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19 Jul 99 - paper; privacy policy; resource efficiency; cool kid; clothes; rocket; award ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive ------------------- >From Beth Eckl, Alameda County General Services Agency, Oakland, CA, responding to Matt Fikejs' 7/7/99 request for paper waste prevention campaign information: As part of a paper reduction program and in response to a mandate to reduce paper 15 percent, Alameda County (CA) has completed a paperless educational tool - a paper reduction video (15 minutes) for County office employees (11,000 in 27 agencies) to increase awareness. The video is generally shown at staff meetings. A small one-page handout listing reduction guidelines and tips is provided (along with a paper reuse tray, a good tool to begin the awareness process, when funds permit). If anyone would like a copy of the video, called The Paper Trail, you may order it free through another organization that provided us the grant. Email them at: acwma (A T) stopwaste (D O T) org For more info on our paper reduction program, contact me. E-mail: eeckl ( A T ) co ( D O T ) alameda ( D O T ) ca ( D O T ) us Phone: (510) 208-9629 -------------------- Excerpted from a 7/7/99 press release from the Direct Marketing Association (written by Stephen Altobelli), taken from the DNA's website: Effective July 1, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is now requiring its members -- including catalogs, banks and financial institutions, publishers, manufacturers, non-profit organizations, book and music clubs, Internet merchants, and other consumer marketers -- to follow a set of consumer privacy protection practices in a move to bolster confidence in shopping direct. These practices include the concepts of "notice," marketers disclosing to customers when contact information (name and address, etc.) about them may be shared with other marketers, and "opt-out," providing a choice not to have information shared. In addition, member marketers must honor any individual consumer's request not to receive solicitations from them, a term known in the industry as "in-house suppression." Marketers must also use the association's two national name-removal services, the Mail Preference Service (began in 1971) and the Telephone Preference Service (began in 1985) to "clean" their marketing lists when prospecting for new customers using direct mail or telephone. The DMA is calling this effort, "The DMA Privacy Promise to American Consumers." The DMA will require new members to adhere to the Privacy Promise, allowing them reasonable time to comply. The DMA also will monitor existing members' marketing activities, randomly interviewing a sizable number of companies each year. In addition, the association will enforce the Privacy Promise through the peer-review work of its existing Committee on Ethical Business Practice, which will refer cases of non-compliance to the DMA Board of Directors for final action. In cases where a non-complying member refuses to correct a procedure that the DMA Board believes to be in violation of the Privacy Promise, the Board can expel the member company, and make public its action. "The DMA is backing this effort with a full monitoring and enforcement program," said Pat Faley, DMA vice president for consumer affairs. According to Faley, the DMA plans to utilize secret shoppers, decoys, consumer complaint case handling, and visits to DMA-member Web sites and facilities, as well as random staff contacts and requests for documentation, to assure member compliance. The DMA is the largest trade association for businesses interested in interactive and database marketing, with nearly 4,500 member companies from the United States and 53 other nations. (To see the entire press release, see the DMA's website at http://www.the-dma.org/ and click on the first item under "DMA Announcements.") -------------------- Excerpted from 7/14/99 press release from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (forwarded by Jan Whitworth): The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has released a final report evaluating Oregon's Resource Efficiency Program. This program is a community-based service that works with businesses, schools, and government facilities to conserve materials, water, and energy resources and reduce solid waste generation. Analysis of the program found that each community achieved meaningful resource and cost savings for participants. Between July 1996 and June 1998 DEQ partnered with three communities in Oregon to pilot its Resource Efficiency Program. The participating communities were: Cannon Beach, Corvallis, and Milwaukie. With the help of funding, training and technical assistance from DEQ, each community hired a local Resource Efficiency Coordinator (REC) to promote and recruit participants for the program, conduct resource efficiency assessments for participants, and work with them to implement savings opportunities. Small and medium sized businesses and facilities were the focus of efforts. In total, 71 participants in the program documented these annual savings: Materials, 57,000 pounds. Electricity, 360,000 kWh. Water, 5,500,000 gallons. Natural gas, 19,000 therms. There was a net savings of $82,000 per year, or an average of $42 per employee. Fifty percent of the documented savings came from materials efficiencies, 34 percent came from energy efficiencies, and 16 percent came from water