News

PNW Climate Week kicks off with climate solutions

Salish Current · last updated July 17, 2025 – 6:44 AM

Across Whatcom and Skagit counties, communities are working to create sustainable alternatives in housing, industry and agriculture — this week and every week.

Finding a lasting solution to the climate crisis requires community collaboration. Organizers of PNW Climate Week are working to make that happen.

This week, Bellingham joins Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., in hosting events for PNW Climate Week. The event series, which began on Wednesday, celebrates sustainability and climate mitigation efforts throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In Bellingham, things kick off today (Thursday, July 17) with a tour of a waterfront clean-up site and a climate happy hour. Throughout the week, there will be two bike tours, a fix-it fair and workshops covering resilience and becoming a citizen scientist. On July 23, events start to wrap up with a bloc k party at Squalicum Harbor and conclude with a hempcrete workshop on July 25.

These events highlight a selection of the efforts toward climate mitigation and ecological restoration in the region, which is known for its environmental stewardship.

An evening view of Bellingham Bay waters on June 19 provide a backdrop for PNW Climate Week’s logo. (Oren Roberts photo, PNW Climate Week graphic)

“The Pacific Northwest is home to breathtaking natural landscapes and very passionate communities that care a lot about protecting it,” said Amy Nicknish, a volunteer and member of the PNW Climate Week’s leadership team. “This is a great way to create space for climate education.”

Kirsten McDade, the North Sound Waterkeeper at RE Sources, is leading the tour of the Weldcraft Steel and Marine clean-up site on Thursday.

“Every day is Earth Day for RE Sources,” McDade said. “So, this isn’t anything unique for us to do, honestly. It’s just something we do all the time.”

The Weldcraft Steel and Marine clean-up site is just one of 12 prominent clean-up sites along Bellingham Bay, McDade said.

“They’re all in different stages of cleanup,” McDade said. “Two have been cleaned up and are now in the monitoring phase.”

The Weldcraft Steel and Marine site is in what McDade called the “cleanup action plan phase,” with a plan in place for the final clean-up before entering the monitoring phase.

The tour will detail the history of the contamination site, which dates back to the 1940s, before the Clean Water Act set wastewater standards and limited industry pollution.

“The pollution occurred probably in the ’80s and ’90s,” McDade said. “Once we got cleaner and more strict regulations, the modern pollution started to decline, but then legacy contamination remained.”

The tour, McDade said, will also highlight what the current owner, Seaview Boatyard, is doing to prevent recontamination at the site as it operates its boatyard. Staff from the Port of Bellingham and the Washington State Department of Ecology will also be there to answer questions.

PNW Climate Week is organizing events like these to bring the community together to learn and get involved, Nicknish said.

“The strength of PNW Climate Week lies in the fact that different community groups — from students and Indigenous leaders, to local government and start-ups — are bringing their own lens to the climate conversation,” Nicknish said.

Suneeta Eisenberg is hosting the hempcrete workshop through her nonprofit organization, Whatcom Waves, and North West Living and Learning Community Collaborative.

The workshop will include hands-on instruction for how to make and build with hempcrete, a building material made from hemp, lime and water.

“It’s completely different than concrete because it is not water intensive,” Eisenberg said. “It is nontoxic. It does not have any volatile organic compounds, and it doesn’t have any clinker.”

Clinker, a traditional cement component made at temperatures exceeding 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit, is very energy intensive. The combustion required to make it contributes to the cement industry’s 7% hold on global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2024 statistical analysis published in the journal “Cleaner Environmental Systems.”

Hemp, Eisenberg said, offers a sustainable alternative. It’s fast growing and serves as an effective carbon sink. Hempcrete is often cited as a method of sequestering carbon to prevent further greenhouse gas emissions in research and reviews.

Suneeta Eisenberg and her partner, Michael, visit a hemp grow site at the Lower Sioux Tribal community in Morton, Minnesota, in September 2024. (Courtesy Suneeta Eisenberg)

The collaborative is leveraging hempcrete as a nature-based solution to decarbonize and decolonize construction, Eisenberg said. Their statewide hybrid community land trust model aims to maximize HB 1110 funding for housing, ensuring perpetual affordability and climate-resilient homes, especially for people of color.

Private citizens can also join the collaborative by building a hempcrete ADU on their property and selling it to a first-time homebuyer.

“We’re just really excited to do this work as the educational hub and the community connector,” Eisenberg said.

Eisenberg said she hopes the workshop will educate attendees and give them hope for the future.

“Showing people what’s possible allows us to dream together, and that’s when we really heal,” Eisenberg said.

There are climate resilience efforts worth noting beyond the scope of PNW Climate Week.

“Whether it’s a beach cleanup or academic programs during the school year, there’s always something going on that’s climate related,” Nicknish said.

In Skagit County, the Rodale Institute’s PNW Organic Center researches the effectiveness of different cover crops, alternatives to managing pests and diseases and agroforestry. Though the center is not involved with PNW Climate Week, its work aims to support organic farmers and to help smooth other growers’ transition into organic practices.

Arash Ghalehgolabbehbahani is the research director at the Rodale Institute. He oversees the institute’s regional resource centers across the country, including Pennsylvania, California, Georgia and Washington.

“Washington is one of the hotspots of organic agriculture,” Ghalehgolabbehbahani said, with over 150,000 acres of certified-organic fields in the state.

The PNW Organic Center’s research addresses challenges faced by both organic and non-organic growers in the region.

“Growers are practicing, and they see some challenges in their farm. We are trying to address those challenges and find a solution for them,” Ghalehgolabbehbahani said. “Based on that, we realized that one of the big problems in that area is weed management.”

So, researchers at the PNW Organic Center began researching the effectiveness of various species of cover crops, which suppress weeds and supplement the soil.

“We believe that soil health is the foundation of producing high quality and nutritious food,” Ghalehgolabbehbahani said. In research trials, they test both the nutritional values in the food and markers for healthy soils.

With over 40 years of research, the Rodale Institute’s Farming System Trial found that organic agricultural practices — including roller-crimping and crop rotation — are more sustainable for some crops and can improve carbon capture and soil health compared to systems that rely on “chemical inputs” like synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. This is because they focus on building and maintaining healthy topsoil.

In the U.S., some regions are losing topsoil 10 to 1,000 times faster than pre-agricultural levels, according to a 2023 study supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Modern rates of topsoil loss are unsustainable, Ghalehgolabbehbahani said.

“If we stay in the situation that we already have, and we have lots of commercial production, in 60 years, we will lose our crop production systems because we’re losing topsoil,” Ghalehgolabbehbahani said. “I’m telling you, the only way we feed the world is organic agriculture.”

PNW Climate week features some agriculture-related activities in Seattle, including opportunities to volunteer at UW Farm and learn about food justice.

The events in Bellingham, Eisenberg said, help to bring more people into the climate conversation.

“Not everyone has access to education and opportunities in Seattle,” Eisenberg said. “Having Bellingham on the map is helpful for people in rural communities like Skagit, Island and Whatcom who might be interested or just want to learn something new.”

Ultimately, the events create space for community connection.

“It’s a way to open up people’s homes and poetry and art and dependable strengths to help mitigate some of that fear and anxiety of climate impacts,” said Eisenberg.

— By Oren Roberts

PNW Climate Week kicks off with climate solutions

here today, more tomorrow