Greater New Bedford Waste Management District Speakers:

Marissa Perez-Dormitzer serves as the Waste Reduction Manager for the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District. She works with the District’s two member communities - New Bedford & Dartmouth - to educate residents about waste reduction, implement new programs, and apply for & manage grants. Marissa graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering.

Meg Hebert is the Waste Reduction Coordinator for the Greater New Bedford Regional Refuse Management District. She enjoys learning and sharing ways to reduce waste through reuse, recycling, repurposing, and composting. Meg graduated with a physics degree from UMass Amherst.

After the lecture presentation, these community organizations will be on hand for further discussions:

Samantha Marino - Bay State Textiles is a Massachusetts-based company working to keep textiles out of the waste stream, educate students and raise money for the schools and towns across the Commonwealth with their rebate program. This highly successful program currently partners with more than 100 school districts, 150 municipalities, over 600 schools, and several colleges and Universities. Bay State Textiles gives back thousands of dollars to communities and schools every year.

Claudia  De Sousa-Baptista of Bushwood Tailors - An experimental slow fashion and tailor shop looking to collaborate with our local community of makers, and artists in the exploration of creativity within sustainability. Bushwood Tailors Opportunity Shop (OppShop) is an experimental shop looking to explore ideas on how to prolong the life of textiles and clothing through proper garment care, tailoring, mending, up-cycling, repurposing, dyeing, and re-wearing. We also feel strongly that supporting our local makers and artists has a smaller carbon footprint than shopping from large corporations and so we carry items made by local artists, designers, and makers in our shop, all of them made sustainably and largely from repurposed materials. The over-production of clothing is causing a global crisis. We are here to help spread the word within our community and to join forces, via social media, with all of the organizations that are part of the slow fashion movement.

Eileen Brennan is the Owner of Start at the Bottoms which is a refill and zero-waste store in New Bedford. The name Start at the Bottoms implies that right from the very start we can take action to reduce plastic and toxins by using organic cotton baby diapers. Customers are encouraged to bring their own clean dry containers to purchase household and body products by the ounce. All packaged items are in biodegradable packaging. Start at the Bottoms is also a pickup location for over 170 healthy plastic-free packaged grocery items. Interactions with customers working towards the common goal of preserving the territory we occupy and leaving a healthy planet for future generations are the foundation of the mission. Eileen is also a member of the Massachusetts Southcoast Climate Reality Project which welcomes all.

Thursday, June 29 at 6:00 pm

This event is FREE. Registration is suggested to reserve a seat.