A wave of possible recalls. Within the last month, efforts to recall Mayor Jenny Durkan and councilmember Kshama Sawant got underway, and now councilmember Lisa Herbold could be the latest to join them. In order to recall an elected official in Washington state, there needs to be “an allegation backed by facts that the elected official’s broken the law.”  (KUOW)

According to South Dakota’s governor, Seattle is “being overrun by violent mobs.” Gov. Kristi Noem spoke at the Republican National Convention this week and made the accusation against Seattle and multiple Democrat-run cities. (The Seattle Times)

This article explores why police are often the first responders for people in crisis. One of the answers is simple: people don’t know who else to call in these situations. About 60% of SPD’s sworn staff are trained in crisis intervention. In 2019, they logged over 16,000 crisis calls. (Crosscut)

Seattle professional sports teams joined a number of other organizations in a boycott over the shooting of Jacob Blake. The Mariners and Sounders both postponed the games scheduled for Wednesday while the Storm, OL Reign, and Kraken all released statements of support.

Need tools? Phinney Center Tool Library is here to help. If you live in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood and are a part of the PNA, you can start checking out tools as of this Saturday. They’ve got everything from saws to drills to yard stuff. (PhinneyWood)

Some bad news and some good news. No new interview today BUT there are two brand new ones coming to you next Friday, so don’t forget about this section.

Since there isn’t a new interview this week, I thought I’d take the time to share a playlist of the artists we’ve heard from already. Plus some of my favorite Seattle musicians.

You can check it out here.

Question: “Why is recycling plastic so hard and how do we fix that?”

That’s what reader Deanna R. asked us, and for the third story in our series with Vertue Lab, we tried to answer that question.

The EPA reports that Americans only recycle 35% of the waste they create. But that number is misleading because it doesn’t account for all the plastics that cannot be recycled once they reach recycling facilities. Instead, they’re usually incinerated or dumped in a landfill.

In 2017, 26.8 million tons of plastic ended up in landfills nationwide, and 5.6 million tons were combusted, according to the EPA. That’s out of a total of 35.4 million tons of plastic that were recycled total in the U.S. that year. That means only 8.4% of all plastics were actually recycled.

There are a few layers to this problem. One is that there’s just more plastic out there in the world today. A lot of it comes from packaging — think about all your Amazon orders and grocery store trips. Another is that plastic is not created equally, some kinds are more difficult to recycle than others. And third, recycling plastic is a business and some types of plastic just don’t have a market.

Legislative solutions are one part of solving the plastic problem, and one local experiment suggests changing the system altogether.

This series is sponsored by VertueLab. VertueLab did not provide editorial input.

Enjoy your weekend and we shall see you in September! ✌️

—The Evergrey