaker globally, nationally, regionally and locally over the last several years. Not only did China lose interest in being the world's recycling center, but the markets closer to home have been unstable. This means swings in pricing and capacity, and added unpredictability. It also means that the world, including Wellesley, faces the prospect that no matter how hard we try to be good stewards here, and get our materials into the best, most trusted hands, some of the material still likely ends up not getting recycled. At the same time, our communities' costs for trash and its proper handling have gone up significantly, largely driven by the combination of increased transportation costs and shrinking capacity in New England. So if ever there was a time to divert even more materials and food waste OUT of the trash stream, it's now. But the unsteadiness of the markets for the materials that can be recycled is not making that easy.
All that said, we are left with few options. But there are three Rs we care about and the other two must be highlighted at times like these: besides recycling we must reduce and reuse.
To aid in reducing, I believe as a town and as a DPW through our RDF, we need to continue to message about reducing our footprint. Certainly less one-time use products - reduced reliance on paper plates for instance.
To aid in re-use, I believe we need to continue to promote the RDFs reusables area. But we also need to consider how we can support other tools that might assist in making it easier for residents to re-use instead of purchasing new. That might mean promoting online community tools both existing and maybe new that help residents exchange "stuff". A current colleague Board member had this idea previously and I note it here because I think it's a good one.
But to address the question - if we can't reduce or reuse, we need to make sure we recycle more and trash less. The DPW and RDF staff have the challenging tasks of sorting out how to best navigate the recycling markets. But as residents, I believe we need to address and discuss some clear patterns that impact the growth of recycling through the RDF. For example, it seems that more and more residents use home pickup services. The value of ease can not be overstated. People are busy. Putting barrels at the end of your driveway or even having them handled from your garage is a really enticing solution. And for recycling, many alternate services are single stream - you also can't overstate the ease of just putting all recycling into a single bin, or maybe two. But sorting recycling into multiple categories and then bringing it to the RDF is a real investment of time and effort. And it's increasingly a choice that not everyone can or wants to make.
Our RDF staff have spent great amounts of time and energy trying to stimulate more uptake for recycling and for food waste diversion. We see small victories, but not the numbers we most ideally would like. So I believe that real change will come from a discussion at a town wide level about what people really want.
Would setting up a single stream recycling option increase recycling numbers and resident use? Maybe, and that's a challenge because not only would single stream reduce the income we get from our recycling materials in the market, but it might mean that an even lower percentage of our materials are ultimately recycled because single stream is more prone to contamination.
Or should the town consider town wide pickup of trash and recycling and food waste? That would be a massive investment at a time when it's unclear whether it would even make sense, and unclear how it would be funded, and unclear if it would actually achieve the goal of increased recycling.
The point is - we have an ongoing challenge, unclear solutions, shifting dynamics in both the recycling markets and our community, and a deep desire to increase recycling, reuse, and reduction. My commitment is to keep a light shining on this area and this question and continue to work with the DPW leadership to help figure out what priorities, focus, and changes will help us help the town continue to reduce our environmental impact.
The Town of Wellesley elects a Board of Public Works consisting of three residents who each serve a three-year term. The Board has the general duties of road commissioners, surveyors of highways, superintendent of streets, water commissioners, and sewer commissioners.
Question 1. As you know, Town Meeting passed the Select Board’s Resolution to Address the Impact of Climate Change in 2020. How do you envision this resolution being carried out by the Board of Public Works during your term? What additional actions will you champion to ensure that the Town meets its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Jeff Wechsler-
Long term, I believe the biggest impact we can have is through promoting changes in the buildings in town - private homes, and commercial and town buildings. I believe a long term shift to energy efficient structures with on-site energy production is not just a nice idea, but is necessary for climate resilience, for local control of critical resources, and for cost control.
This means taking advantage of solar and geothermal on-site and on town owned land and buildings.
This means insulation, air-sealing and newer construction methods to achieve net zero or passive structures throughout town.
This means focusing on conversion to electric only buildings.
And this also means focusing on how we adapt town infrastructure to handle and support and promote these changes.
As a Public Works Board member, we also sit on the Municipal Light Plant Board - and through the areas of responsibility for these entities combined, this Board role can greatly help move us along the path to such a future. A future that significantly reduces our greenhouse gas emissions.
But we're not there today, so here's the pathway to bridge the gap:
- Continued prioritization on accessing renewable projects in New England that come online on the New England grid.
