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06 Jun 01 - C & D; online billing; Bill Moyers; stewardship; Martha Stewart; shoes; workshops ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From David Allen, Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada: Rob Arner recommended I contact the listserv regarding a Construction & Demolition Waste Management Study I am overseeing. I am a waste reduction coordinator with the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, a regional government located in British Columbia. I have been interested in C&D waste management issues for a number of years and, as a former contractor, have an appreciation of the challenges faced by builders and contractors. Specifically, I am looking for examples of effective C&D feasibility and/or waste management studies and initiatives in other jurisdictions. I have spent a good deal of time on the issue to date, but would appreciate any links, ideas, contacts, guidance, etc., that would improve the study's design and approach. Any assistance that people can provide is much appreciated. E-mail: recycle ( A T ) slrd ( D O T ) bc ( D O T ) ca -------------------- Excerpted from a column about online billing by Bob Tedeschi in the 6/4/01 New York Times: According to the Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm, only about three million of the nation's estimated 130 million Internet users use the Internet to pay any of their bills - and most of those customers still receive the billing statement on paper through the mail. A far smaller number, about 100,000, actually go to a single website to view their incoming bills and electronically pay them, according to Gartner. Many utility companies, trash collectors and other companies have been somewhat slow to offer their bills online - whether through their own websites or through a site served by one of the billing consolidator companies such as Checkfree and Spectrum. Susan Landry, research director at the Gartner Group, said of online billing, "Billers hate it." Setting up an online billing system is not only costly, she said, but can clutter the line of communication a biller previously had with its customers. But some billers are enthusiastic. George McGrath, senior vice president of Norcal Waste Systems, a trash collection and recycling company based in San Francisco, said he was "truly excited" about the company's online billing system, even though just 28,000 of his 400,000 customers use it. Mr. McGrath said his customers can view and pay their bills on Norcal's website for no charge. In the future, he said, those customers will also be able to do so on another website affiliated with Spectrum, although that might entail a service charge. Mr. McGrath would not disclose how much the company spent on the online billing system, but he said that online bill processing cost half as much as traditional bill processing, given the expense of printing, mailing and handling paper bills. Mr. McGrath said customers had also responded favorably to a feature, rolled out last month on his site, that automatically debits their checking accounts when their bills come due, and then notifies them by e-mail. "They're telling us, 'We don't want to go into your site; just take the money and let us know you're doing it,'" Mr. McGrath said. "So that's what we're giving them." -------------------- Excerpted from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) website (forwarded by Marcia Rutan and Josh Marx): "Bill Moyers Reports: Earth on Edge," will be broadcast on PBS on Tuesday, June 19, 2001, at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (check local listings). In this program, journalist Bill Moyers describes scientific evidence that we are approaching a key environmental threshold. "Earth on Edge" showcases new data depicting the scale of human impact on the planet's life-support systems. The broadcast coincides with the launch of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international effort to gauge the health of the world's forests, grasslands, coastal and freshwater areas. Preliminary findings were featured in the World Resources Institute's report, "World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life", which the program is based on. The statistics from their preliminary findings are staggering: Half the world's wetlands lost in one century, half the world's forests chopped down, 70 percent of the world's major marine fisheries depleted, the world's reefs at risk. For more information, see these websites: - http://www.pbs.org/earthonedge/ - http://www.wri.org/wr2000/earthonedge_about.html -------------------- Link to the temporary website for the new Product Stewardship Institute, at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell: http://www.turi.org/product_stewardship/index.html --------------------- From Tom Watson, National Waste Prevention Coalition and King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA: I thought this was a nice quote from Martha Stewart, in her 6/2/01 syndicated newspaper column: "Composting is one of the best things you can do for your garden and for the environment." The column went on to give some home composting tips. Home composting is usually considered a form of waste prevention, and it's great when someone as well-known as Martha Stewart gives it a boost! -------------------- Excerpted from a 6/5/01 Environmental News Service posting (forwarded by Kinley Deller): NIKE LAUNCHES CURBSIDE SHOE COLLECTION PILOT FOR RECYCLING AND REUSE Over the next two weeks, residents of Laguna Beach, CA, will be taking bags of used athletic shoes out to the curb along with aluminum cans, newspapers and other recyclables. The city's 9,800 households will take part in a pilot program aimed at recycling and reusing more athletic footwear, through Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program. "We want to take responsibility for our product through its entire life," said Bill Malloch, strategic director for footwear sustainability at Nike. "Product innovation and performance are our first priority. But we feel it is important to take our responsibility one step further - once the consumer is finished using our product, we offer them the option of recycling their old shoes. Shoes in good condition will be donated to charity." For this pilot program, recycled plastic bags were distributed to every Laguna Beach household on May 18. The bags are designed to hold five to seven pairs of athletic shoes, rubber-banded together. On garbage days, residents can put shoe-filled bags out on the curb for pick-up. Once the shoes are collected, the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program will sort, clean, cut and grind them up to create a material called Nike Grind. This material is then used in athletic courts, tracks, fields and playground surfaces. Each year, the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program collects and recycles more than two million used athletic shoes - not just Nike, but any brand. Since the beginning of the program, some 13 million pairs of athletic shoes have been recycled and Nike has donated 70 athletic surfaces to U.S. communities. ------------------- Excerpted from a message from John Crisley, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Municipal Waste Reduction Program, Boston, MA: In June the Massachusetts DEP will conduct an expanded outreach effort to stakeholders to promote the availability of municipal technical assistance grants. DEP will hold five new outreach workshops June 21-28 at locations around the state. DEP is anticipating a funding increase for recycling, composting and source reduction programs in fiscal year 2002 and wants to increase the number of grant proposals it receives. Outreach workshops are intended to provide an opportunity to have more in-depth discussions with DEP staff, municipal officials, non-profit and other stakeholders to share ideas, outline concepts, and remove potential barriers to developing clearly-defined technical assistance grant proposals for 2002. Areas in which DEP is interested in receiving proposals include: Source reduction (consumer and local government), food waste/organics diversion, construction and demolition (C&D) recycling, commercial recycling, and household hazardous waste (HHW) programs. For more information on the workshops, contact John Crisley at (617) 556-1021 or by e-mail at: john [DOT] crisley [AT] state [DOT] ma [DOT] us - end -