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25 Oct 04 - rats; contest; gift cards; consumption; sustainability; Nobel; bags
** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM **
-- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition
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Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org
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From Ellen Harrison, Cornell University, Department of Crop & Soil Sciences,
Cornell Waste Management Institute, Ithaca, NY:
Here at the Cornell Waste Management Institute, we have recently updated our
small scale (backyard) composting website:
http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/smallscalecomposting.htm
In giving a talk
to recycling folks in New York state and mentioning a hope to reinvigorate
efforts to encourage small scale on-site composting, several of them
mentioned opposition from the local health department and/or local
journalists, due to the real or perceived issue of rats coming to the bins
in urban and suburban areas. I would very much appreciate any comments from
folks about rats - and how to prevent problems with compost bins. Thanks.
E-mail: ezh1 ( AT ) cornell ( DOT ) edu
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Note from Tom: The Waste Prevention Forum focuses on reduction and reuse
(not recycling) of solid waste and toxics. We DO consider home composting
or on-site composting to be waste prevention (but not large-scale municipal
composting). And if we deal with recycling in the Forum, it's because there
is also a reduction or reuse angle. Thanks!
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From Keefe Harrison, North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention &
Environmental Assistance (DPPEA), Raleigh, NC:
The North Carolina DPPEA is hosting a waste reduction commercial contest.
Three winners will receive $1,000 each. For more information, go to
http://www.re3.org/contest.pdf or contact
Keefe Harrison at keefe ( D O T ) harrison ( A T ) ncmail ( D O T ) net or (919) 715-6507.
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The next two postings are in response to the 10/20/04 posting from Starbucks
asking about possible options for reuse or recycling of used plastic gift
cards, such as those used by Starbucks and many other companies. (These are
the size of credit cards, and they are the modern version of the gift
certificate.)
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From Sarah Grimm, BRING Recycling, Eugene, OR:
Is there a Buy Nothing Day event in your area? Or an alternative gift fair?
You could use colorful sticky vinyl scrap (sign makers' discard) to
redecorate them. They could become new gift cards for a kiss, a hug or a
meal. They could be decorated with a popular sports logo (duck feet in my
area), favorite animals, or sets of letters or words for students or
children.
E-mail: sarahg (AT) bringrecycling (DOT) org
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Excerpted from a message from Barbara Frierson, City of Fremont, CA:
I would respectfully point out that advance planning might render these
kinds of "oops, now what do we do with THIS??" questions less necessary.
Starbucks has a good corporate environmental policy, I believe, yet no one
in Marketing thought to research the material those cards are made from and
how they could be reused or recycled?
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) tickets came to mind as an
alternative; they are made from paper sturdy enough for multiple uses,
include a magnetic stripe, and can be recycled at their end of life.
Another possibility would be a denominationally color-coded paper ticket
that can be punched every time someone has a cuppa, and then recycled when
used up.
Maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but just because it's plasto-electronic, that
doesn't make it BETTER.
E-mail: bfrierson (AT) ci (DOT) fremont (DOT) ca (DOT) us
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From Karen Hamilton, King County Environmental Purchasing Program, Seattle,
WA, responding to the 10/20/04 posting seeking recommendations for a
children's book "that gets kids into celebrating holidays without wanting a
lot of stuff":
Check with the Center for a New American Dream. They have a whole program
based on Kids and Commercialism: http://www.newdream.org/kids/index.php
E-mail: karen ( DOT ) hamilton ( AT ) metrokc ( DOT ) gov
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Link to the Living Planet Report 2004, a new report released by the WWF
(formerly the World Wildlife Fund):
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/general/livingplanet/index.cfm
According to the report, humans currently consume 20 per cent more
natural resources than the earth can produce.
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Link to online resources on consumption issues, on the website "A Better
Future" (first seen in the WasteCap of Lincoln, NE, newsletter):
http://www.abetterfuture.org/consumption.htm
The "A Better Future"
website is maintained by Warren Flint, of Washington, DC.
