WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ARCHIVE   BACK TO ARCHIVE INDEX

13 Jun 03 - hotels; vinyl; DVDs; federal awards; NRC; TVs ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive --------------------- From Mary McReynolds, St. Louis County Solid Waste Department, Virginia, MN: I was up at a tribal resort in our area the other day to talk about options for organic composting. One thing that came up is the hotel ratings (stars, diamonds and whatever) and some of the requirements to obtain them. This particular resort uses styrofoam coffee cups and non-recyclable plastic cups in their guest rooms to obtain a fairly good rating. Compostable paper is a lower rating. The use of reusable ceramic and glass is a higher rating, but fairly expensive for this site. Those of us doing the walk-through of this facility were wondering if these rating companies could be open to discussion of the waste reduction efforts as a criteria for additional "stars" or "diamonds" for hospitality facilities. Have you heard of anyone having those discussions? E-mail: mcreynoldsm [A T] co [D O T] st-louis [D O T] mn [D O T] us -------------------- From Renee Kimball, Enuf!, Portland, OR, responding to the 6/10/03 item about vinyl plastic (also known as polyvinyl chloride or PVC): I did some research on the plastic "sealer" inside the caps on beer and soda pop bottles - about 99 percent of the time it is PVC. I have not extended the research to include food jars and bottles but I would bet money it's the same. If anyone is interested in pursuing this line of "questioning" for themselves, let me know and I'll send out info I have now. There are alternatives available and being used - it's just the industry has gone for vinyl. My equation: PVC + FOOD = A life-quality disaster waiting to happen (sometimes it takes 20 years or more). Personally, I believe we will look at plastic in another 20 years and simply say "What were we thinking?" E-mail: Renee [ A T ] EnufWaste [ D O T ] com -------------------- Excerpted from a 6/11/03 article by Ann Zimmerman in the Wall Street Journal: WAL-MART GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH NETFLIX ON DVD RENTALS Wal-Mart Stores Inc., of Bentonville, AR, announced it has expanded its eight-month old DVD subscription service by offering lower rates, increasing the number of distribution centers and adding more available movie titles - moves that will heat up competition with industry leader Netflix. Both Netflix and Wal-Mart rent DVDs through a membership program. Customers place orders online, the DVDs arrive through the mail, and customers return the DVDs in postage-paid envelopes. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, CA, offers 15,000 titles and has 18 shipping centers, with more than half its deliveries arriving the day after an order is placed. Wal-Mart says that as a result of its recent service expansion, it now has 13,000 titles and six shipping centers for DVDs. Wal-Mart has a subscription plan for $18.76 a month, compared with the Netflix fee of $19.95 a month (both plans allow subscribers to rent three DVDs at a time). Wal-Mart has also added a $15.54 monthly plan that allows customers to have two DVDs out at a time. Netflix says it has more than 1.13 million subscribers. Wal-Mart does not release its subscriber numbers. -------------------- From Renee Kimball, Enuf!, Portland, OR, responding to the recent postings about Disney's new disposable DVDs: Regarding the DVDs - I would envision this will all be a moot point in another 5 years when we "dial up" movies instead of renting physical ones. Same thing with music - we'll be able to compile our own CDs and pay copyright fee on individual tracks. Mind you, I don't think ASCAP or BMI will EVER give any of the copyright fees to the vast herd of "minor players." They don't get copyright fees now for airplay - only the Britney Spears, INXS, Eminem folks get the money. E-mail: Renee ( AT ) EnufWaste ( DOT ) com -------------------- Link to a 6/10/03 release from the U.S. Office of the Federal Environmental Executive, Washington, DC, announcing the winners of the 2003 White House "Closing the Circle" Awards: http://www.ofee.gov/whats/Federal_Employees_Honored.html Scroll down for details on all the winners. These annual awards honor federal employees and programs for outstanding environmental stewardship work. The 2003 award winners include: - Sonya Capek, National Park Service, Pacific West Region, Seattle, WA, for developing innovative handbooks and training programs for environmental purchasing and contracting. - The Marine Location Marker Team, U.S. Army, Crane Army Ammunition facility, Crane, IN, for reusing more than 52,000 pounds of red phosphorus from marine location markers