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15 Jul 02 - junk mail; England; pepper grinders; packaging; NYC; mercury; envelopes ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: NEW BUSINESS JUNK MAIL REDUCTION SERVICE I just learned about a new service that will help businesses reduce the amount of unwanted mail they receive. Although it's just getting started, I think it has a lot of potential. The service is called Red Flag Employer Services, and their website is at: http://www.controlthemail.com The way it works is that companies or agencies provide Red Flag with a list of all of the former employees who no longer work there, and Red Flag notifies direct mailers to remove these names from their mailing lists. There is no charge to the companies who submit lists of former employees; Red Flag will make its money by charging the direct marketers who want to clean up their lists. Many business-to-business direct marketers realize that they can improve their response rates by not sending mail to people who are no longer with a company. Red Flag does not provide its list of former employees directly to marketers. Instead, the marketers send Red Flag their lists, and Red Flag returns to them a report that identifies which records on their list they need to remove. Red Flag Services is a for-profit company located in Danville, CA, in the Bay Area. I got an e-mail from Chuck Moxley, a founder of Red Flag, and I also chatted with him on the phone. From those communications, and from reviewing their website, I got a sense that this is a legitimate new company, with a promising, original idea. Chuck contacted me because he had discovered the National Waste Prevention Coalition's Business Junk Mail Reduction Project website while researching the concept. He said that Red Flag currently has about 8,000 former employees in its database, but he thinks they need at least 20,000 or 30,000 names before they can start marketing the service to direct mailers in earnest. I would encourage you all to check out the Red Flag website. If you think that this is a useful service, you could consider submitting the names of former employees from your own office, or promoting this service to businesses. Thanks! E-mail: tom ( DOT ) watson ( AT ) metrokc ( DOT ) gov -------------------- From Ann McGovern, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, consumer waste reduction, Boston, MA (forwarded by Steve Long): I am forwarding a request from a colleague - she is asking if any states have instituted "no junk mail" lists via legislation whereby residents may submit their addresses to be added to a statewide "no junk mail list." Massachusetts is considering such legislation and is seeking experiences from any state that may have tried such a thing. Note: The legislation under consideration is NOT for establishing "no call lists" for telemarketers, which has already been filed in Massachusetts. This is specifically for paper junk mail. Thank you! E-mail: ann [D O T] mcgovern [A T] state [D O T] ma [D O T] us -------------------- Link to a 7/11/02 article by David Hencke in the British newspaper The Guardian, about a controversial proposal by the British government to begin a national "pay-as-you-throw" system in England for residential garbage collection: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,12188,753172,00.html This proposal is in response to a European Union directive to reduce drastically the 1,400 landfill sites in the United Kingdom over the next eight years. The idea behind pay-as-you-throw systems - also known as variable rate systems or volume-based rate systems - is that if residents have to pay more when they throw out more garbage, they will reduce the amount of garbage they produce, through recycling and waste prevention. Many U.S. cities have pay-as-you-throw rate systems for residential garbage. Recent related articles in the Guardian are at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waste/0,12188,747275,00.html -------------------- From Barbara (Nichols) Zaccheo, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC: DISPOSABLE PEPPER GRINDERS A consumer product featured in the "Shopping Cart" column of the Washington Post food section appears to be inconsistent with waste prevention values. Here's the article from the Post: "Someone in Italy must have said basta! as they chased down their errant everyday salt and pepper grinders or refilled them for the 7,000th time. The result? These disposable grinders from Drogheria Alimentari. They're cheap, they're handy and are also available for nutmeg, white peppercorn, cinnamon and more. Though they are nonadjustable and nonrefillable, we're grateful nonetheless. There are at least two other similar products available, including one under the McCormick name. Drogheria Alimentari grinders are available locally at most supermarkets for $2.99 to $4.19." To view the Drogheria Alimentari grinders, check out: http://www.bri-al.com/danda.html To view the McCormick grinders, check out: http://www.mccormick.com/mc/prd/prflvr.cfm/pf/38 My husband and I noticed that some restaurants in Brazil and South Africa use these and it appears they are becoming more prevalent on shopping center aisles in America too. E-mail: Zaccheo [ D O T ] Barbara [ A T ] epamail [ D O T ] epa [ D O T ] gov --------------------- Link to articles about packaging reduction by Samar Farah and Amelia Newcomb in the 7/11/02 Christian