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Link to a 10/20/04 press release about Washington Governor Gary Locke
signing an executive order on sustainability, which directs state agencies
to adopt more environmentally friendly practices (forwarded by Kinley
Deller):
http://www.governor.wa.gov/press/press-view.asp?pressRelease=1715&newsType=1
The executive order directs that all new state buildings be built to
green building standards and that those over 25,000 square feet be certified
to a Silver Rating in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design) rating system established by the U.S. Green Building Council. It
also directs agencies to reduce petroleum use throughout state fleets by 20
percent in five years and directs an additional 10 percent reduction of
energy use by state facilities on top of the 10 percent ordered in 2001 by
Locke. Additionally, it orders a 30 percent reduction in paper use and an
increase in purchases of paper with higher recycled content. The full text
of the executive order is at:
http://www.governor.wa.gov/eo/eo_04-06.htm
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Excerpted from a 10/8/04 article by Geoffrey Dabelko in Grist magazine
(first seen in the WasteCap of Lincoln, NE, newsletter):
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARDED TO ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST
Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental activist and
biologist-turned-deputy environment minister, has been awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. This is the first time the Peace Prize has been awarded to
honor work in the environmental field. She is also the first woman from
Africa to win the Peace Prize.
In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, which planted 30 million
trees across the country, in the process employing thousands of women and
offering them empowerment, education, and even family planning. The Green
Belt Movement was grounded in the firm belief that environmental protection
is inextricably linked to improving human living conditions.
Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to an environmental activist may raise some
eyebrows. But Maathai is on the front lines of the struggle over natural
resources that fuels conflicts across the world. The everyday fight for
survival of those who depend directly on natural resources - forests, water,
minerals - for their livelihoods is at the heart of the battle for peace and
human security. Maathai told Norway's TV2, "When natural resources get
scarce, wars are started. If we improve the management of our natural
resources, we help promote peace."
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Excerpted from a 10/21/04 Newhouse News Service article by Margie Wylie:
THE BATTLE OVER PLASTIC BAGS
Alaskans call them "tundra ghosts" and "landfill snowbirds." In China,
they're "white pollution." South Africans have sarcastically dubbed them
their "national flower." Snagged in treetops in Ireland, they become
"witches' knickers."
Since their introduction in the 1970s, handled plastic bags have become the
world's favorite way to tote purchases. Light, cheap, strong, waterproof and
durable, as many as 1 trillion are used each year. Most are trashed, a tiny
fraction are recycled and a good many are littered or break free of waste
bins and landfills. It's a propensity that has led some countries to enact
taxes and outright bans. Critics say the bags are not just a blight, but are
wasteful, kill wildlife, pollute oceans and may be insinuating toxins into
the food chain.
Americans used 1.3 billion pounds of plastic bags in 2001, according to
Mastio & Co., a market research firm in St. Joseph, Missouri. That's 100
billion bags, or 360 per year for every man, woman and child in the country.
Purchases are bagged almost reflexively. "When I buy a birthday card, it
goes into a plastic bag - I buy one item and it goes into a plastic bag,"
said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, an
environmental group in Sacramento.
During a cleanup of coastal areas in the United States and 100 other
countries last year, 354,294 bags - most of them plastic - were collected,
according to the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group based in
Washington, D.C. Plastic bags made up 5.4 percent of all beach debris, the
fifth most common litter. When whole, the bags can entangle or be eaten by
birds, dolphins, whales and sea turtles. Those encounters can maim or kill.
More worrisome to Murray is this: The bags, which take up to 1,000 years to
degrade, break into finer and finer particles circulating in the oceans. A
2001 study by the Algalita Marine Foundation of Long Beach, Calif., sampled
a Texas-sized garbage slick floating about 1,000 miles off San Francisco and
found six times as much plastic as plankton, the tiny animals and plants at
the bottom of the marine food chain. The next year, Algalita sampled just
off Long Beach, where plankton are more concentrated, and found plastic
particles still 2.5 times as plentiful. A Japanese study found that beads of
polyethylene plastic can concentrate toxins at up to 1 million times their
strength in surrounding sea water. A British study found that ocean
invertebrates such as barnacles and jelly fish can eat plastic fragments.
