Our Approach

SPU is working in collaboration with consultants to co-create a community-centered design approach and connect with diverse communities, businesses, and waste prevention providers across the city and around the world.

Phase 1: Research & Engagement  (2022 to 2024)

 From 2022 to 2024, SPU partnered with consultant teams to plan and conduct five parallel research and engagement efforts to inform the Waste Prevention Strategic Plan (WP Plan). This included conducting online research and engaging more than 1,200 residents, businesses, and organizations through focus groups, listening sessions, interviews, surveys, and crowdsourcing competitions.

The five research and engagement efforts included:

1. Customer Experiences
   Engaged a diverse array of residential and commercial customers to better understand waste prevention practices, motivations, barriers, and opportunities.
2. Waste Prevention Provider and Partner Experiences
   Gathered insight from Seattle businesses and organizations about how they engage or would like to engage their communities in waste prevention. Such as providing repair opportunities, collecting used items to share or sell, educating communities on how they can prevent waste, and distributing surplus food to those in need.
3. Best Practices from Other Jurisdictions
   Learned about successful waste prevention programs and policies from other jurisdictions across the U.S. and the world.
4. Measurement and Evaluation
   Identified methodologies for collecting data to measure the success of waste prevention efforts.
5. Modeling Tools
   Identified tools that can be used to help calculate specific environmental, economic, and social impacts of waste prevention. 

Phase 2: Decision-Making and Waste Prevention Plan Development (2024-2025)

We used the information collected through the research and engagement efforts to make decisions on the waste prevention goals, metrics, roles, prioritization criteria, and evaluation and measurement strategies and tools to include in the WP Plan. These decisions will guide how we invest waste prevention resources for decades to come.

We will share the draft WP Plan for public comment in early 2026.

Phase 3: Program and Policy Prioritization (2025)

From the research and engagement efforts, we are currently working to identify specific waste prevention programs and policies to consider implementing to amplify what’s already successful and fill waste prevention gaps in our community. We will use the prioritization criteria from the WP Plan to evaluate the programs and policies and decide short-term and long-term priorities. Based on this, we will develop an Implementation Plan.

Phase 4: Program and Policy Development and Implementation (2026+)

Once we have identified our waste prevention program and policy priorities, we will collaborate with community and form partnerships to develop and implement the efforts. We will also develop tools to measure success and track progress towards the waste prevention goals and metrics laid out in the WP Plan.