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04 May 01 - school lunchrooms; retirement; paperless billing ** 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 the 5/2/01 inquiry from a city that is rebuilding six schools, asking about cost comparisons for purchasing and disposing of Styrofoam dishware, compared with purchasing and washing reusable dishware. -------------------- Excerpted from a message from Steve Engel, Metro, Regional Environmental Management, Portland, OR: Several schools in the Portland, Oregon, metro area have been dealing with this question. The Portland Public Schools (serving something like 60,000 lunches per day at 94 schools) removed their wash systems some years back on the promise of a market for polystyrene trays and dishware. That market has vanished, and a reassessment of durables resulted in a predicament: As compared with disposal costs, it might repay the school system within 5 years to reinstall washers and buy durable dishware. BUT: It looks like the schools here won't be making that move back to permanent ware, in part because of unpredictable costs of remodeling and dishware replacement (estimated at about 15-25 percent annually), plus water-heating (energy) costs, employee health-and-safety concerns, the risk of contamination from improperly washed dishes, and the increasing reluctance to free student workers from class. PLUS, reinstalling a washables system involves a large, unbudgeted, unavailable, out-of-pocket, up-front chunk of dollars (vs. ongoing, familiar purchase-and-dispose budget items). Careers and personal relationships also get tangled up in this type of decision. The lesson might be: Keep a wash system if you have one. Make efforts to reduce loss of permanent ware. Any cost analysis you do will have unique, local assumptions. E-mail: engels ( AT ) metro ( DOT ) dst ( DOT ) or ( DOT ) us -------------------- From Wayne Gash, Washington State University, Material Resource Services, Pullman, WA: New dining centers would be an opportunity to install food grinders (like the Hobart Digester) so that all food waste, including napkins and polystyrene, can be composted at considerable savings over landfilling, at least in most areas. At Brigham Young University (BYU), they throw their plastic forks and spoons and polystyrene cups into the digesters along with the food and waxed cardboard. BYU claims that up to two percent polystyrene is actually beneficial to their compost/soil amendment. We are planning on giving the polystyrene cups a try in our digesters here at Washington State University. E-mail: wcgash [ AT ] mail [ DOT ] wsu [ DOT ] edu Note from Tom: On-site composting, which is done at some universities and other institutions, is sometimes considered waste prevention. (Since this forum is focused on waste prevention, we don't run items about large-scale, off-site composting.) --------------------- From Tom Watson, National Waste Prevention Coalition and King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA: LEANNE MEYER RETIRES Leanne Meyer, a leader in waste prevention, recently retired from her position as a recycling coordinator for the U.S. Postal Service in Lansing, Michigan. Leanne, who had been with the Postal Service for many years, made a proposal several years ago that the Postal Service should update its policy on donating undeliverable items to charities (so that more of these items, such as product samples, could be donated). The National Waste Prevention Coalition began working with the Postal Service on this issue, and it now appears that the Postal Service is close to making the improvements in this policy that were initially envisioned by Leanne. Along with her award-winning recycling and waste prevention work for the Postal Service, Leanne has also been active as a volunteer in the community. She is one of the founders of the Creation Station, a non-profit reuse center in Lansing that provides used materials to teachers and parents for school projects and other children's activities. I have known Leanne for a number of years, and I just wanted to wish her well in her retirement. I'm sure she is now enjoying having the extra time to ride her horse! --------------------- Text of a full-page ad in the 5/7/01 New Yorker magazine for AT&T's new "paperless billing" service: "AT&T online billing lets long distance customers pay automatically, see every call on-screen - and with merely a click, identify the party dialed. Saving time, checks, and the occasional deciduous tree." The ad also shows a drawing of a tree, which is shaded to look like the AT&T logo, and gives the website address for more information on this service: http://www.att.com/paperlessbilling - end -