- Continued prioritization on investing in in-town projects that reduce greenhouse emissions (like solar on the roofs of several larger buildings in town).
- Continued lobbying for more renewable resources to be built in New England, and the acceleration of various pending projects (like the many slow moving offshore wind projects).
- Continued work to improve the emissions of our town equipment and fleets, including a continued focus on purchasing EVs and Hybrids when possible in the DPW and MLP fleets and continued investment in battery powered landscaping equipment for the DPW.
- Continued work to promote re-use, reduction and recycling in place of trash - both at the RDF and more generally as well (many residents use private trash and recycling services).
- Continued effort to promote and incentivize a shift to more energy efficient appliances and HVAC solutions - in particular things like air source heat pumps and heat pump hot water heaters.
I feel fortunate to have been helping the town move forward in these areas over the last six years, and am excited to continue to help us move further down the path towards the vision of a self-sufficient town running on local resources and doing so with extremely low to no greenhouse emissions. It's a long path but a necessary, and exciting, journey.
Question 2. Waste contributes approximately 6% to our Town’s carbon emissions. What new measures would you consider taking in the coming term in order to increase recycling of both non-organic and organic materials at the RDF, including food waste?
The scenario for recycling and waste diversion has been getting bleaker and bleaker globally, nationally, regionally and locally over the last several years. Not only did China lose interest in being the world's recycling center, but the markets closer to home have been unstable. This means swings in pricing and capacity, and added unpredictability. It also means that the world, including Wellesley, faces the prospect that no matter how hard we try to be good stewards here, and get our materials into the best, most trusted hands, some of the material still likely ends up not getting recycled. At the same time, our communities' costs for trash and its proper handling have gone up significantly, largely driven by the combination of increased transportation costs and shrinking capacity in New England. So if ever there was a time to divert even more materials and food waste OUT of the trash stream, it's now. But the unsteadiness of the markets for the materials that can be recycled is not making that easy.
All that said, we are left with few options. But there are three Rs we care about and the other two must be highlighted at times like these: besides recycling we must reduce and reuse.
To aid in reducing, I believe as a town and as a DPW through our RDF, we need to continue to message about reducing our footprint. Certainly less one-time use products - reduced reliance on paper plates for instance.
To aid in re-use, I believe we need to continue to promote the RDFs reusables area. But we also need to consider how we can support other tools that might assist in making it easier for residents to re-use instead of purchasing new. That might mean promoting online community tools both existing and maybe new that help residents exchange "stuff". A current colleague Board member had this idea previously and I note it here because I think it's a good one.
But to address the question - if we can't reduce or reuse, we need to make sure we recycle more and trash less. The DPW and RDF staff have the challenging tasks of sorting out how to best navigate the recycling markets. But as residents, I believe we need to address and discuss some clear patterns that impact the growth of recycling through the RDF. For example, it seems that more and more residents use home pickup services. The value of ease can not be overstated. People are busy. Putting barrels at the end of your driveway or even having them handled from your garage is a really enticing solution. And for recycling, many alternate services are single stream - you also can't overstate the ease of just putting all recycling into a single bin, or maybe two. But sorting recycling into multiple categories and then bringing it to the RDF is a real investment of time and effort. And it's increasingly a choice that not everyone can or wants to make.
Our RDF staff have spent great amounts of time and energy trying to stimulate more uptake for recycling and for food waste diversion. We see small victories, but not the numbers we most ideally would like. So I believe that real change will come from a discussion at a town wide level about what people really want.
Would setting up a single stream recycling option increase recycling numbers and resident use? Maybe, and that's a challenge because not only would single stream reduce the income we get from our recycling materials in the market, but it might mean that an even lower percentage of our materials are ultimately recycled because single stream is more prone to contamination.
Or should the town consider town wide pickup of trash and recycling and food waste? That would be a massive investment at a time when it's unclear whether it would even make sense, and unclear how it would be funded, and unclear if it would actually achieve the goal of increased recycling.
The point is - we have an ongoing challenge, unclear solutions, shifting dynamics in both the recycling markets and our community, and a deep desire to increase recycling, reuse, and reduction. My commitment is to keep a light shining on this area and this question and continue to work with the DPW leadership to help figure out what priorities, focus, and changes will help us help the town continue to reduce our environmental impact.