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08 May 02 - reuse; mercury; band; McDonough; medical waste; garage sales ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- Link to information on the City of Seattle's "Use It Again, Seattle!" community exchange events this spring and summer (forwarded by Carl Hursh): http://www.cityofseattle.net/util/useitagain/events.htm This web page also includes links to other useful information on reuse (on the left). -------------------- Link to the website for the University of Minnesota reuse program: http://www1.umn.edu/recycle/reuse.html This reuse program, which is operated by the university's recycling program, offers surplus items to university departments for free, and to the general public for a small fee (in most cases). The notable thing about this program is that the items available are listed on the program's website, with a photo of each item (even the smallest office supplies). For example, click on "Items Available for Public," and then click on the underlined items on the left to see the photos. -------------------- Link to a cover story on mercury reduction by Jim Motavalli in the May/June 2002 E Magazine: http://www.emagazine.com/may-june_2002/0502feat1.html -------------------- Excerpted from a message from Renee Kimball, waste prevention advocate and member of the band Enuf!, Portland, OR: Our enviro-boogie band, Enuf!, will be taking a worm bin and permanent ware with us when we travel down south in May for a 13-day musical excursion to northern California. First stop is the Second Annual Humboldt County Compost Festival, at Humboldt State University (where our worms will meet and greet CA worms). The next stop is the LaGrange Banjo & Fiddle Contest. Then (still to be confirmed) is a lunchtime performance for a certain GREAT group of waste reduction folks in Sacramento. Finally, we'll play at THE Whole Earth Festival in Davis. All food scraps, paper and any other organic stuff will be put in the worm bin and it will be prominently featured at every performance. We'll also be doing workshops on "Wastrument" (TM) building (musical instruments made from the "formerly disposable") and vermiculture. Peace, love and global worming! E-mail: rrrrenee [AT] aracnet [DOT] com -------------------- A column by James Surowiecki in the 5/6/02 New Yorker: WASTE AWAY Seventy years ago, the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge factory, in Dearborn, Michigan, was the show horse of the second industrial revolution. Spread out over a thousand acres, it included a steel mill, a power plant, glass and cement factories, and an assembly plant. Coal, iron ore, and sand were hauled down the Rouge River on giant freighters, and were transformed first into steel and glass and then into Model As, tractors, and airplanes. Today, there's a new show horse at the Rouge. As part of a two-billion-dollar redesign, Ford is covering much of the roof of its new factory with a plant called sedum, effectively turning the roof into a ten-acre garden. Skylights and giant windows will flood the factory with natural light. And the complex will include acres of natural swales and wetlands. The change will please the tree-huggers but should please the bean counters, too. The "living roof" lowers energy costs by keeping the factory cooler. The skylights and windows reduce the need for artificial light. And the wetlands serve as a natural filtration system for rainwater running off the buildings. It might seem silly to build an environmentally friendly plant to turn out gas-guzzling trucks, but the new Rouge may well offer the possibility of a new industrial revolution. Or so William McDonough believes. McDonough is an architect and product designer whose ideas inspired the Rouge renovation. He is also something of an environmental heretic. In his new book, "Cradle to Cradle," McDonough (with his co-author, Michael Braungart) argues that the battle between environmentalists and industrialists is as outmoded as Earth Shoes. "The growth/no-growth argument is specious," he said last week. "Growth is good. The question is, how do you want to grow?" McDonough's guiding principle seems simple enough: The source of our environmental woes is waste. There is nothing wrong with cars, TV sets, and running shoes. What's wrong is the waste - chemicals, heavy metals, CO2 - that's produced when we make them, use them, and, eventually, throw them away. Eliminate that waste, and you eliminate the problem. Right, and why not cure cancer while you're at it? Last time we checked, waste - landfills, smog, river sludge - was the price we paid for a healthy economy. McDonough doesn't see it that way. We don't need to make less stuff. We only need to make stuff differently. In McDonough's future, there would be only two kinds of products. The first would be made of natural substances - he calls them "biological nutrients" - and they'd be perfectly biodegradable. Had enough of those pants? Just toss them out the window, like an apple core. The second would be made of "technical nutrients" - steel, plastics, polymers, silicon, glass - and would be endlessly reusable; old shoes would become new shoes, old cars would be turned into new cars. Everything would be raw material for something else. McDonough hasn't simply imagined these products; he has started to make