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13 Feb 04 - convenience; chopsticks; lids; repair; prize; design ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive --------------------- Excerpted from 2/5/04 and 2/6/04 reports by consumer reporter Liz Crenshaw on WRC-TV (NBC4), Washington, DC (from transcripts on the station's website): THE COST OF CONVENIENCE Vicky Weiland, a teacher of Family and Consumer Sciences (what used to be called "Home Ec") at Robert Frost Middle School in Potomac, Maryland, has calculated the annual costs of a number of disposable and convenience products, compared with their more traditional counterparts. Here's what she found out: Over one year: - Pre-packaged lunches for children, $299. Buying items separately and making at home, $180. (For 100 school lunches.) - Tuna lunch-to-go kits, $99. Homemade tuna lunches, $49 - Furniture polish wipes, $43. Canned furniture polish, $25. - Car cleaning wipes, $14. Spray bottle of car cleaner plus paper towels, $9. - Windex wipes, $42. Spray Windex and towels, $14. - Dish wipes, $73. Dish washing liquid and sponge, $60. - Disposable cutting sheets, $20. A cutting board, $8. - Clorox Ready-Mop system, $49. Sponge mop and cleaner, $30. ---------------------- From Renee Kimball, Enuf! (an "enviro-boogie" band), Portland, OR: CALLING ALL CHOPSTICKS, AND A CHALLENGE First I would like to thank all those who continue to send me the AOL tins and jewel cases for our CDs - your kindness is appreciated! We also have an ongoing need for chopsticks - we use them as "drumsticks" for the Wastrument(TM) Workshops and we have a lot of them coming up. Any arrivals would be most welcome. As an incentive to promote an event in September, Enuf! is challenging all you creative types to come up with a good REUSE idea for lids of plastic tubs. We're hoping to get an idea we can teach to others, so simple and resource-efficient is grand! The main purpose of this is to draw attention to keeping them out of the recycling stream, as they don't bail well and become deadly flying missiles when projected from beneath a truck tire in a storage yard. It's also an effort to find some way of reusing this non-recyclable item. To sweeten the effort - we're offering $100 to the winning idea. E-mail: Renee (A T) EnufWaste (D O T) com Mailing address: Renee Kimball, 2224 SE Umatilla St., Portland, OR, 97202 Phone: 503-238-6973 ---------------------- Excerpted from a 1/13/04 article by Billy Cox in Florida Today: ELECTRONICS REPAIR HARDER TO FIND Independent electronic service technicians have been bailing out in droves for at least a decade, according to a survey conducted last year by the Professional Service Association (PSA), an industry trade organization. The PSA reported that more than 20,000 repair shops listed in the Yellow Pages nationwide in 1992 had dropped to below 9,000 in 2002. And with schools cutting back on electronics-repair courses, the free-fall has yet to hit bottom. ---------------------- From a 2/10/04 item on the Ethical Performance listserv: Alcan, an aluminum company based in Montreal, has created an annual prize of $1 million (U.S. funds) to recognize outstanding contributions to sustainable development made by a not-for-profit group. The prize will be awarded to a single organization each year. The closing date for entries is 3/31/04. The winner of the first annual prize is expected to be named in January, 2005. For more information, see: http://www.alcanprizeforsustainability.com/en/conditions.asp ---------------------- Excerpted from a 2/6/04 column by Tom Horton in the Baltimore Sun: GOING FROM LESS BAD TO A FUTURE OF GREEN Kermit the Frog was right. It's not easy being green, and here's why: Environmentalism is the curmudgeonly brake, grinding to restrain that heady, high-revving, wondrous engine, the economy. Befitting brakemen, the language of us greenies is laced with words like limits, avoid, minimize, reduce, sacrifice, regulate. Right now, it has to be that way. For all our talk of "win-win" solutions, the faster our modern industrial economy runs, the worse nature usually fares. It's a hell of a thing that a home-building recession is among our more reliable protectors of open space; that a drought, cutting runoff from farms and streets, is the only way we clear up Chesapeake Bay waters. Of course we're making environmental progress. Progress toward being less bad. But you know how that story ends? The same as if we're bad, or more bad. It just takes longer. Is it our fate to lurch down the highway to the future, one foot tromping the gas, one simultaneously mashing the brake, trying to arrive with the least wreckage possible? Maybe not. Consider Toyota's gas-electric hybrid car, the Prius. The harder you brake, the more the friction charges the electric motor, which powers the vehicle in its cleanest, most fuel-efficient mode. Now, take a leap beyond the Prius, and imagine an economy that, the faster it ran, the greener we'd be. Buildings would emulate trees, producing more oxygen and more energy than they used, cleansing the wastes of their inhabitants, and providing beautiful workspace "habitat." New products, from autos to carpeting, would be designed so their manufacture produces air emissions and waterborne effluent too clean to regulate. The products themselves would be infinitely recyclable in industrial closed loops or compostable, returning their components to enrich the soil. Imagine finishing a cola and tossing the bottle, knowing it will degrade, not just harmlessly, but with benefit to the soil - seeds implanted in the bottle at the factory will sprout into trees. Imagine shoes with soles, as they abrade with wear, that release beneficial nutrients rather than today's mix of toxic compounds. Many have envisioned such a future, though few so compellingly as William McDonough, a landscape architect and author of "Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way We Make Things" (North Point Press, 2002). What really sets McDonough apart is how his design firm, and his collaborations with co-author and German chemist Michael Braungart, are putting the above "imaginings" into practice with corporate clients that range from Ford and IBM to Nike and Oberlin College. McDonough's book makes it clear that our current "cradle to grave," throwaway economy, and a regulatory structure that only hopes to make it less bad, won't lead to a future we should want. "Regulation," McDonough says, "can be seen as a failure of design." - end -