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01 Apr 05 - strategy; consuming; film; Pizza Pizza; VCRs; faxes; dumpsters
** 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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Letter to the editor in the 3/28/05 New York Times by David Levner, Queens,
New York City, responding to a Times news article:
JUST MAKE LESS TRASH
To the Editor: The March 25 New York Times news article "Higher Costs Could
Upset Trash Plan Mayor Favors" didn't mention the simplest strategy for
lowering the cost of New York City's garbage disposal: Reducing the amount
of trash we New Yorkers generate. Waste reduction is not impossible. It can
be accomplished by a combination of education (advertising), policy
(reducing the trash generated by city agencies), legislation (requiring less
packaging) and pricing (pay as you throw). The most difficult aspect of
waste reduction is changing the mind-set of the bureaucracy.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. There's a reason why "reduce" comes first.
- David Levner
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From Charlotte Becker, Becker Projects, Gresham, OR, responding to the
3/24/05 posting about consumerism:
My partner and I were talking the other night about how American society
really seems to devalue people over objects and wealth. Then he said
something I had never thought of before - the reason people shop is because
it makes them feel valued. They are consumers and as such are to be catered
to. Carrying that thought to its logical conclusion, the more we see our
personal contributions to society devalued, the more money we'll spend to
feel better, the better the economy will be, the worse we'll feel and so on.
It's probably nonsense, but it made me wonder why I sometimes get the almost
uncontrollable urge to spend money I don't have on something I don't need.
E-mail: beckerp [ AT ] comcast [ DOT ] net
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Link to a 4/1/05 interview on the AlterNet website with Heather Rogers,
maker of the 2002 short documentary film, "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of
Garbage" (forwarded by Jeff Gaisford):
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/21651
A description of the film, and information on how to order it, are at:
http://www.akpress.org/2002/items/gonetomorrow
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Excerpted from a 3/31/05 press release from the Canadian restaurant chain
Pizza Pizza:
PIZZA PIZZA OFFERS FREE PIZZA SLICE FOR OLD CELL PHONE
The Pizza Pizza chain has announced an environmental promotion for April, in
honor of Earth Day April 22. Pizza Pizza is supporting Pitch-In Canada's
National Cell Phone Collection Program by offering a free slice of pizza to
anyone handing in their old cell phone at any of its restaurant locations in
Ontario and Quebec. Pizza Pizza has more than 480 locations across Canada,
including 340 dine-in and delivery restaurants in Ontario and Quebec.
Collected phones are refurbished or re-manufactured for reuse in emerging
countries that rely on wireless communication and where the price of a "new"
phone is unaffordable for most people. The phones are also provided, at no
cost, to Canadians in situations where there is an economic necessity for
both safety and communication. Phones and batteries that cannot be reused
are recycled to recover metals and plastics.
Pizza Pizza has made a company-wide commitment to the environment and
strives to reduce, reuse, and recycle in all facets of its operations. The
company's waste prevention efforts include:
- The saving of approximately 1.5 million sauce cans annually by using
large-volume plastic packaging. The packaging design, developed by Pizza
Pizza, is now commonly used throughout the pizza industry.
- The saving of 500,000 flour bags a year by depositing flour directly into
a silo at Pizza Pizza's distribution headquarters.
- The use of returnable totes for packaging dough, cheese, pizza sauce and
groceries shipped to Pizza Pizza restaurants instead of cardboard boxes,
saving the creation and recycling of 10 million square feet of cardboard
annually.
- Encouraging all Pizza Pizza suppliers to use returnable and refillable
plastic packaging.
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Links to resources for repairing VCRs (seen in an article by Katie Thorsos
in the Frugal Environmentalist):
For those who still use a VCR (video cassette recorder) and hate the idea of
throwing a broken one away when it could just be a minor problem, here are
two Internet resources for repairing it yourself:
1) Samuel Goldwasser's "Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Video
Cassette Recorders" http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/vcrfaq.htm
The "VCR Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide" section is particularly
helpful: http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/vcrfaq.htm#vcrtrb
2) Bruce J. Meehl's "VCR Repair Instruction - The Self Service Website"
http://www.fixer.com
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Excerpted from an article by Robert Johnson in the 3/27/05 New York Times:
THE FAX MACHINE: TECHNOLOGY THAT REFUSES TO DIE
In an office world that has gone largely digital, hand-held and wireless,
the fax machine is ancient technology that just won't go away. No one shows
off her fax machine the way she might, say, a BlackBerry. Yet the fax
persists as a mockery of the much-predicted paperless society. "Back in the
mid-1990's, when e-mail was really coming into its own, we had high-priced
consultants telling us that the fax was going the way of the horse and
buggy," said Jonathan Bees, then a product manager for office machines at
Konica; he is now editor in chief of Better Buys for Business magazine.
Among the products he reviews for consumers these days are fax machines.
"They're better than ever - quieter, faster and with clearer reproduction,"
he said. "They haven't been passed by, after all."
Some 1.5 million fax machines were sold in the United States last year for
use at both businesses and homes, according to the Consumer Electronics
Association, based in Arlington, Va. Manufacturers estimate that they sold
500,000 more machines that combined a fax function with other functions,
like copying and scanning. Although sales of stand-alone fax machines are
well below their peak of 3.6 million in 1997, some manufacturers say that if
the multiuse machines are included, demand has been rising of late. "We have
been seeing an increase in fax sales for the last four or five years," said
Paul Fountain, marketing product manager at Hewlett-Packard in San Diego. In
1994, Hewlett-Packard left the fax market, believing the predictions of
impending obsolescence. But, Mr. Fountain said, "We came back in 1998
because we realized the fax was not going away."