them. A new fabric that he created for Designtex, which Lufthansa is testing for airplane seat cushions, is free of poisonous dyes and fibres; you can eat it, if you like. He thinks we'll soon have an ice-cream container that biodegrades in a matter of hours. "It's fun to just throw stuff away," he says. "You could put 'Please litter' on the wrappers." The pages of "Cradle to Cradle" are made not of paper but of a new waterproof polymer that can be reused forever. This isn't merely a souped-up form of recycling. For one thing, recycling tends to be economically inefficient. For another, most recycling is actually downcycling, with the material becoming less valuable each time it's used. When the steel in old cars, for instance, is melted down, it becomes too weak for making new ones. Products aren't made to be reused. They're made to be thrown out. Products that will live forever (or die right away) must be designed that way from the beginning. We may be decades - centuries? - away from McDonough's perfect world, but he does seem to point to a path out of the seemingly unwinnable trench war between conservation and commerce. Never mind the invisible hand; McDonough's talking about the invisible hand-me-down. Thirty years ago, two scientists named Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, who were looking for a way to measure the burden that economic growth places on the earth, came up with the E=mc2 of the modern environmental movement. The equation was I=PAT, meaning that environmental impact (I) was the product of population size (P), level of affluence (A), and technological capability (T). The equation expressed some of the movement's central tenets: population growth, economic growth, and consumption are bad, technology rarely makes things better, and when you combine them all you get Armageddon. Translated into public policy, these tenets helped produce a thicket of environmental regulations, all predicated on the assumption that the only way to save the planet was to set limits and keep businesses and consumers from violating them. Of course, those regulations have done a great deal of good. But they also encourage companies to devote tremendous time and energy to figuring out how to get away with as much as possible, and to think of environmental concerns only as obstacles to profitability. Environmentalists, meanwhile, are stuck in the role of scolds, nagging corporations, in essence, to wear hemp and drink soy. But McDonough is saying that affluence and technology don't have to be enemies of the earth. In fact, they could be its best allies. We can save the world and get rich, while littering the yard with our biodegradable beer cans. -------------------- Link to a website from Health Care Without Harm, describing an international competition for innovative technologies for the treatment of medical waste in rural areas: http://www.medwastecontest.org Health Care Without Harm, with technical support from the World Health Organization, is holding this worldwide contest to find cleaner, safer, low-cost technologies to replace incineration for medical waste disposal in rural areas. Top prize for the best conceptual design is $5,000. Students, faculty, health professionals, researchers, inventors, and others are encouraged to submit entries. Health Care Without Harm is a non-profit, international coalition representing 360 groups in 40 countries. -------------------- Excerpted from a 5/4/02 syndicated column by Martha Stewart: MARTHA STEWART'S GARAGE SALE TIPS A garage sale, also known as a yard sale or tag sale, is a wonderful way to eliminate clutter and to recycle belongings that you no longer need. The key to organizing one successfully is planning well in advance. First, decide on a weekend for your sale, and warn the neighbors so they won't be surprised by the traffic. Check with local government in case you need special permission for additional parking or commercial use of a residential property. Once your date is set, place a classified ad in the local paper, with the date and time, rain date and address. Mention some intriguing items for sale and, unless you don't mind people knocking on the door at the crack of dawn, specify "no early birds." Prepare for the sale by posting easy-to-read signs in the neighborhood and a large one in your yard. Next, gather card tables and picnic tables and plan table displays. Group items in eye-catching ways - by color, for instance, or by era, style, etc. Make items accessible by putting clothes on racks, books in boxes or on shelves, and so on. Set prices high enough to allow for bargaining but not so high you'll scare off buyers. If you have any doubt about the value of a particular item, especially an antique, have it appraised ahead of time. Put a price tag on everything, and add a label describing noteworthy items - "Gothic hall chair," for example. Have friends help out during the sale, greeting shoppers, handling the cash, giving receipts and bagging. Keep plenty of small bills and change on hand, as well as a long extension cord so buyers can test any electrical appliances. As the sale goes on, regroup the remaining items. For the last couple of hours in the day, lower prices to encourage lingering shoppers. At the end of the day, box up whatever hasn't sold; you can donate these items to a charity group. - end -