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16 Jun 99 - Trashbusters; large families; reuse on parade; green weddings ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive ------------------- >From Darin Cosgrove, Reuses.com, Brockville, Ontario: An article in today's Globe and Mail (Toronto) describes a pair of businesses which are 'battling for market share' in refuse collection and which may have a minor reuse component as part of their plan. The story "Firms aim to clean up in trash business" profiles the 'battle' between garbage collection outfits '1-800-Got-Junk' and 'Trashbusters', which are operating in a number of North American cities (Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Seattle, Toronto, Portland). I won't copy the article here (for reasons of copyright and brevity). The interesting point in the article is a brief mention of the reuse approach of the 'Trashbusters' company, which reportedly "recycles about 40 per cent of its volume, depositing furniture with charity groups, wood at a chipping facility and dry wall at a recycling plant." If you can overlook the fuzzy use of the term 'recycling' throughout the piece and want more info, visit http://www.globeandmail.ca/hubs/rob.html and search on all or part of the article's title to call up the full text. (I would have posted the article's direct URL, or address, in this message except it would have taken up 6 or 7 lines.) I believe articles are removed from the Globe's site after 7 days. E-mail: darin ( A T ) newpublishing ( D O T ) com -------------------- >From Ann Schneider, University of California at Santa Cruz - Business Environmental Assistance Center, Santa Clara, CA, responding to the 6/14/99 posting about the "What Will We Do With All Our Garbage?" cover article in the 6/13/99 Parade magazine: What I thought was interesting is the family on the cover of Parade magazine had the new American family - 3 kids. Parade quite often has articles about large families and pictures large families on its cover. Only once in the last 5 years do I remember an article about population and the adverse effects of the ever-expanding human population. This article was written by a former Senator about 6 months ago. The big shame is it does reach a lot of people. E-mail: aschneid (AT) cats (DOT) ucsc (DOT) edu --------------------- >From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA: I had the pleasure to be in Portland, Oregon, the weekend of June 5-6 with my family, and we had front-row seats for the Starlight Parade, which is part of Portland's annual Rose Festival. This is a major parade, with 300,000 spectators lining the streets of downtown. I'm sure that most parade floats use a lot or resources and generate a lot of waste, but in this parade, one float stood out, for both environmental coolness and coolness in general -- the Association of Oregon Recyclers (AOR) float. I may be partial since I know a lot of people with AOR, but they really did a great job with this float. Here are excerpts from an e-mail from Charlotte Becker of AOR, telling about the reusable materials they used for the float: We took first place in the Non-Commercial Division with our float made of junk. We didn't spend a dime on lumber. The paint, except one can of spray paint, came from a household hazardous waste facility. The lettering was made of scrap Corex (this is that corrugated plastic used for lawn signs of all kinds) and old political signs. The letters were backed with black polyfoam that came from ReUse It's scrap pile. That company went out of business and has lots of the stuff to get rid of. The flowers around the perimeter of the float were aluminum beverage cans cut in half and then cut to make petals. We sliced up about 150 cans to do this. The railing was recycled steel and was taken off the float and reused as railing on another application. Oh, I almost forgot. That shiny stuff on the arch was Starbucks bulk coffee bags that had been slit open and flattened. The giant recycling symbols were fabricated by the Clackamas County Transportation Department's sign shop, and they went back there when we dismantled the float. We kept all the lettering and the aluminum flowers, and the wood went to the hog (hog fuel). We were going to try to dismantle it, board-by-board, but the volunteers were beat and we had to vacate the warehouse, so hogging it was the best alternative. All in all, we only threw away about 2 roll carts of debris, from start to finish of the 2-1/2 week project. We had 40 volunteers and 11 companies and agencies involved in the creation of the float. This was a project on which competing companies Waste Management, Waste Connections and BFI all participated. Nearly everything was donated, except the banner of sponsor names, some of the lighting, and the nails and screws we used to put everything together. We actually spent more on food and drink for the volunteers than we did on the float. To see photos of the float, see the AOR website at: http://aor.home.mindspring.com/ Click on "1999 Starlight Parade." Charlotte's e-mail address: beckerprojects ( AT ) mindspring ( DOT ) com ------------------- "Nice Day for a... Green Wedding - Planning a Ceremony that Celebrates the Earth" is an excellent article by Elizabeth Hilts in the May-June 1999 issue of E/The Environmental Magazine. You can see the entire story at: http://www.emagazine.com/may-june_1999/0599gl_consumer.html - end -