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19 Jul 02 - junk mail; crayons; waste generation; printers; computers ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From Colleen Hetzel, Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance, St. Paul, MN: The Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance was updating our junk mail card and I noticed that the address for the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Mail Preference Service has changed. I thought it might be a good idea to send the change out on the Forum so that if other agencies were reprinting their cards they would have the correct NEW address. The Mail Preference Service address has been changed to: P.O. Box 643 Carmel, NY 10512 They have been forwarding cards for a few months, but the cards will only be forwarded for a year (probably around 8-9 months left). E-mail: colleen ( DOT ) hetzel ( AT ) moea ( DOT ) state ( DOT ) mn ( DOT ) us -------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: I would like to add some more info, related to Colleen's message above (and thanks, Colleen, for letting us know about this!). A DMA recorded phone message confirms the new address given above for the Mail Preference Service. The phone number for that DMA message is: (212) 790-1488 Unfortunately, the address for the Mail Preference Service is not easily found on the DMA's website. The only way to find it is if you fill out an electronic form with your name and address, at: http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglistdave You can submit this form to the Mail Preference Service electronically, but if you do, you have to pay the DMA a $5 "processing fee." DMA says you can print the form out and send it in by mail to avoid paying this fee, although they discourage that because they say it will take longer. Well, they won't even give you the mailing address until you submit your name and address. After you do that, the mailing address they give you for the Mail Preference Service is slightly different than the one above (it's still Carmel, NY, but it's a different box number). I called the DMA and asked about this and they said yes, they have two different addresses now for the Mail Preference Service, one for the people who get the address off their website and one for everyone else. Does this sound a little confusing? Someone in the direct mail business recently made the comment, "Within the DMA, the Mail Preference Service is a joke." This just confirms that for me. The DMA is trying to make it harder for people to get off mailing lists, not easier. And if you do want it to be a little easier, you have to pay them for the privilege! E-mail: tom [ D O T ] watson [ A T ] metrokc [ D O T ] gov --------------------- Also from Tom Watson: Here's another bit of depressing junk mail reduction news: The National Waste Prevention Coalition's "Reduce Business Junk Mail" website has been providing the "opt-out" information for InfoUSA (a main mailing list provider for business-to-business direct mail), so businesses can ask to have their names deleted from InfoUSA's lists. However, we have just taken the information for InfoUSA off of our website, because we found out that they are not legitimately offering this service. InfoUSA has taken the opt-out info off their own website, and they told me via e-mail that if a business wants to get off their lists, they can still opt-out, but the business' name automatically goes back on their lists "when the next phone book comes out." That's not much of an opt-out service, if you ask me! I know that some of you have been using the information on the Coalition's business junk mail reduction website for your own local web pages and brochures to help businesses reduce their unwanted mail. So I just wanted to let you know about this, so you can also take off InfoUSA. If you'd like to check out our website, it's at: http://www.metrokc.gov/nwpc Click on "Reduce Business Junk Mail." ------------------- From Jerry Powell, Resource Recycling magazine, Portland, OR: COLORFUL REUSE Crayola is now marketing a reuse device for use by children eight years old or above, and by adults. Employing the heat from a typical 60-watt light bulb, the crayon reuser produces new crayons by remelting crayon stubs. The only drawback is the cost of the device (over $30), although it may prove very useful in day care and school settings. E-mail: JPowell ( A T ) resource-recycling ( D O T ) com ------------------- Excerpted from a 7/18/02 article in Waste News (forwarded by Carl Woestwin): PER CAPITA WASTE GENERATION DECLINING, EPA STUDY SAYS Americans generated nearly the same amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) in 2000 as in 1999, but per capita waste generation declined, according to statistics released July 10 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Americans generated 231.9 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2000, a one-year increase of about 900,000 tons, or less than 0.4 percent. At the same time, daily waste generation per person decreased by about 2.8 percent, from 4.64 pounds in 1999 to 4.51 pounds in 2000. A stagnant economy was largely responsible for waste generation holding steady, according to the authors of the EPA's "Municipal Solid Waste in the United States." Waste generation increased throughout the 1990s as economic growth continued to be strong, with paper and paperboard generation leading the charge, but that changed in 2000. "Total MSW generation increased only slightly between 1999 and 2000, and this can be attributed to a large extent to a decline in production of paper and paperboard of 1.7 percent," the report states. ------------------- Excerpted from an article by David Gallagher in the 7/18/02 New York Times: PROFIT FOUND IN USED PRINTER INK CARTRIDGES An increasing number of schools and nonprofit groups are collecting empty ink cartridges from computer printers for remanufacturing and reuse. But the trend is being driven by more than environmental friendliness. There is a surprising amount of money in those hunks of plastic, some of which ends up paying for things like school computers and famine relief. What makes the cartridges valuable is strong demand from an emerging industry of companies called remanufacturers, many of them started by entrepreneurs who spotted a market niche. These companies overhaul and refill inkjet and laser cartridges and