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06 Feb 03 - time; carpet; water bottles; green building; faxes ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From Janine Bogar, Thurston County Solid Waste, Olympia, WA: As was previously mentioned on this listserv, John de Graaf, of Affluenza fame, is working on a new - though very related - cause called Take Back Your Time Day. This effort is to address the overworked, stressed lives most of us lead. As John says on his website: "Take Back Your Time Day is a nationwide initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families, our communities and our environment." Time famine and stress affects everything, including the amount of waste we create. John asserts that: "It even contributes to the destruction of our environment. Studies show that lack of time encourages use of convenience and throwaway items and reduces recycling." I am wondering if anyone has any statistics backing this claim up. Intuitively I don't doubt it to be true. However, in order to even ask for my organization to support this cause, I need proof, or at least some numbers suggesting that time-famine is directly and clearly related to our mission of recycling and waste reduction. I'm interested in hearing other's thoughts on this. Thanks. E-mail: bogarj [ AT ] co [ DOT ] thurston [ DOT ] wa [ DOT ] us Note: The Take Back Your Time Day website is at: http://www.timeday.org -------------------- Link to information on the Carpet America Recovery Effort's new grant program for carpet reuse and recycling projects: http://www.carpetrecovery.org/grants/03_CARE-RFP.pdf Grants of up to $50,000 each are being offered to private businesses or non-profit organizations for projects related to the reuse and recycling of carpet. Grant applicants must have been in business for at least two years. Government agencies are not eligible. Grant applications are due by March 14, 2003. The Carpet America Recovery Effort, which is offering the grants, is a carpet industry-based effort to increase the amount of recycling and reuse of post-consumer carpet and reduce the amount of waste carpet going to landfills. A press release about the grants is at: http://www.carpetrecovery.org/news/030121_grants.asp -------------------- From Renee Kimball, Enuf!, Portland, OR, responding to the news item, posted 2/3/03, about possible health risks (both from bacteria and toxic plastic compounds) from the reuse of plastic water bottles: While I personally don't care for the plastic water bottles (I use a glass resealable one instead), I think the problem is more one of hygiene than anything else. You'll get the same type of bacterial buildup in glass and stainless steel if you don't scour it out on a daily basis (and this includes ALL water bowls for pets, including birds). A rinse and scour with a bottle brush EVERY DAY keeps the bacteria away. Let it go for two days (especially in summer) and you'll notice the slimy buildup of bacteria on ANY container. Also, I'm glad to see someone is finally addressing the leaching and degradation issues with plastic. E-mail: rrrrenee (A T) aracnet (D O T) com -------------------- Excerpted from an article by Jim Carlton in the 2/5/03 Wall Street Journal: HOME BUILDERS EMBRACE ENVIRONMENTAL GOALS Spurred by the economics of greater energy efficiency and pressured by environmentalists, residential home builders of all kinds are embracing green standards in everything from materials to design. The trend is still relatively small, but growing fast. Officials at the National Association of Home Builders, a trade group, say that about 13,000 of the 18,000 homes that have been built over the past decade in accordance with their group's green specifications were constructed last year. Meanwhile, a 2001 survey by Cahners Residential Group, an industry trade publisher, found that 28 percent of 344 U.S. builders questioned in a survey used green techniques on most of their developments. That was an increase of 22 percent from when the survey was conducted in 2000. In the same 2001 survey, 94 percent of 300 American consumers questioned cited energy savings as their most sought-after green upgrade, followed by majority preferences for water-saving appliances and recycled building materials. Industry groups have set up programs to encourage green building in 18 locales nationwide, with five more set to follow soon. Programs are already in place, for example, in Atlanta, Denver, Seattle and the state of California. Green building isn't for everyone. Many building suppliers say the demand for green products is being driven more by environmental groups than the general public. "What you need for the green movement to really be successful in building is for all the homeowners to want it, but that's just not the case right now," says Jim Rush, a marketing vice president for Temple-Inland Inc., an Austin, Texas, supplier of wood products. Builders say that in many cases another impediment is local zoning laws. A builder in Texas was told his plan to construct narrower streets - so as to preserve trees and increase natural water runoff - couldn't be approved because the law required standard, wide streets. But builders add that increasingly, municipalities are becoming so enamored of the final result that they are waiving certain rules and even expediting the permit process for green projects. At the International Builders Show in Las Vegas last month, green building was one of the subthemes of a convention that attracted some 90,000 builders from all over the world. There were panel discussions on the trend, as well as numerous green products on display. For example, Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta AG demonstrated a greener termite barrier. Called the Impasse Termite System, it is designed to encase insecticide inside a plastic sheet beneath a home's foundation so that the chemical doesn't have to be sprayed outside and left to seep into the ground. -------------------- Excerpted from an article by Ashbel Green in the 2/5/03 Portland Oregonian (forwarded by David Allaway): LAWYER FIGHTS ILLEGAL FAXES WITH LEGAL FACTS A little advice to Oregon businesses: Quit faxing advertisements to Gresham attorney Timothy J. Vanagas. He is not afraid to sue. And the law is on his side. Federal law awards $500 to anyone who receives an unsolicited commercial fax. Oregon law adds another $200 if the recipient tells the business to stop and it doesn't. So far, Vanagas has filed three lawsuits, going after an auto dealer, a mortgage lender and even the city of Gresham over a fax about a seminar that cost $75 to attend. At this rate, he isn't going to get rich in his battle against the junk fax, but Vanagas really just wants to make a point. "You have spam on your computer. You have telemarketers calling you at home during the dinner hour. Your mail box is filled with junk mail. And there are so many things that happen like that where you feel like there is no affirmative action that you can take," he said. "It just fairly tickles me in this limited way that there is something affirmative that the involved person can do where you don't feel powerless to respond." The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits faxes that advertise goods and services without consent of the receiver. Congress passed the law because junk faxes were paralyzing computers. The penalty for each junk fax is $500, an amount that can be tripled if the fax-sender knew about but ignored the federal law. Under a similar 1989 Oregon law, the penalty is $200, but the fax receiver can seek punitive damages. The law was challenged in 1993 by five businesses, including two from Oregon, saying it violated free speech. But a federal magistrate in Portland upheld the law. Nationally, the law was little used until 1995, when Hooter's, a restaurant chain, settled a class action for $9 million. Last year, the Dallas Cowboys paid $1.7 million to settle a class action, and a San Francisco law firm filed a $3 trillion class action against Fax.com. In Oregon, the state Department of Justice has gone after several commercial fax operations, but Vanagas said he doesn't know of any other private attorney who has used the law. That's probably because Oregon's class action law does not offer the same payoff as laws in other states. In other states, plaintiffs attorneys can win $500 per class member, which quickly gets into the millions of dollars. In Oregon, Vanagas said, individual plaintiffs can win the whole $500, but in a class action, they can recover only the cost of the fax, which Congress calculated at 7 cents. On Monday, Vanagas filed two lawsuits in Multnomah County Circuit Court, one against a mortgage lender that faxed him an ad offering to refinance his house and the other against the city of Gresham for sending him a fax about a $75 summit on "Building the East Metro Vision." Vanagas said city officials claim that their fax was not a commercial solicitation but a public service. - end -