Science Monitor (first seen on the Reuse Development Organization listserv): - http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0711/p11s02-sten.html - http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0711/p11s01-sten.html --------------------- Excerpted from a 7/13/02 editorial in the New York Times (forwarded by Jeff Gaisford): TROUBLE WITH TRASH New York City's ubiquitous trash - 11,000 tons of it daily from residences alone - has traveled to Pennsylvania and Virginia, and there's even talk of sending it to a Caribbean island. It is seeing more of the world than some New Yorkers do, and it could threaten to overtake culture as the city's most notable export. Recognizing the scale of the problem, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made the garbage crisis the focus of his second 100 days in office, promising to deliver something in the way of a solution by next Friday. It is an ambitious target, given the political, economic and environmental hazards surrounding the issue. It was irresponsible of Mr. Bloomberg's predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, to close the Fresh Kills landfill before finding an alternate trash disposal solution. Mr. Bloomberg should reopen it on a temporary basis, while continuing to send the rest of the trash to landfills elsewhere. But finding trash depositories cannot be the only focus if the city is going to seriously address the mountains of garbage it produces. New York has been living large for too long, and like overly indulgent parents, its officials have done little or nothing to rein in the excess. The city needs to go on a trash diet. Here are a few ways to start: - Expand the recycling program. Mayor Bloomberg's suspension of glass and plastic recycling cannot be the end of the discussion. We need new strategies for separating glass and finding markets for plastics. The program may never actually break even, but reducing the size of our trash burden will be worth a lot. The State Legislature can help by widening the bottle bill to include redeemable deposits on noncarbonated beverages. Albany should also correct an outrageous injustice in which unclaimed refunds on drink containers - tens of millions of dollars in New York City alone - go back to the bottlers. That money should be directed to recycling and environmental projects. - Compost. The whole idea of composting in a city this large and crowded sounds ridiculous, but there are places where it can work. In neighborhoods with lawns, cuttings should be mulched and returned to the ground, an uncomplicated task that could save the city as much as $9 million a year. Composting table waste is being done successfully on Rikers Island, and it worked in a Park Slope experiment a decade ago. It should be explored for larger applications. - Cut down on packaging. Manufacturers who wrap their products in layer upon layer of packaging could be persuaded to pare down if the city used the muscle of its more than seven million consumers to demand more restraint. The problem is big enough to require a trash czar - a high-level mayoral appointee who can help usher in a new era of waste reduction. This project will require new and creative thinking that goes beyond just how to get rid of what the city's residents throw out. The time is right and the garbage crisis demands this kind of attention. --------------------- Link to a 6/27/02 press release from the Mercury Policy Project about a United States Senate bill that would ban the sale of mercury fever thermometers: http://www.mercurypolicy.org/new/documents/s351releasefinal062702.pdf On June 27, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed S.351, a bill that would ban sales of mercury fever thermometers, except by prescription, and improve management of surplus mercury. A summary of the draft bill, from the Mercury Policy Project, is at: http://www.mercurypolicy.org/new/documents/S351Summary62502.pdf The full text of the draft bill is at: http://www.mercurypolicy.org/new/documents/s3512DEC02_471.pdf --------------------- From Bill Carter, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Watershed Management Team, Austin, TX (forwarded by Julie Rhodes and Woody Raine): I've come across an envelope for monthly billings that is apparently in strong use in Australia but has not been widely adopted in the U.S. It carries a bill to a customer and then is used by the customer to return payment, and it is still recyclable paper after the return. The key trick is a flap on the end of the envelope opened along a perforation which the customer uses to open the envelope and through which to return stub and payment, then lick and seal. I guess you sort of have to see it to get the idea, but it is lighter and works better than other returnable envelope designs I've seen. The company has apparently worked out the postal issues and has prepared an education campaign so that customers will not destroy the envelopes once they are introduced. But only a handful of institutions have used it so far. The Atlantic Envelope Co. has the rights to this particular design in part or all of the U.S. You can contact Richard Rogers for more info at richardb [DOT] rogers [AT] worldnet [DOT] att [DOT] net I'd be interested in any information anyone has on this technology, or variants on it, and how well they work in practice. E-mail: wcarter ( A T ) tnrcc ( D O T ) state ( D O T ) tx ( D O T ) us - end -