sell them to consumers at prices considerably lower than what printer manufacturers charge for new cartridges. By rewarding schools, charities and other groups for sending in the empties, the industry has enlisted an army of cartridge hunters. One of the largest of these programs is run by the Funding Factory, which says it has signed up 22,000 institutions, most of them schools, that send in used cartridges and, more recently, cell phones. The Funding Factory provides promotional material for school fund-raising campaigns and boxes with prepaid shipping labels that schools can use to send the collected materials to the company. Participants can log on to http://www.fundingfactory.com to track a tally of reward points and redeem those points for cash or computers and other school supplies. Participants say they are happy with the program's simplicity and with the money it generates. But the simplicity of the program has its price. Funding Factory is a division of ERS Imaging Supplies of Erie, PA, a broker that assembles batches of cartridges for sale to remanufacturers (http://www.ers-imaging.com). Although the Funding Factory site does not advertise that option, people who are willing to forgo the free boxes and other conveniences of the program can send their cartridges directly to ERS and get about twice as much money for them. ERS pays about $4 for inkjet cartridges and up to $20 for some laser cartridges. David Steffens, a senior vice president of ERS and head of the Funding Factory program, said the difference in the amount paid was partly related to the higher cost of running the school program. For example, he said, the Funding Factory pays for all shipping and packaging, even though it is unable to resell a quarter of the cartridges it receives. But even those are recycled, he said. The program has given schools about $3 million in cash and equipment so far and is likely to distribute up to $2 million more by the end of the year, he said. Larger groups can get more out of their cartridges by setting up their own programs. Food for the Poor, an international relief organization based in Deerfield Beach, FL, developed one by working with M.B. Sales, a cartridge broker in Canoga Park, Calif. Businesses or individuals who sign up at http://www.foodforthepoor.org/recycle get postage-paid boxes they can use to collect cartridges. The boxes go directly to M.B. Sales, which covers all the costs of the program and pays the group up to $22 for laser cartridges and $2 to $4 for inkjets, depending on the model. The program started in April and, after little more than an announcement in the group's newsletter, is now bringing in a few thousand dollars a month, said Glen Belden, director of corporate and planned giving at Food for the Poor. He said he expected a big expansion as several large companies started participating. "You send me four of your laser cartridges, and I've just fed a family of five for a year," Belden said. "It's environmentally conscious, and it's a great awareness builder." The only potential losers in this recycling equation are printer manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, which have generally sold printers at low prices in hopes of profiting from the sale of pricey replacement cartridges. Remanufactured and cloned cartridges are now available from many major office supply chains. Office Depot's Web site offers a Hewlett-Packard inkjet model for $29.99, while a remanufactured version sold under the Office Depot name is $21.99. Recycled products and clones now account for 16 percent of the inkjet market, and that figure is expected to come close to doubling by 2006, said Jim Forrest, an analyst who follows the imaging industry for Lyra Research. Printer makers have added complex features, like ink-measuring chips, to their cartridges in what remanufacturers say is an effort to make their work harder. The printer makers argue that the modifications are product improvements. They also question the quality of the remanufacturers' offerings and the sincerity of their environmental pitches. Douglas Vaughan, a spokesman for Hewlett-Packard, said that remanufactured cartridges gave customers more options and that "choice is good." But he added, "At the end of the day, the quality that you're going to get from a refilled or remanufactured ink cartridge is extremely low in relation to what you'll get from HP." Vaughan said that his company's ink was superior and that the cartridges' print heads and other parts were not designed for reuse. Hewlett-Packard offers its customers a "take-back program" for all of its cartridges. The company pays for shipping, but it does not pay for the returned cartridges and does not reuse or refill them, Vaughan said. Instead, they are broken down into their component materials, and about 65 percent of that material can be recycled. Ian Elliott, a senior vice president at Nu-kote International, a major remanufacturer based in Bardstown, KY, said his company's remanufactured cartridges were tested in printers and were fully guaranteed. He acknowledged that the company had thrown out many cartridges that could not be resold, but said it now threw out 10 to 15 percent of them and was working hard to reduce that figure to zero. For example, it is now working with a company that can grind up unusable cartridges and turn them into plastic wheels for garbage cans. Most people who donate cartridges to collection programs probably have no idea that they are handing over materials that bring significant profit to an upstart industry - one that is generally not welcomed by the cartridges' original manufacturers. David Wood, who campaigns for waste reduction as program director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network, said there was "some need for better accountability throughout these emerging recycling sectors in terms of what's happening to the materials." But just about any recycling is good recycling, Wood said, especially when the long-term environmental impact of discarded cartridges is unknown. "The more stuff we can divert from landfills, the better," he said. --------------------- Link to a June, 2002, column by Monte Enbysk on the Microsoft Network's Small Business Solutions website, providing detailed information on how businesses can reuse and recycle their old computers (forwarded by Lisa Sepanski): http://www.bcentral.com/articles/enbysk/157.asp?cobrand=msn - end -