efficiencies. Participating businesses, schools, and public agencies were provided 768 resource efficiency recommendations in the program's first year. Ninety-four percent implemented at least one measure and 35 percent implemented measures in all three areas: materials, water, and energy. The program generated many successful efficiencies. Materials efficiencies included: - Reformatting a newsletter allowed a chamber of commerce to save $2,100 annually and eliminated the need for 500 pounds of manila envelopes. - A two-person coffee shop evaluated its practice of "double-cupping" hot drinks. Offering this as a choice saves $800 a year. Oregon's Resource Efficiency Program demonstrated in all three communities that meaningful resource and financial savings can be realized. Specifically, it is possible to train people, even those with relatively little or no direct experience, to manage and conduct a voluntary resource efficiency program in their community. Supported by the appropriate resources, including program design improvements, adequate funding, local sponsorship and technical assistance, communities throughout Oregon can replicate similar accomplishments achieved in the pilots. To receive a copy of the complete Resource Efficiency Program report, including case studies, methodology, and analysis, please contact Jan Whitworth, project leader, at (503) 229-6434 or by e-mail at: WHITWORTH [DOT] Jan [AT] deq [DOT] state [DOT] or [DOT] us --------------------- Excerpted from an article by Diana Hefley in the 6/23/99 Northshore Citizen, a community paper in suburban Seattle (forwarded by Shirley Shimada): After 8-year-old James Hicks saw a presentation to his second-grade class by the King County Green Team (a county-funded program for waste prevention and recycling education in the schools), he decided to take matters into his own hands. James, who lives just north of Seattle, began calling newspapers and companies to try to get them to publicize information about reuse and recycling. The result was that Albertson's, a major national grocery store chain, created a program that rewards children for reusing bags. Albertson's also put this message, in big letters, on the side of its paper and plastic grocery bags used in stores throughout Washington state: "James Hicks, Second Grader at Arrowhead Elementary, would like to share the following message with Albertson's customers: If everyone in King County saved one bag from the grocery store and reused it one time, we would save 1,595,243 bags!" James' mother, Jane Hicks, is amazed by the attention her son has received. "He's in trouble one minute and the next he's saving the world," she said. And what has James learned? "When I hear some more facts, I'll do this again," he said. -------------------- Excerpted from an article by Peter Kilborn on the front page of the 7/19/99 New York Times: Nearly a decade of rising prosperity in America has resulted in huge volumes of used clothing. Americans bought 17.2 billion articles of clothing in 1998 - a 16 percent increase over 1993, according to the NPG Group, a market research concern in Port Washington, NY - and gave the Salvation Army alone several hundred million pieces of clothing, well over 100,000 tons. And because so few people make or mend their clothes anymore, the U.S. federal government in 1998 moved sewing machines from the "apparel and upkeep" category of consumer spending to "recreation." At a Salvation Army warehouse in Rhode Island (one of 119 across the country), workers sort out the clean and undamaged clothes - those are roughly 20 percent of all the clothing received. Those are sold at thrift shops or given to the poor. The other 80 percent are fed into balers that make 1,100-pound bales. Rag dealers buy the bales for 5 cents a pound and ship them off to countries like Yemen and Senegal. Reasons why people are buying more new clothing, and thus getting rid of more used clothing, include: Incomes are up. Unemployment is down. Clothing prices have risen just 13 percent in a decade, while the average for all consumer goods rose 34 percent. Prices of women's clothes are lower now than six years ago. -------------------- Excerpted from an article by James Wallace in the 7/16/99 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: In the year 2000, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch the world's first reusable rocket. -------------------- >From Meg Lynch, Metro Regional Environmental Management, Waste Reduction and Planning, Portland, OR, responding to Tom Watson's 7/15/99 posting about the National Association of Counties award that King County received for its coordination of national and regional waste prevention coalitions: I've had the great good fortune to know Tom for nearly 13 years, when he first started writing for Resource Recycling, and what he modestly refrains from mentioning is that none of the progress and accomplishments of the coalitions -- or their births, for that matter -- would have been possible without his energy, enthusiasm and commitment. E-mail: lynchm [AT] metro [DOT] dst [DOT] or [DOT] us Note from Tom: Thanks to everyone who has written to congratulate King County on the award. This is the only one of those messages I'm going to run on the Forum, since it's the only one that was clearly written to the group. I didn't really want to run this one either, but I used to work for Meg, and I was afraid if I didn't, she'd kick my ass! - end -