Help me justify a trip to Seattle!

My wife is attending a conference in Seattle from June 26-30, 2013. I'd like to go along, but I'm balking at the price of transportation -- money is tight. However, if it were a business expense, I could justify going!

I have a permaculture design business, but business has been slow, so lately I'm occupied running a curbside recycling company here in Emporia, Kansas and trying to get the city to implement curbside recycling city-wide. So I'd like to pick your collective brains about opportunities to
* attend permaculture events during those 5 days (or immediately before or after)
* tour permaculture sites in the Seattle area -- I am particularly interested in urban farms and aquaponics
* tour a recycling center or learn about Seattle's recycling system
* be a guest speaker for a local permaculture group, perhaps about how Midwestern/Great Plains permaculture differs from Cascadia

Thanks in advance for doing some of my footwork for me! I'm happy to return the favor anytime you visit eastern Kansas.

We have had curbside recycling in Western Washington going back to the 80's. Right now the biggest company is Allied Waste:

http://www.rabanco.com/about/contact.aspx

Another good resource is the Department of Ecology green page:

http://www.ecy.wa.gov/green.html

For permaculture stuff, check out the Seattle Permaculture Guild:

http://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Permaculture-Guild-Meetup/

If you don't use Meetup I recommend you start. There are other meetup groups including the local Earthship group, aquaponics, etc. But pretty much the Permie Guild is the largest.

As to the curb-side collecting, all of our garden/kitchen waste (and, YES, they do say to put pizza boxes in it) goes to Cedar Grove Composting http://www.cgcompost.com/what-we-do who produce 350,000 tons of compost per year, which is sold in all local gardening stores.

The city is also involved in a food forest project: http://beaconfoodforest.weebly.com/

no real help for you but just wanted to pipe up and say that where I used to live, McMinnville Oregon, Western Oregon Waste had luscious long compost piles which were piped to provide all heat for the offices and recycling warehouses. way freakin cool!!!