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04 Oct 02 - disposables; hospitals; Buy Nothing Day; Netflix; NWPC project ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From the drugstore.com website: NEW DISPOSABLE KITCHEN PRODUCT Saran Disposable Cutting Sheets, made by S.C. Johnson & Son, are plastic sheets that you put on top of a cutting board. They are described as "the convenient way to contain the germy mess left behind when cutting chicken, meat, fish, vegetables and much more. Now, when cutting or preparing food, simply lay down a new Saran Disposable Cutting Sheet. When you are done, just throw away the sheet with the germy mess!" A package of 20 of these sheets costs $3.99 on the drugstore.com website. A full description of the product is at: http://www.drugstore.com/qxp77085_333181_SESpider/Saran/Disposable_Cutting_Sheets.htm Note: This product is now also being advertised on television, and is currently available in stores, in at least some parts of the country. -------------------- Link to an online guide for hospitals, "Waste Reduction Guide: Cutting Costs & Minimizing Waste From Your Facility," published by Hospitals for a Healthy Environment: http://www.h2e-online.org/tools/guide.htm -------------------- Link to information on the 2002 Buy Nothing Day, from the website of Adbusters, a non-profit advocacy organization based in Vancouver, BC: http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd This year Buy Nothing Day will be held Friday, Nov. 29 in the U.S. and Canada. It will be held Saturday, Nov. 30 in Europe, and will also be held in other countries as well, on one of those dates. Information on Buy Nothing Day in the United Kingdom is at: http://www.buynothingday.co.uk -------------------- Excerpted from a business column by Peter Wayner in the 9/23/02 New York Times, following up on a 7/31/02 Forum posting about Netflix: Netflix is a national company that rents DVDs of movies through a membership program, sending the discs to customers through the U.S. mail. Netflix uses minimal packaging (just a simple paper envelope) that is reused to send the disc back. The New York Times column notes that Netflix has been very successful - The company mails about 190,000 discs each day to its 670,000 subscribers. -------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: We have received more responses regarding the proposals for a new National Waste Prevention Coalition (NWPC) project, so we are running excerpts from those responses below. Thanks again to everyone who has responded. If you have comments on people's responses to the proposals, or additional comments on the proposals themselves, please e-mail those to me by Oct. 11. Once again, the preliminary project ideas are: Junk Phone Book Reduction; Waste Prevention SWAT Team; Double-Sided Printing Breakthrough Project; War on Obsolescence. For brief descriptions of these proposals, see the 9/26/02 posting (click on the link to the archive at the top of this message). For those Forum readers who are not really interested in the new NWPC project, don't worry - We certainly won't be doing all the work on the new NWPC project on this Forum. But, people's responses about the project have covered a lot of pertinent waste prevention issues, so we thought people would be interested in the responses. Thanks! E-mail: tom ( DOT ) watson ( AT ) metrokc ( DOT ) gov ------------------- From Carl Hursh, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, waste reduction and recycling program, Harrisburg, PA: I would like to join the list of folks who recognize the opportunity to make an impact by focusing on unwanted telephone directories. In Pennsylvania we can be served by two phone companies, one for local and one for long distance service. We now (again) have the ability to be served by one company for both services. I find this having the opposite effect of a service monopoly: companies must vie for customers by offering the most competitive prices. If you choose to have two different service providers, you invite two telephone directories to your door. Compounding this problem is that another company offering service in my county that I do not subscribe to must feel that I need its directory as well. So that makes three directories for me. Add the "Yellow Book" and you can see why I have a five-foot stack of directories in my vestibule, arranged by size, company and date, on which I throw my car keys when I get home. I will soon need to participate in my county's phone book collection drive as it becomes more difficult to grope for the keys in the dark. We have had positive discussions over the years with telephone book publishers (YPPA - the Yellow Pages Publishers Association, now known as the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association) to encourage the use of recycled-content paper, to render their products more recyclable by using water-soluble glues and by being more careful about telephone book cover adornments, and to assist with implementing and operating telephone book collection programs. I believe we could reestablish a dialogue with the industry to develop alternatives to the annual delivery of unwanted telephone books. An example of an alternative is the "Superpages" CD-ROM offered by one of the companies serving Pennsylvania. Another could be a notice with your telephone bill where you could select between receiving a telephone book or a CD-ROM, or neither, along with a link to a web site containing a directory reflecting real-time listing updates. I believe the best opportunities for waste reduction education exist when the topic hits home. When people can actually connect to the problem, they begin to understand and recognize other examples where they can have an impact. Unwanted telephone directories is such an issue. E-mail: chursh ( AT ) state ( DOT ) pa ( DOT ) us ------------------- From Wayne Gash, Washington State University (WSU), Material Resource Services, Pullman, WA: My two cents, for what it's worth: Before we started recycling at WSU, nearly 15 years ago now, we had a very innovative surplus property program that reused items generated on campus, and I also went out and "screened" and brought in state and federal used property for "reutilization" on campus. The program was not funded. We generated enough revenue to operate and gave money back to the departments every year. Our entire recycling program operated for years with reutilized trucks and forklifts and apple barrels, and on and on. So, my roots are really in waste reduction rather than recycling. Also, as an auctioneer, I know that you can sell virtually anything for reuse as something, you just have to put the idea in someone's head. My motto; "J-U-N-K is a four-letter word." Of the four proposed projects, I would rate the War on Obsolescence the highest priority. It ties in very closely with product stewardship, which has to happen. It's just a matter of time. My take on the junk phone books: You can't stop them, but can you get them to take them back? On double-sided printing: It's force of habit, which is strong. There is no logical reason not to double-side. Just pick up any book, magazine or newspaper. E-mail: wcgash [A T] wsu [D O T] edu ------------------- From Katie Jensen, Austin Energy Green Building Program, Austin, TX: Here is another suggestion for an NWPC project: Writing Utensil Waste Reduction - Disposable pens and other writing utensils are a waste that can easily, with some thought and effort, be greatly reduced. There are many angles that this project may take: 1) Focusing on soy- and vegetable-based inks; 2) Recycled-content and recyclable pen bodies; 3) Working with employers or employees (depending on which angle the group thinks is most appropriate) to encourage the purchase of pen bodies, requiring the purchase (thus the disposal) of only the refill as needed. Obviously, all three of these ideas could work together, though it seems the third option would reduce the most site-generated waste and the first and second options would reduce a large quantity of chemical waste. E-mail: katie [ DOT ] jensen [ AT ] austinenergy [ DOT ] com -------------------- From Jim Hill, California Department of Conservation, Sacramento, CA: Regarding new programs for the NWPC: How about a Best Practices clearinghouse? Something along the lines of what the Clean Washington Center did with recycling technologies a few years ago. NWPC could collect model program information for targeted groups, such as businesses, local government, state agencies, general public. The database could be in a standard format, including contact information, barriers, cost assessments, strategy, etc. Case in point: In California state government, we have waste reduction mandates, yet we lurch along slowly because of limited staff, dissimilar agency objectives, inertia, etc. A "how-to" manual with real case studies could help. I realize the NWPC web site has many useful links - but I think a more standardized, in-depth Best Practices database would be helpful. E-mail: jhill (AT) consrv (DOT) ca (DOT) gov ------------------- From Tom Watson: I'll be out of the office next Wednesday through Friday, Oct. 9-11, so there will be no Forum during that time. Thanks! - end -