used in rescue operations, resulting in savings of more than $2 million. - The Federal Network for Sustainability, a San Diego-based alliance of 13 West Coast federal agencies, for a variety of projects. - The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), Chicago, IL, for achieving U. S. Green Building Council LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for the new U.S. courthouse in Youngstown, Ohio. The courthouse, on a former "brownfield" site, was completed under budget and ahead of schedule. It is the first GSA courthouse project to receive LEED certification. -------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: I just wanted to give early notice that the National Waste Prevention Coalition will have a strong presence at the National Recycling Congress (NRC) this year, which will be held in Baltimore September 14-17. We'll have our "Waste Prevention Lounge" booth in the exhibit hall, where people can stop by to meet others interested in reduction and reuse. We hope to have a comfy couch and some chairs, and we'll display waste prevention materials and project information from around the country. If your agency or organization has cool posters, display materials or other items you'd like us to consider for the booth, please let me know! The booth will also feature the National Waste Prevention Coalition's projects, including our new Phone Book Reduction Campaign. We'll need some help staffing the booth. If you are planning to come to the conference and are interested in taking a shift in the booth, let me know. Shifts are only an hour long. We don't do a booth at NRC every year, but when we do, it's always been a lot of fun. I'll also be participating in two sessions as a speaker and moderator. The conference has a significant waste prevention element. This year's sessions include: "Consumption and Waste Reduction: On a Collision Course," "Getting Closer to Zero Waste," "Eliminating Toxins from the Waste Stream," "Reuse First!," "Deconstructing Deconstruction," and "Surplus Property Programs at Colleges: The Real Reuse." The conference program is online at: http://www.nrc-recycle.org/congress/NRC_Preview.pdf E-mail: tom [ D O T ] watson [ A T ] metrokc [ D O T ] gov Phone: (206) 296-4481 ------------------- Excerpted from a 6/12/03 article by Robert Strauss in the New York Times: TV REPAIR STILL ALIVE TV repair is an odd business in the 21st century. Sets are bigger and smaller than they used to be - and more expensive and cheaper; better-built and more fragile; easier to fix and harder. And then there is the emotional component. "A common thought is that TVs have become like toasters, that as soon as they need repair, people throw them out," said Steve Waite, the technical manager for the Sony Electronics East Coast repair center in Bristol, PA, just north of Philadelphia. "But that's not entirely true. People get attached to their TVs in different ways than toasters. Customers can be funny that way." Certainly, there is a bit of the throwaway mentality among TV consumers. "We tend to use the term 'commodity products' for something a customer will replace rather than repair," said Sean Skelley, vice president for business development at Best Buy, the Minneapolis-based consumer electronics retail chain. A recent advertising circular for Best Buy shows TVs priced from $80 for a 13-inch RCA portable to $11,000 for a 50-inch Pioneer plasma set. "I would think that maybe $400 would be the price point where they might say, 'I'll buy a new one,'" Mr. Skelley said. "But then, if the repair can be cheap, maybe they will stick with it." "I'd say if someone spent $2,000 for a set, maybe the top he might pay to have it repaired would be $450," said Adam Goldman, of Advanced Electronics, a repair shop in Blackwood, NJ. Mr. Goldman said that high-end televisions have been the new lifeblood of the local TV repairman. He charges a minimum of $40 to repair a set, followed by an hourly rate that sometimes varies, he said, according to how much he feels a customer can pay. The Sony service people estimated their average repair at $75 to $100. The advent of the big-screen TV has, for the most part, saved the small shops that repair TVs. Homeowners are more likely to call someone who can be there quickly to fix the multithousand-dollar set in their living room. Mr. Skelley of Best Buy said his company had found that consumers buy a new TV every three to six years. Mr. Waite at Sony said that generally the first repairs on TVs come after about eight years for people who use sets only for watching programs, perhaps earlier for those who use them extensively for gaming. "So there must be some truth in the throwaway story - either that or everyone has 15 TVs by now," Mr. Waite said. - end -