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27 Aug 99 - phone books; house reuse; American Express; home composting quips; archive; Dilbert ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive ------------------- The first two postings are in response to Margaret Kitchell's 8/25/99 posting asking how to stop companies from distributing unwanted Yellow Pages phone books: ------------------ >From Jesse White, Resource Management Group, Sarasota, FL: I wonder if you could put up a "No Trespassing" sign with instructions that unwanted material dropped off at your door will result in prosecution. Then I wonder if GTE or their delivery people could be sued for trespassing. I remember reading about someone who did something similar with unwanted mail and was able to recover some fees. I don't think this was in the U.S. The other way to go is to consult with GTE and charge them to complete a study analyzing the effectiveness of this kind of blanket advertising, vs. targeted deliveries. However, I suspect that the "blanket" distribution works, and that's why they do it. It's one of the ways that AOL has become what it is. Good luck. E-mail: Jessewhite [ A T ] aol [ D O T ] com ------------------ >From Jeffrey Smedberg, County of Santa Cruz Public Works, Santa Cruz, CA: We have three telephone directory publishers who distribute phone books in Santa Cruz County. I asked each publisher to provide a phone number for people to call to get off their distribution list for the next delivery cycle. The County publicizes these numbers. On the question of what to do with a book they had already dropped off, I found a County ordinance on illegal trash disposal that might be stretched to include the dropping off of an unsolicited and unwanted book. One of the companies, Great Western Directory, which is the newest publisher trying to gain a following in the area and therefore perhaps more sensitive to the public's attitude, said they would go back and pick up people's books. I can't confirm any cases in which they actually did so. In our past experience, the publishers do pay some attention to and attempt to stay on good terms with the local jurisdiction's solid waste and recycling staff. If we all insisted on their compliance with some standards, we might get somewhere. E-mail: dpw179 ( AT ) scruza ( DOT ) cahwnet ( DOT ) gov ------------------ >From Anne Frisch, Saint Paul Neighborhood Energy Consortium, Saint Paul, MN, responding to Cathy Graves' 8/25/99 posting about moving houses for reuse in Santa Cruz County, CA: The Free Market, Saint Paul's Internet-based residential materials exchange (which we operate), is facilitating a house exchange this month. In May, a local church listed a large (2,000-plus square feet on its first floor, eight bedrooms) old home that is on their property and had to be removed. The church listed the house on the Free Market and received several serious inquires about it. A family is taking the house, moving it a few miles away. The actual move will take place sometime next month. More news will follow. We are very excited about the house exchange. E-mail: annef [A T] spnec [D O T] org ------------------- >From Amy Perlmutter, Chelsea Center for Recycling and Economic Development, University of Massachusetts, Chelsea, MA (forwarded by Jeffrey Smedberg; this item has also appeared on several other listservs): The wording for American Express's Purchase Protection Plan says that the Plan "protects against theft of and accidental damage to the item purchased for 90 days from the date of purchase." Purchases not covered include "used, rebuilt, refurbished, or remanufactured items." Seems odd to me that the Plan excludes these things when it only covers theft and accidental damage. ------------------ >From the Master Composter website: Following are the winning and runner-up entries for a composting T-shirt contest sponsored by the City of San Jose, CA, provided by Michele Young from the city: Winner: Turn over an old leaf: Compost 2nd: Make the mulch of it! 3rd: Can you dig it? Runners-up: 1. Compost: Make the mulch of it 2. Composting has a-peel 3. Do the Earth a good turn - Compost! 4. Composters have fertile beds 5. How does your garden grow? With San Jose Compost, naturally 6. Composting? Bin there, Done that. 7. Got worms? 8. San Jose, It's your Turn/Compost! 9. Get into the Mix - Compost! 10. Worm your way into composting 11. Turn over an old leaf - Compost! 12. Ask me about my worms 13. Compost - Can you dig it? 14. Compost - because we said so. The Master Composter website is located at: http://www.mastercomposter.com/ (Note from Tom: I could not get into this site this morning, although it usually works fine.) ----------------------- >From Tom Watson, Waste Prevention Forum moderator: Just a reminder about the archive for the Waste Prevention Forum. I think a lot of people are forgetting it's there. We run a link to the archive at the top of every installment (see above). Simply click on the link or, if you can't do that with your e-mail system, just copy the address and paste it in the address box on your Internet browser. The archive currently has all the Forum postings going back to Jan. 1, 1999. Advantages of the archive are: 1) If there are messages that interest you, you don't have to save them on your own computer. You can use the archive to find them at any time; and 2) You can do a quick and easy search for postings about any subject. Thanks again to Darin Cosgrove and Reuses.com of Brockville, Ontario, for providing this terrific archive service for us! ------------------ The 8/27/99 Dilbert comic, by Scott Adams: 1) Pointy-haired boss talking to employees: "We can save money by cutting used paper into little squares to use as note pads." 2) Boss holds up little stack of pads: "I made these in less than one hour." 3) Boss: "Not counting the time it took me to print the blank pages." - end -