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28 Jul 03 - business mail; diapers; printing firms; DVDs; games; NYC; EPA ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive --------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: About a year ago, a posting on the Forum described a new service for businesses, called Red Flag. The way this service works is that companies or agencies provide a list of former employees (who are still receiving mail), and the service then notifies direct mailers to remove these names from their mailing lists. Well, I'm happy to report that this service - which now has a new name, the EcoLogical Mail Coalition - seems to be doing very well. Nearly 6,000 companies and organizations have already signed up for this service, including United Airlines, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent, Tyson Foods, Clackamas County (OR), the Central Contra Costa Solid Waste Authority (CA), and First Lutheran Church in White Bear Lake, MN, just to name a few. For information on the EcoLogical Mail Coalition, see their new website at: http://www.ecologicalmail.org Their list of former employees' names is still called the Red Flag Database. There is currently no charge to companies or agencies who submit lists of former employees. The EcoLogical Mail Coalition does operate the Red Flag Database as a for-profit business; the main way the owners hope to make money is by charging the direct marketers who want to clean up their lists. Many business-to-business direct marketers realize that they can improve their response rates by not sending mail to people who are no longer with a company. I think this is a valuable service - my office signed up - and I hope the EcoLogical Mail Coalition has great success in its efforts to help businesses reduce the huge amount of unwanted mail addressed to former employees! --------------------- Excerpted from a message from Angelique Mullen, teacher and activist, San Francisco, CA: CLOTH DIAPER ADVOCACY I am a mother of an 18-month-old daughter, and we happily diaper her in cloth. I have been wanting to get involved with a cloth diaper advocacy group here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but it seems as though there aren't any. Not only can I not find one, it seems as though there isn't one anywhere in the U.S. We have Tiny Tots Diaper Service here, but they are a business, not necessarily an advocacy group. I have been trying to get people in my local attachment parenting group to join me, and although they cloth-diaper, they don't seem interested in activism. I won't give up, though! I was wondering if anyone has advice on where to begin, to get a group going? I have been doing some research, trying to get more of a knowledge base. Some of the statistics out there seem to be at least a decade old. However, one thing is clear: the health and environmental risks from disposables are not good! Does anyone know of any recent studies done about the environmental or health aspects of diapering? Any help would be greatly appreciated. E-mail: terang [ AT ] sbcglobal [ DOT ] net --------------------- From Mike Ruby, Envirometrics, Seattle, WA: A colleague of mine is very interested in the Canadian "Clean Print" organization and is wondering if it might be a good idea to organize something similar south of the border. As I understand it, this organization promotes pollution prevention, recycling and sustainability practices among commercial printing firms. Does anyone knows if there is something similar already organized in the U.S., if any of the trade associations are active on these subjects, or where might be the best sources of information on these subjects currently? Also, contacts with people who share similar concerns would be helpful. E-mail: mruby [AT] envirometrics [DOT] com ---------------------- Link to information on the new GrassRoots Recycling Network campaign, "Who Put Goofy in Charge of Product Design?", opposing the Disney Corporation's new disposable DVDs (forwarded by Marcia Rutan; this follows up on previous postings on this topic): http://action.grrn.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item=5033 From this web page, people can write an e-mail to Disney CEO Michael Eisner, expressing concern about this product. ---------------------- From Gina Hawkins, City of Gainesville, recycling program, Gainesville, FL: We are preparing for America Recycles Day (already!) and would like to know what types of hands-on activities your organization has included in your America Recycles Day events. We are considering a "carnival" atmosphere and are especially interested in game ideas (i.e. ring toss, bowling, etc.) with recyclables. Pictures, diagrams and props (if you have any to lend out) will be appreciated. Thanks. E-mail: hawkinsrm ( A T ) ci ( D O T ) gainesville ( D O T ) fl ( D O T ) us (Note from Tom: Although we don't run items on this Forum that are purely recycling related, we're including this one because some of the activities could involve reusable items, not just recyclables.) ---------------------- Excerpted from an opinion piece by Stephen Hammer and Benjamin Miller in the 7/24/03 New York Times: NEW YORKERS: IT'S YOUR GARBAGE - PAY FOR IT Until New York City begins to fundamentally rethink some of the ways it manages waste, the money devoted to sanitation will continue to force cuts in other City services. The City needs to encourage New Yorkers to produce less waste in the first place. The single most effective way to do this is to treat sanitation services like other utilities, where you are billed based on your use of the system. The current approach, which involves financing residential waste services out of property taxes, sends the wrong signals. Charging residents according to the amount of refuse they set out for collection is not only fair, but would mean reducing costs for those who produce less refuse. Who among us would relish paying our neighbors' phone or electric bills if costs were simply apportioned equally across the entire city? Thousands of cities around the country, including San Jose, Austin and Buffalo, have adopted similar plans, and the amount of waste they send to landfills has been reduced by an average of 17 percent. Such measures encourage people to make small changes in their daily habits: asking for fewer shopping bags at the supermarket, removing their names from junk mailing lists, and recycling and composting more of the waste they do produce. The plan would also allow the City to reduce property taxes; to make up for this revenue, the City would charge households a fee based on the number of trash bags they put on the curb or the size of their trash cans. The less waste you generate, the less you pay. Given the complexity of life in New York, we might not achieve the same reduction in waste as other cities that have introduced similar plans. Still, every one-percent reduction in waste volume would save New York City nearly $5 million a year. Such a system would not only be more equitable for New Yorkers, but would be fairer to our neighboring states, where much of our garbage is burned or buried. We can't continue to dump it all on others. --- Stephen Hammer and Benjamin Miller, former New York City Sanitation Department officials, are senior research associates at the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University. Benjamin Miller is also author of "Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last Two Hundred Years." -------------------- From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) WasteWise program listserv: RCRA NATIONAL MEETING The 2003 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) National Meeting will be held Aug. 12-15, 2003, in Washington, D.C. This year's meeting will focus on EPA's Resource Conservation Challenge, a major national effort to find ways to conserve natural resources through waste reduction and energy recovery programs. The RCRA National Meeting will promote new EPA initiatives, foster discussion, and provide education and information on regional, state, and tribal RCRA issues. For more information, see: http://www.epa.gov/osw/meeting - end -