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22 Feb 99 - media campaign; junk mail; alternative to herbicides ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition ----------------------------------------- From Christine McCoy, National Recycling Coalition (NRC), Alexandria, VA: Dear Colleagues, The National Recycling Coalition's Source Reduction Forum is developing its Grassroots Media Outreach Campaign. We are developing tool kits that NRC State Recycling Organizations and others can use to get the word out about source reduction and reuse. The tool kits will include press releases, Op-Eds, and other outreach materials. We need your help! If you are aware of any successful source reduction media outreach campaigns we would love to hear from you! To fill out a survey, or share campaign outreach strategies or materials, please contact Christine McCoy, NRC Program Specialist at: ChristineM [A T] nrc-recycle [D O T] org or at 703/683-9025, ext. 211. Thank you for your time and assistance in this matter! ----------------------------------------- From David Allaway, Harding Lawson Associates, Portland, OR: In response to Jeffrey Smedberg's 2/12/99 posting, "How much do people hate junk mail?": I don't know of any surveys of how much people "hate junk mail." However, a survey of 180 residents in Cannon Beach, Oregon, conducted for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality in August/September, 1998, found that 27% of residents claim to have "taken an action in the last six months to remove the amount of unwanted mail received." The 90% confidence range is plus-or-minus 7%. Among various subpopulations, including subpopulations identified (by other survey responses) as having above-average or below-average concern for the environment, there were no statistically meaningful differences. As an aside, and as a commentary on the Polk press release that Jeffrey mentioned, just because 68.7 percent of the U.S. adult population shops by mail, doesn't mean that 68.7% like receiving unsolicited mail. I'll bet that many people who try to reduce the amount of unwanted mail they receive also occasionally do at least some shopping through the mail. Good luck with your survey, Jeffrey, and please let us all know what you find out (even if it is Santa Cruz)! E-mail: dallaway ( A T ) harding ( D O T ) com -------------------------------------- Excerpted and paraphrased from item in the March, 1999, Consumer Reports: Corn gluten meal, a corn by-product used mainly as a feed additive, is being marketed as a weed seed inhibitor. In other words, it prevents weeds from coming up in the garden. Consumer Reports calls it a safe, organic alternative to chemical weed preventers. The magazine's testing of one brand of this product -- W.O.W.! (WithOut Weeds) Pre-Emergence Weed Control -- showed that it was effective in one garden that was saturated with weed seeds and watered regularly. However, the product was not effective in another garden with different soil and relatively few weed seeds. Consumer Reports recommends that if people are interested in this product, they should first test it in a small area of the garden and compare it with their normal weed-control method. - end -