While fax machines aren't as prevalent as computers in the workplace or home
offices, Bill Young, a communications coach at the Strickland Group in New
York City, said, "The fax has important functions that e-mail simply hasn't
been able to take over." Those would include reproducing signatures on
documents like contracts, business proposals and medical prescriptions. CVS,
a 5,300-store chain, relies on fax machines as the most common means of
receiving prescriptions, said Todd Andrews, a spokesman in Woonsocket, R.I.
"The fax gives the pharmacist a written record of what the doctor ordered,"
he said. Faxing avoids misunderstandings that can occur when prescriptions
are phoned in - and it reduces or eliminates waiting time for customers who
otherwise would deliver their prescriptions by hand. Of course, even with a
fax, precise communication is still at the mercy of the doctor's
handwriting. Another factor in the fax's favor is security. "With a fax, you
don't have to worry about computer hackers or someone stealing the password
to the recipient's e-mail," Mr. Young said. "As long as there's a person at
the receiving fax ready to remove the paper, the message is confidential."
Falling prices have helped to maintain the fax's popularity. "The fax
machine you would buy at Costco or Staples 10 years ago for the home office
would typically cost about $200," Mr. Fountain said. "Better machines are
available today for $45." The $200 machine a decade ago would have been a
stand-alone fax. Now, Hewlett offers the Fax 1050 - a combination fax,
copier and answering machine - for $99.
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Excerpted from an article by Carole Braden in the 3/24/05 New York Times
(forwarded by Thor Peterson):
TURNING TRASH INTO GOLD: DUMPSTER DIVING 301
At a community workshop and toolshed in Brooklyn, 18 hearty New Yorkers sit
on red wooden benches, surrounded by homemade sawhorses and aging power
tools. They are here to attend Dumpster Diving 301, a course on fishing for
free home-improvement materials - things like scratched doors and mismatched
kitchen cupboards - from construction waste bins. Yes, in a surprising twist
on continuing education these students have paid $20 to learn how to pick
through trash.
It is no revelation that one person's junk can be another's jewel, but few
would have predicted the evolution of this scrappy practice into something
bordering on chic. One Web site (http://dumpsterworld.com
) provides a forum on hunting grounds and
tactics, and another (http://dumpsterdiving.meetup.com
) lists 171 groups of trash pickers
around the globe, 52 formed in the last year. The students in the Brooklyn
seminar, sponsored by an "art combine" called the Madagascar Institute, were
do-it-yourselfers trying to cut construction costs by sorting through nail-
and-grime-ridden rejectamenta.
Their leaders were two seasoned teachers, Omar Freilla and Maureen Flaherty.
"I don't know about you, but I'm kind of cheap," said Mr. Freilla, 31, the
director of an environmental group in the South Bronx called the Green
Worker Cooperatives. He recommended canvassing high-rent neighborhoods like
the Upper East Side and Upper West Side (where "a lot of perfectly good
stuff gets chucked"). "You have to think differently when you use old
materials," Ms. Flaherty, 30, said. Dressed in blue coveralls, she sat on a
footlocker-size "window seat," which she constructed from a found wood-frame
window with a cracked pane, plywood planks and a couple of old industrial
door hinges.
She held up a length of snaggled oak flooring with an angry nail protruding
from it and described, to the class's delight, an air-powered gunlike
machine that can easily blow nails, even bent ones, out of boards. After
removing the nails and sawing off the jagged ends, Ms. Flaherty said, "You
can cover gaps with pretty molding that you've found and plug the nail holes
with wood fill." She says the effort knocks about 80 percent off the cost of
a new wood floor.
Like a lot of other dumpster divers, Ms. Flaherty and Mr. Freilla - who said
he and his wife plan to buy and restore a home in the South Bronx using
found materials - practice the sport not only to conserve cash but also to
decrease Earth-clogging waste. The instructors devised the course after they
met at a mixer held by the New York City chapter of Green Drinks
International (http://www.greendrinks.org ), a
network of career environmentalists with outposts from Melbourne to
Minneapolis. Mr. Freilla preaches the importance of reducing waste, even if
it means lending an unofficial hand to contractors during demolition. Ms.
Flaherty suggests keeping a watch for building permits and construction-size
dumpsters. For those who do not own a car or truck, she points out, a
folding shopping cart may serve as a hauling assistant.
After a round of introductions, the instructors declared it time to hit the
streets. Ms. Flaherty, who had been out scouting that morning, led the way.
Behind a set-design and photography studio, the group encountered a trash
bin overflowing with plywood strips. "These will make nice shadow box
frames," said one participant. Several blocks farther, outside a house under
construction, loomed a 30-cubic-yard dumpster piled with square beams and
molding scraps. After pulling themselves up to peer inside, some divers -
those who knew enough to wear old clothing, thick-soled boots and heavy work
gloves - began to dig, handing down finds that included two small wood-frame
windows and a genie-lamp light fixture with dents.
Some defects should be warning signs, the instructors said. Tunnels in wood
have usually been burrowed by termites; boards with water stains are often
warped; and "the smell of cat urine does not go away," Ms. Flaherty noted.
She also suggested that gleaners with children carry lead-paint test kits,
available at many hardware stores.
"If anybody wants to craft their treasures into something else, I can show
you how to use the tools," Ms. Flaherty said, ushering her shivering posse
back to the workshop. Some took her up on the offer. Others jumped into
their cars and headed back to the scavenging sites in search of more
perfectly good garbage.
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