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08 Apr 05 - WasteWise; homes; consuming; disposable; polystyrene; hair; policy report; PVC
** 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 Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the
National Waste Prevention Coalition:
BUSH'S BUDGET WOULD ELIMINATE EPA WASTEWISE PROGRAM
President Bush's federal budget for Fiscal Year 2006 calls for the
elimination of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) WasteWise
program. I was told about this today by an EPA manager. Although Bush
announced his budget in early February, the axing of WasteWise was
apparently buried. Even EPA officials did not realize it until the past
week or so, and it apparently hasn't been mentioned in the press. Bush's
proposal calls for the EPA's current total budget of about $8 billion to be
cut by 5.6 percent overall. The EPA manager told me that the WasteWise
program's annual budget is currently about $650,000.
WasteWise is a voluntary program where partners set goals for waste
prevention, recycling collection and buying recycled materials. The program
currently has more than 1,400 partners, including businesses, government
agencies and other organizations. WasteWise partners include major
corporations such as General Motors, Kodak and the Walt Disney company.
Here at King County, we have been a WasteWise partner for seven years. The
WasteWise program has served as a great foundation to help us improve our
internal waste prevention and recycling programs. Ironically, just last
week King County co-hosted a big regional workshop on internal waste
prevention and recycling, and we promoted the EPA WasteWise program during
that workshop.
Congress could certainly decide to restore the funding for WasteWise. It's
not dead yet. But this proposal from the Bush administration does show that
even a voluntary, feel-good, fairly innocuous program like WasteWise is not
immune from the Bush environmental budget ax.
E-mail: tom [ D O T ] watson [ A T ] metrokc [ D O T ] gov
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Excerpted from "Homes That Heal (And Those That Don't): How Your Home May Be
Harming Your Family's Health," a 2004 book by Athena Thompson (excerpt seen
in Sustainable Industries Journal Northwest):
TOP TEN HAZARDOUS PRODUCTS IN THE HOME
1) Paints and stains
2) Pool and spa chemicals
3) Pesticides and other poisons
4) Household cleaners and disinfectants
5) Aerosol spray products
6) Art and hobby chemicals
7) Batteries
8) Automotive products
9) Solvents and thinners
10) Sharp instruments such as medical syringes
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From Christine Gardener, City of Columbia, MO, responding to the 4/1/05
posting noting that the reason people shop is because it makes them feel
valued:
Barbara Ehrenreich touched on this in her book, "Nickeled and Dimed." When
she was working at a Wal-Mart her job was to straighten up the clothing -
picking up what was dropped, folding things, etc. She noticed that the
customers were very destructive and seemed to purposely drop items on the
floor, throw them around, and mess up the displays. She felt it was a way
for the mostly low-income Wal Mart shoppers to compensate for feeling
marginalized in their lives and work places. When they shopped they
expected to be catered to. She speculated that someone who has a job
cleaning up after others can vent some of the frustration of having to do
that valueless job by causing others to have to clean up after them when
they are a "valued customer."
E-mail: cmgarden (AT) GoColumbiaMO (DOT) com
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Excerpted from a 3/30/05 Associated Press item:
KIMBERLY-CLARK LAUNCHES DISPOSABLE FACE CLOTH
Kleenex maker Kimberly-Clark Corp. said it will spend more than $20 million
to launch a disposable, moist face cloth that it thinks people will prefer
over a regular washcloth or wet paper towels. The product will reach store
shelves in April, said the company. Called Kleenex Moist Cloths, they are
bigger than 8 inches square and are moistened with an alcohol-free formula.
Kimberly-Clark said the cloths will carry a suggested retail price of $2.39
for a 40-count box similar to facial-tissue cartoons.
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Link to a sample letter people can use to complain about hard-to-recycle
polystyrene foam pieces being used for packaging, from the website of
Eco-Cycle, a nonprofit environmental organization in Boulder, CO:
http://www.ecocycle.org/specialevents/styroeprinstructions.cfm
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Link to the website for Locks of Love, a non-profit organization that
accepts donations of cut hair:
http://www.locksoflove.org The donated hair
is used to make hairpieces for financially disadvantaged children 18 years
and younger suffering from long-term medical hair loss. Donated hair must
be 10 inches or longer.
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Note from Tom: The two links above were both seen in a weekly column by
Sarah Jackson called "Where Do I Take My ...?" in the Olympian newspaper,
Olympia, WA. This column reports on local reuse and recycling options for a
wide variety of materials. The archive for these columns is at:
http://www.theolympian.com/where2take
(As of today this archive had not
yet been updated with the most recent columns, but most likely will be
soon.)
