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03 Jan 03 - chemicals; REI; South Korea; underwear; Reverend Billy ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From Gil Friend, Natural Logic, Berkeley, CA: A biotech company doing DNA synthesis says, "We use Methylene Chloride and Acetonitrile. We use them like water." They're interested in pollution prevention and materials substitution options, to feed transitions over the next four years. Can anyone point me to good citations and/or people experienced in this sector and/or with these materials to help on specific pollution prevention and materials substitution opportunities? Thank you! E-mail: gfriend (AT) natlogic (DOT) com -------------------- From Anne McLaughlin, City of Portland, Solid Waste and Recycling Division, Portland, OR, responding to the 12/30/02 posting about the environmental messages on some REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) shopping bags: I especially like the slogan on REI's bags, "Reuse is the sincerest form of recycling." Has it been used before? Thanks. E-mail: amclaughlin (AT) ci (DOT) portland (DOT) or (DOT) us -------------------- Excerpted from a 12/25/02 article by Koo Sung-ja for the Chosun Ilbo news service, South Korea: SOUTH KOREA PLANS NEW RESTRICTIONS ON DISPOSABLE PLASTIC ITEMS The South Korea Ministry of Environment said it was revising regulations pertaining to recycling in order to reduce the use of disposable products. The ministry will enforce the new regulations, one of which bans the use of disposable plastic plates in cafeterias located in department or discount stores, beginning in July, 2003. In addition, fast food restaurants larger than 150 square meters will no longer be able to use disposable plates or cutlery, and small grocery stores and retail markets will not be allowed to provide free plastic bags to customers, but will be allowed to sell them. Also, professional sports teams will be prohibited from providing free "cheering instruments" made of plastic, such as "thunder sticks." -------------------- Excerpted from an article by Ajay Jain in the 1/2/03 Financial Express business newspaper, Bombay, India: NEW PRODUCT AVAILABLE IN INDIA - DISPOSABLE PANTIES A new product imported from the Far East, the disposable panty, has been introduced in India recently by a Delhi-based company. It is made of lightweight, soft, breathable, polypropylene fabric. Its features allow it to fit into any pocket or handbag for the lady on the move. From a marketing standpoint, the critical aspect is the product positioning. Much as the manufacturers would like to sell it for daily use, the economics of it may not add up for all customers. Worldwide, the trend is to buy either when traveling or during menstrual cycles. It saves the bother of laundry in hotels, or when stains seem painful and embarrassing to wash. It's also been found useful when unexpected overnight guests drop in. Which brings us to distribution channels. Keeping its main application in mind, it has often been found to move well with sanitary tissues (ST). A logical choice for the sales channel is to place it on shelves closest to those of STs. Chemists (drug stores) thus become an important channel. Code Inc., the Indian company which is importing the panties, has partnered with Lifespring stores for selling its product, and is in the process of appointing more distributors nationally. Another important channel that could emerge is institutional sales - to hotels and airlines for example, for the use of their customers. The product is currently sold in a pouch of five. The brand is called "I Am" and the aim is to target women making a statement of self confidence. The first month of the launch has seen a fairly good response from consumers. Awareness is being created through advertisements in daily newspaper supplements, magazines and outdoor media. A website is being prepared. Good results are currently being achieved by having sales promotion advisers at strategic locations, talking to potential customers. And does the company face any socio-cultural barriers in India? Not very different from those for STs and inner wear, says Code Inc. director Jay Gandhi. And what about customers wanting to reuse the product instead of throwing it away? Tests have shown it to be good for at least one wash, but this is not something the company will officially communicate. ---------------------- Excerpted from an article by Constance Hays in the 1/1/03 New York Times: PREACHING AGAINST CONSUMERISM Some people may be upset that retail sales failed to meet expectations during the holiday season. Not Bill Talen. For the last four years Mr. Talen, also known as Reverend Billy, has been performing from the theaters of Bleecker Street to the Starbucks on Astor Place, exhorting people to resist temptation - the temptation to shop - and to smite the demon of consumerism. With the zeal of a street-corner preacher and the schmaltz of a street-corner Santa, Reverend Billy, 52, will tell anyone willing to listen that people are walking willingly into the hellfires of consumption. Shoppers have little regard for how or where or by whom the products they buy are made, he believes. They have almost no resistance to the media messages that encourage them, around the clock, to want things and buy them. He sees a population lost in consumption, the meaning of individual existence vanished in a fog of wanting, buying and owning too many things. "Consumerism is a dull way of life," he says. "We're all sinners. We're all shoppers. Let's do what we can." It's an act, a kind of performance art, almost a form of religion. He named it the Church of Stop Shopping. As Reverend Billy, he wears a televangelist's pompadour and a priest's collar, and is often accompanied by his gospel choir when he strides into stores he considers objectionable or shows up at protests like the annual post-Thanksgiving Buy Nothing Day event on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Other performers preach the same gospel, with their own twists. Ange Taggart, who lives in Nottingham, England, turns up in places like Troy, NY, to go into a store, buy a lot of things, and then return them. She recently filled a cart with Martha Stewart products at Kmart, then put them on the conveyor in a certain order, so that when she got her receipt, she said, the first letters on the itemized list spelled "Martha Stewart's hell." There is also Andrew Lynn, who created Whirl-Mart last year. He gets a group of people together, everyone with a shopping cart, and they stroll the aisles of Wal-Mart or Kmart, putting nothing in the carts. When store managers tell him to take his protest elsewhere, he tells them: "This isn't a protest. We're performing a consumption-awareness ritual." There may be something to it, too. Psychologists at the University of Rochester and at Knox College in Illinois have published studies concluding that people focused on "extrinsic" goals like money are more depressed than others and report more behavioral problems and physical discomfort. Some economists have also addressed the phenomenon of rich people who feel poor. Juliet Schor of Harvard University, the author of "The Overspent American" (Basic Books, 1998), says people are frustrated because they compare their lives with what they see on television. Robert Frank of Cornell reached a similar conclusion in "Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess" (The Free Press, 1999). Reverend Billy said he had his epiphany in 1999, when protesters disrupted the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle; he discovered the potential of drama to send a political message. Mr. Talen soon realized that after years of work producing Spalding Gray and other performers, he suddenly had an act of his own. He recently walked down Lafayette Street, bellowing in character about how creeping consumerism threatens the fabric of society, in the form of chain stores, sweatshops and more. But to the public, it mostly just means more stuff to buy at a good price. Indeed, it is no surprise that Reverend Billy has not had much of an impact. Even this year, considered to be a particularly disappointing Christmas shopping season, Americans are still expected to spend almost $1 trillion at stores, restaurants and auto dealers in the last three months of 2002, up perhaps 3 to 4 percent from the year before. The Reverend Billy made his first formal appearance at the Disney store in Times Square, circa 1998. He was driven away in a police car, his wrists still cuffed to a large statue of Mickey Mouse. He has found other targets; in general, he selects large global companies that he feels are inappropriately seizing control. In 1999, he zeroed in on Starbucks. Reverend Billy says he tries to remain relatively low key. "I'm against a lot of political people who have become fundamentalists themselves," he said. He doesn't like the anti-fur people who ridicule pedestrians in fur coats or hats, for example. He is a latte drinker, though he doesn't order it at Starbucks. He wants to help awaken desensitized shoppers, he says, because "they are underestimating the complexity and beauty of life." And besides, "they are definitely underestimating the impact of shopping." - end -