That leads Murray to worry that "plastic particles are becoming vehicles for
transferring toxins up the food chain."
Many countries are finding that litter from plastic bags is a compelling
reason to act. Among them:
- Ireland, which in 2002 began charging 19 cents for each disposable bag
taken at the checkout, cutting use by 95 percent and raising millions of
dollars for environmental programs. To ease the switch, many stores sold
canvas bags; some offered "bags for life," replaced free when they wear out.
- Taiwan cut use 69 percent when it instituted a fee of 3 cents in 2001.
- South Africa and one Indian province ban the flimsier bags, but allow
thicker bags, which are more durable, less mobile and easier to recycle.
- Bangladesh, where plastic bags were widely blamed for choking the drainage
system and causing two devastating monsoon floods, has had a ban on
production and possession of all polyethylene bags since 2002.
- Australia, where the government has set goals for merchants to reduce bag
use or face the imposition of fees.
Meanwhile, the United States has seen anti-bag stirrings in California,
Alaska and New York City. In 1998, plastic grocery bags were banned in
Galena, Alaska, a village of 850. "Bags blew out of the landfill and into
the Yukon River, and there was even some evidence the salmon were eating
them," said Cindy Pilot, director of the environmental department of the
Louden Tribal Council, Galena's governing body. With a grant from the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, the council handed out 2,000 free canvas
bags and phased out plastics in the town's three stores. To date, nearly 40
other Alaskan villages have followed suit, said Bill Stokes of Palmer,
Alaska, who helped formulate many of the bans with the state's Department of
Environmental Conservation.
Elsewhere in America, restriction efforts have been less successful. New
Yorkers, fed up with bags snapping in the wind on Central Park trees, tried
and failed to institute a 15-cents-per-bag levy in 2003. The same year in
California, a bill proposing a 2-cents-per-bag tax, payable by the stores,
died under heavy opposition from retailers and bag makers. A proposal in San
Francisco would require big grocery chains to charge 25 cents per bag, paper
as well as plastic. Several Los Angeles groups are working to advance that
idea, said Murray, of Californians Against Waste. In January, at the start
of a new legislative session, Murray's group will push a
quarter-per-plastic-bag fee statewide.
But bag makers argue that taxes don't work. The Irish levy caused big jumps
in paper bag use and sales of plastic trash bags, said Donna Dempsey, a
spokeswoman for the Film and Bag Federation, a Washington, DC, trade group.
"If the goal is to get these things out of the waste stream, then it's not
working," Dempsey said.
The answer, in the industry's view, is to increase recycling beyond the 1
percent of plastic bags the Environmental Protection Agency says are
recycled now. "There's a tremendous need for this material, but we have to
get the system set up to collect it," said Frank Ruiz, spokesman for the
California Bag and Film Alliance, a group of manufacturers and retailers who
oppose fees. Composite wood-plastic lumber companies are eager to get their
hands on the bags, which are cheaper than other recycled plastics, said Mike
Vatuna, director of bulk materials for Trex Co. Inc. in Winchester, Va.
Vatuna said Trex uses 35 million pounds of plastic bags each year and would
like to have 100 million.
Although many supermarkets have recycling programs, most municipal recyclers
don't. Bags tend to blow out of curbside recycling bins. They clog sorting
equipment. Brokers reject much of what is collected as too contaminated with
food or paper sales receipts.
Ruiz said Americans won't put up with bringing reusable bags to the store.
"In Europe, most stores are very small and people shop nearly every day," so
they may need only a single reusable bag, he said. "Here it's a Saturday
morning pilgrimage where you load the car up with 25 bags."
But Murray argues that many consumers, frustrated by plastic bag waste, will
support bag fees. "By putting this fee into that transaction," he said,
"we're forcing everyone to think about it - the checker putting the stuff in
the bag, the consumer taking the bag and the retailer supplying the bag."
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