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19 Sep 03 - ordinances; billboards; Spanish; shipping; books; consumption; green capitalism ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive --------------------- From Jeffrey Smedberg, County of Santa Cruz Public Works Department, recycling programs, Santa Cruz, CA: Santa Cruz County is looking for sample language for an ordinance we are considering that would allow the control of unsolicited printed material distributed to residences. These printed materials might include phone books, advertising circulars, and free newspapers, but would not include items sent by US mail. We have already received the city ordinance on this subject from Beavercreek, OH, which was posted on this Forum last May. Thanks. E-mail: dpw179 [ A T ] co [ D O T ] santa-cruz [ D O T ] ca [ D O T ] us --------------------- Excerpted from messages from Bruce Lumper, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Solid Waste Program, Eastern Region, The Dalles, OR: I am working with The Dalles Disposal and Hood River Garbage Service on their efforts to promote waste prevention. One of the tasks that they have committed to carrying out is the development and placement of waste prevention ads on small and large billboards. Does anyone have any information/photos/designs regarding waste prevention billboard ads? I would appreciate any information that you might have. The brainstorming/design meeting where I will be needing this material takes place this coming Wednesday, Sept. 24. Thank you. E-mail: lumper ( D O T ) bruce ( A T ) deq ( D O T ) state ( D O T ) or ( D O T ) us ---------------------- From Susan Lhotka, City of Manassas, refuse and recycling program, Manassas, VA: I'm looking for examples of Spanish-language waste reduction materials. Thanks. E-mail: slhotka (A T) ci (D O T) manassas (D O T) va (D O T) us ---------------------- From Bruce Nordman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, responding to the 9/10/03 posting about reusable dunnage bags for shipping: Regarding the item about "reusable dunnage bags," which are inflatable, to prevent shifting of cargo in shipping: Years ago I saw a similar product for consumer shipping that was a series of linked inflated tetrahedrons. Very little mass and it seemed to work very well. I've long thought that Styrofoam peanuts should be required to be packed into small (e.g. shoe sized) bags that would work like bean-bags - they could be picked up by hand easily and when spilled could be cleaned up easily. Also quite reusable. E-mail: BNordman [ AT ] LBL [ DOT ] gov ----------------------- Link to the website for Bridge to Asia, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that accepts used scientific journals and other books and sends them to China and other Asian countries (forwarded by Susan Hunt): http://www.bridge.org Click on "Books." Donated journals and books can be dropped off at the organization's warehouses in San Francisco or the Chicago area, or can be sent to them. According to the website, "The need is enormous. In China alone, more than 1,000 university libraries and 3,000 reference rooms need collections of English-language teaching and research materials. Why English? Because it is the international language of science and commerce, and the primary way of communicating with the West. We seek books, journals and other forms of information, both used and new. Contents take priority over condition. Used books are as desirable as new books, if the information they contain is current and their condition is presentable." ------------------------- Link to the new Conscious Consumer website, a project of the Center for a New American Dream (forwarded by Sasha Illahee Pollack): http://www.newdream.org/consumer This website includes film clips and short narratives about people around the world who produce the goods we use, and people affected by the consumption choices we make. It also includes a shoppers checklist and a variety of other resources. ------------------------- Excerpted from "The Greening of American Capitalism," an article by William Greider in the Fall 2003 issue of OnEarth, the magazine of the Natural Resources Defense Council: Innovest, an upstart financial advisory firm with offices in New York, Toronto, Paris, and London, has gathered abundant specific evidence that companies with better environmental records generally produce better returns for investors. Innovest has developed investment-risk ratings for 1,500 corporations, a grade that resembles the credit-risk ratings by Moody's or Standard & Poor's. In this case, a corporation's environmental performance and viability are evaluated according to 150 concrete indicators, including its liabilities for past pollution, risks of hazardous waste disposal, the energy efficiency of its production systems, exposure to future regulatory costs, and scores of other markers. "Our ultimate purpose is to reengineer the DNA of Wall Street," explains Matthew Kiernan, Innovest's founder and chief executive. "If you want to change corporate behavior, you have to start with their financial oxygen supply, producing solid information from social-environmental areas that have been completely opaque to financial markets." The text of the entire article is currently online at: http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/03fal/capitalism.asp - end -