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13 Sep 99 - tires; electronic books; abstracts; pesticides; moving ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive ------------------- >From Tom Kacandes, Empire State Development, Albany, NY, and president, Reuse Development Organization, responding to the 9/9/99 posting from Mary McReynolds asking if anyone has heard of any law which prohibits local governments from giving away used tires: It sounds to me that some tire dealer does not like a government competing with its own new and used tire sales. Two thoughts: 1) like it or not, governments are allowed to compete with private business in any way they want (established by a Supreme Court case regarding cement in Kansas years ago) and there is a fiduciary responsibility for this entity to get rid of tires as cheaply as possible, which they are doing and bully for them! 2) Go to the local Firestone and Goodyear dealerships and look at their used tire racks - is anyone hassling them about the legality of used tire sales, much less giveaways? Do they offer a warranty? (Not in my experience.) Do they worry about liability in selling these tires or require the signature of a waiver? (Tires are sold "as is," which has a generally accepted meaning - might want to check fine print on the receipts they give, though.) Do you think their legal departments haven't OK'd these sales? (If dealers in your state are selling used tires, that implies no state law against it.) You could more closely emulate them by culling out the obviously dangerous tires with extremely worn tread, though farm vehicle or tire swing users might not care about this. This objection falls into the "give me a break" category and deserves strong argument to squash it. I'd call the tire dealers association and say you're responding to a dealer who called you worried about used tire sales' legality - they'll hand you all the info you need. E-mail: TKACANDES ( AT ) EMPIRE ( DOT ) STATE ( DOT ) NY ( DOT ) US ---------------------- Also from Tom Kacandes, responding to the recent postings about whether a future edition of the Oxford English Dictionary should be published in book form or online: Apparently technology development is getting closer to emulating the inherent efficiency of printed paper. This would leave us with a book (not a laptop) on the dictionary stand, but the book would contain all 40 volumes stored in memory. Heard about this during an interview with Dr. Neil Gershenfeld (on National Public Radio, of course) re. his book, "When Things Start to Think." A reviewer said: "A good book for discovering about the future directions of computer science and the things which will be coming our way some day soon from research done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Gershenfeld writes very good explanations for some very advanced research topics and their future uses. Covers a revolutionary invention known as electrophoretic paper for making an electronic book which looks exactly like a book but whose pages have the properties of a computer monitor." E-mail: TKACANDES [ A T ] EMPIRE [ D O T ] STATE [ D O T ] NY [ D O T ] US --------------------- >From Stephanie C. Davis, consultant, Berkeley, CA: The Air and Waste Management Association has issued a call for abstracts for its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, June 18-22, 2000. Abstracts are due by September 20. For more information, see the website at: http://www.awma.org/AM2000 --------------------- Excerpted from an opinion piece by Mark Winston on the op-ed page of the 9/11/99 New York Times: (Mark Winston is a professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and is the author of "Nature Wars: People vs. Pests.") Americans use more than one billion pounds of pesticides every year to kill pests in agricultural, urban and forest environments - more than four pounds of toxic chemicals for every man, woman and child living in the United States. The side effects of this strong-arm approach are not trivial. Chronic pesticide exposure among humans has been linked to immune dysfunction, and various forms of cancer and birth defects. Monitoring and clean-up of groundwater polluted by pesticides costs $1.8 billion annually in the United States. And a 1993 study by David Pimentel, a Cornell University entomologist, suggests that pesticides in the United States kill about 67 million birds and from 6 to 14 million fish each year. We need alternatives and a change in attitude. About half of pesticide use in the United States is unnecessary because it is directed at cosmetic problems like weeds or the superficial appearance of fruit and vegetables. To combat real problems, we need to use nonchemical, biologically based alternatives, which already have been developed. For instance, there are pheromones that disrupt the mating of the boll weevil, an insect that eats cotton plants, as well as parasites that can kill fruit-eating flies. Most biologically based techniques, however, have failed to reach the marketplace for a host of regulatory, economic and political reasons. We need to do more to make them available. But that won't happen unless we change our attitude toward chemical pesticides. ---------------------- >From Tom Watson, coordinator, National Waste Prevention Coalition (NWPC): My office here at the King County Solid Waste Division (which is also the home office for the NWPC) is moving. As of next Monday, my new mailing address is: King County Solid Waste Division, 201 South Jackson St. #701, Seattle, WA, 98104-3855. My phone number and e-mail address will remain the same. My computer will probably be down from roughly Friday morning 9/17 until Tuesday 9/21. Well, I better go start packing! - end -