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03 Mar 00 - simplicity; toxics; computers; scratch tickets; DVD; landfills ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- The first two items are in response to the 2/24/00 excerpt from a Desert Sun newspaper article (by Sekai Mutunuhu) about simplicity. -------------------- >From Susan Salterberg, Center for Energy and Environmental Education, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA: Check out Susan Susanka's book, "The Not So Big House." Susanka is an architect in the Minneapolis area, and she speaks a different language than the architect mentioned in the Mutunuhu article. Susanka's "not so big" is not ultra simple, but it's a lot better than the larger-house-is-better trend. E-mail: ssalter [ AT ] netins [ DOT ] net ------------------- >From Gretchen Tomkins, Walla Walla and Columbia Counties, Walla Walla, WA: Here is a response from one of Walla Walla County's Waste Reduction & Recycling Committee members regarding "trendy simplicity": Doesn't the introduction of two more magazines for everyone to receive at home defeat the purpose of simplicity? Why would I want another magazine coming to my door - it's just another piece of eventually-to-be-waste that I must either read, find a place for, or recycle. Wouldn't it be simpler for these editors to just pass on the concept of simplicity by word of mouth and action rather than go through all the hassle of collecting articles, getting advertisers, racing against printing deadlines, managing subscriptions, etc.? And I don't buy the argument that bigger houses with all that gym equipment and home theater equipment are fitting in with simplicity. It's just consumerism and further depletion of resources. You gotta buy all that equipment to set up your retreat, then you have to maintain the equipment. And when the technology changes, some people just have to have the latest and greatest - out goes the VCR and video tapes, in comes the DVD player and all those disks. So I'm getting more sarcastic in my older age. - Sandy Gretchen's e-mail: gtomkins ( AT ) co ( DOT ) walla-walla ( DOT ) wa ( DOT ) us -------------------- >From John Katz, pollution prevention program, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, San Francisco, CA (forwarded by Barbara Nichols from the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable listserv): Does anyone have recommendations for an alternative to trichloroethylene (TCE) for spot removal on clothes in a garment manufacturing plant? An assembly plant in the Pacific Islands stores 55 gallon drums of TCE, and they are dealing with potential contamination from leaks and spills when workers transfer the solvent to individual spray bottles (by sucking on a tube to start a siphon!). As far as I know, the TCE is used for spot cleaning either prior to sewing or before things are packed and shipped - I don't think there is a subsequent washing step, but I'm not sure. If not, the alternative would have to be fairly volatile, so the clothes would dry quickly. Thanks in advance. E-mail: katz (DOT) john (AT) epa (DOT) gov -------------------- >From Theron Shaw, City of SeaTac, WA, responding to the 2/24/00 posting asking for information on solid waste programs that have approached policymaking by using waste-stream-specific environmental criteria, rather than volume or tonnage: I spoke last week with Jim Bennett at Pacific Rim Resources in Seattle. They are working with a client to launch a pilot program for recycling cathode ray tubes. Sounded like they had a pretty solid program in the works. Jim Bennett can be reached at Pacific Rim Resources, 206/623-0735. Note from Tom: This program, which is currently being developed by King County Solid Waste Division in conjunction with other local agencies, involves the recycling and reuse of computer equipment. Information on this program will be posted on this listserv when the program is further along. ------------------ >From Jesse White, Resource Management Group, Sarasota, FL: There is now a company that makes electronic scratch tickets. It's all web based - no paper, no scratch-off stuff, just electrons and mouse clicks. Maybe computers will contribute to the paperless society after all. E-mail: jwhite [ AT ] recyclesmart [ DOT ] com ------------------ Excerpted from article by Lisa Guernsey in the 3/2/00 New York Times: DENTAL SCHOOLS STUFF FOUR YEARS' WORTH OF MANUALS AND BOOKS INTO ONE DVD Starting this fall, students at seven dental schools will be spared the strain of toting heavy textbooks to and from the library. They won't even need to go to the bookstore to buy a single textbook, workbook or laboratory manual. Instead, each incoming student will be asked to purchase a digital video disk (DVD) containing the entire curriculum -- textbooks, manuals and lecture slides -- for all four years of dental school. Each semester, students will trade the old DVD for an updated version. Creators of the technology estimate that the DVDs, each weighing less than an ounce, will replace more than 2 million pages, thousands of images and more than 400 pounds of books and manuals. Educators and electronic publishers have talked for years about the advantages of creating digital replacements for heavy and often quickly outdated printed textbooks. But digital textbooks have been slow to appear, a lag that has been attributed to everything from technological limitations to publishers' fears of copyright infringements. Most students still buy printed textbooks, although many books now come with CD-ROMs that provide supplementary material. The dental schools' use of DVDs is a sudden leap forward. Experts in textbook publishing say it is the first time that digital content has completely replaced books for all students in a school. And it is almost surely the first time that an institution of higher education has attempted to put an entire curriculum -- from handouts to manuals -- in one integrated electronic format for all four years of a degree program. Still, whether students will embrace an entirely digitized curriculum is an open question. Developers say that a DVD with updates will cost roughly the same as the total for the books students are expected to buy now: $3,000 to $6,000, paid over time. In addition to the curriculum DVD, students will have to buy a laptop with a DVD player. Most students, administrators say, will add the cost of the computers and the DVDs to their requests for financial aid. The dental schools will make these purchases mandatory, in part to ensure that the computers and disks qualify for federal education loans, which cover only required materials. To further help with the costs of the laptops, the schools are talking with computer manufacturers to come up with four-year leasing programs. - The full article is currently at this website (but will probably be moved, at some point, to a New York Times site where you have to pay to see it): http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/circuits/articles/02dent.html --------------------- >From Rob Arner, Northern Virginia Planning District Commission, Annandale, VA: An article that I wrote on "Landfill Financial Assurance Requirements," which touches briefly on reduction and recovery issues, is at: http://www.solidwaste.com/read/sp20000228/91899 E-mail: rarner [A T] shentel [D O T] net - end -