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20 Jul 00 - Goodwill; 3M; opinion piece; bar code scanners; purchasing; junk mail; business website ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- Excerpted from a July 17, 2000, Associated Press article by Tara Burghart: The chain of Goodwill Industries stores based in Portland, Oregon, is the most successful chain of Goodwill stores in North America, in terms of revenues. Retail sales at the chain's 24 stores jumped from $25 million in 1996 to a projected $42 million in 2000. The Portland Goodwill (officially known as Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette region) has a seven-person in-house marketing department. About half of the 182 Goodwill systems around the nation also use Portland Goodwill's marketing department. In 1999, the Portland Goodwill system collected 84 million pounds of donated goods - more than any other Goodwill worldwide. It has a year 2000 operating budget of $48.3 million. Average sales per square foot were $166 in 1999 - almost $100 above the national average. Goodwill uses its revenues to support its employment and job training programs. The payroll for Portland Goodwill includes nearly $20 million in wages and benefits to people with disabilities and special needs. Some work in the stores, some process donations and others do simpler piece work. Michael Miller, president and chief executive officer for the Portland Goodwill, is often given a lot of credit for the chain's success. Miller receives a fixed salary and benefit package of about $225,000 a year, and can double that if certain performance incentives are met. For more information on the Portland-area Goodwill, see their website at: http://www.meetgoodwill.org/ ------------------- >From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division. Seattle, Washington: Last summer we ran several postings about the "Swiffer," the new floor sweeper from Procter & Gamble that uses disposable, "electrostatically-charged" cloths. S.C. Johnson and other companies offer similar products. Well, last week, I saw a television commercial for a product from the 3M Corporation called the Scotch-Brite High Performance Cleaning Cloth. The commercial makes a big point that their product is washable, and shows it being tossed into the washing machine. 3M's website describes the product this way: "An efficient cleaning tool specifically designed with a unique combination of bi-component microfibers and knit construction to provide excellent dust, oil and water pickup with minimal linting. May be used dry or damp, with or without cleaning chemicals, on a wide variety of substrates including delicate surfaces." Personally, when I need a "cleaning cloth," I just tear up an old shirt. But the 3M product does seem to be a lot more environmentally responsible than the "Swiffer"-type products. Hats off to 3M for marketing a product as "washable" (which I translate as "reusable")! E-mail: tom (D O T) watson (A T) metrokc (D O T) gov -------------------- Link to an opinion piece on waste prevention (which includes many tips, statistics and examples) by Bob Lilienfeld in the July 9, 2000, San Francisco Chronicle (forwarded by Stephanie Davis): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/07/09/SC54FRO.DTL Note: Although it may be on two lines, it is all one website address. -------------------- Excerpted from an article in the February, 2000, issue of "Waste Dynamics of New England" (forwarded by Tom Kacandes): The U.S. Postal Service has entered into an agreement with Ryzex Remarketing, Inc., that calls for the Postal Service to sell 10,000 bar code scanners previously used to sort and track mail containers. Ryzex will re-market the scanners for the Postal Service, refurbishing and reprogramming them so they can be purchased by others to be used for asset and file tracking, and other applications. The scanners will be available for purchase by anyone, but the Postal Service has arranged for special discounts to be offered to hospitals, schools, libraries and other community organizations. A Postal Service official said the agency had been searching for several years for a profitable and environmentally responsible way to reuse equipment that was custom-built for the Postal Service. Based in Bellingham, Washington, Ryzex is the largest company in the world specializing in used and surplus bar code equipment. The company, which has locations in Canada, England, Australia, and Phoenix, Arizona, expects to gross $30 million this year. For more information on Ryzex, see their website at: http://www.ryzex.com -------------------- Link to the City of Seattle's Environmentally Responsible Purchasing web site, which includes lots of useful links and information (first seen on the Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center listserv): http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/oem/GreenPurchasing/GreenPurchasing.htm ------------------- >From Skip Lacaze, Environmental Services Department, City of San Jose, California (forwarded from the Grassroots Recycling Network (GRRN) listserv by Bill Reed): In response to previous GRRN listserv postings on junk mail: The US Postal Service (USPS) maintains an online database that allows one to look up the ZIP+4 code for any U.S. mailing address. It uses address ranges instead of exact street addresses. This service is at: http://www.framed.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/lookup_zip+4.html They have other products that are used for mailers to verify addresses, in order to clean up their mailing lists and avoid wasting postage (and paper) sending stuff to non-existent addresses. It seems to me that the USPS is the only agency that is in a position to affect a reduction in direct mail abuse. If mail recipients could easily opt out by notifying the USPS, who could then identify such addresses as non-deliverable for unsolicited commercial mail, or, at least, for unsolicited commercial bulk mail, then mailers could be required to use such information to delete those addresses from their mailing lists, subject to loss of mailing discounts, at least, or to serious penalties. The system could be broadened to obligate all mass-mailers and spammers to use the service, on a cost-recovery basis. The ZIP+4 system has over 30 million records. A database with every deliverable address in the U.S. would only be about 10 times as large, and it would have lots of additional uses that would justify the effort and allow for the cost to be recovered. I would be concerned about losing the ability to use direct mail for Californians Against Waste fund raising, and doubt that direct mail could be completely forbidden. However, it could be required to pay the basic first class rate if it is not screened against the reject list. E-mail: skip [DOT] lacaze [AT] ci [DOT] sj [DOT] ca [DOT] us -------------------- Link to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's Commercial Waste Reduction Clearinghouse website (forwarded by Keri Morin): http://www.deq.state.or.us/wmc/cwrc.html - end -