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Link to a March 2005 report from the Product Policy Institute, "Unintended
Consequences: Municipal Solid Waste Management and the Throwaway Society,"
by Helen Spiegelman and Bill Sheehan:
http://www.productpolicy.org/resources
Click on the title of the
report.
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Excerpted from an article by Mark Clayton in the 3/17/05 Christian Science
Monitor:
PVC - SO DURABLE, IT'S HARD TO GET RID OF
It's the white plastic pipe that carries away the water when you empty the
bathtub. Maybe it's in your home's vinyl siding, your wallpaper, or the
beachball your son plays with. The material is polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one
of the world's most widely used plastics and, increasingly, one of its most
controversial. The chemical properties that give it such flexibility and a
long serviceable life also make it an environmental liability when it's
produced and later when it's thrown out.
At least, that's what environmentalists claim. With their prodding, an
anti-PVC movement is picking up steam and some high-profile corporations
have begun to eliminate it from their production lines. But worldwide
production is growing - along with the intensity of the debate. PVC is "one
of the most environmentally hazardous consumer materials ever produced,"
writes Joe Thornton, a biology professor at the University of Oregon in a
briefing paper for the Healthy Building Network, an advocacy group. "It's
true that eventually a lot of vinyl is coming out of service," counters
Allen Blakey, a spokesman for the Vinyl Institute, a trade group. "But the
fact is that you can recycle, landfill, and incinerate it safely and
effectively."
The latest salvo was a December report that showed the world is awash with
300 billion pounds of PVC, much of it nearing the end of its 30- to 40- year
useful life. In the United States, about 7 billion pounds a year of PVC
become municipal solid waste, medical waste, or construction demolition
debris, says the report from the Center for Health, Environment and Justice
(CHEJ) in Falls Church, Virginia. "People are taking the old vinyl siding
off their homes or getting rid of old computers, and all that PVC goes into
the waste stream," says Lois Gibbs, CHEJ executive director. "There isn't
anyone thinking about what to do with it. You can't really recycle it, burn
it, or landfill it without creating new problems for society."
Few within the recycling industry would dispute that PVC can be very
difficult to recycle. Products made out of it carry a "3" or a "V" inside a
recycling triangle symbol. But it is often mistakenly mixed with non-PVC
plastic, contaminating entire batches of more valuable recycled plastic.
Major plastic recyclers have in the past called PVC a "contaminant" to other
plastics. The share of PVC recycled annually is estimated at just 3 percent
or less, according to various studies and US Environmental Protection Agency
data cited by CHEJ. By contrast, 36 percent of polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) plastic, often used in bottles, is recycled, the EPA says.
Incinerating PVC can be a problem, too. It contains chlorine, which when
burned can produce the poison dioxin, researchers say. The Vinyl Institute
says PVC is not a major source of dioxin. It points out that dioxin air
emissions are down sharply in recent years. But environmentalists say that's
mainly because of the closing of scores of municipal and medical-waste
incinerators. The only other disposal alternative - landfilling - is not
much better, environmentalists say. That's because over time the lead,
cadmium, and phthalates - chemicals often added to PVC as stabilizers or to
make it soft and pliable - can leach out of PVC into groundwater, the report
says. Landfill fires contribute to dioxin emissions, too, the EPA reports.
Such views - especially those in the CHEJ report - are sharply contradicted
by the Vinyl Institute. "That report is highly misleading and distorted,"
says Mr. Blakey. The institute calls it a "myth" that vinyl is a problem in
landfills. The group got a boost in December when the US Green Building
Council's PVC task force issued its draft report. It said the available
evidence "does not support a conclusion that PVC is consistently worse than
alternative materials" in terms of health or the environment.
"Whether it is the energy savings provided by vinyl windows or the resource
conservation of durable products like pipe, siding, and flooring, vinyl has
a place in 'green' buildings,'" said Tim Burns, president of the Vinyl
Institute, in a statement. The institute noted that a European Commission
report had also "found vinyl's environmental impacts to be similar to those
of competing materials." The green-building council report was quickly
attacked by scientists and activists. "You can't just take something toxic
and wrap it in a coating," complains Bill Walsh of Healthy Building Network.
If the overall market is any indication, support for PVC is growing.
Domestic production rose to 16 billion pounds last year, up 8.8 percent from
2003. But the product mix is changing, due in part to the pressure brought
by environmentalists. One of the early victories for the anti-PVC movement
came three years ago when Ms. Gibbs and environmental watchdog Greenpeace
targeted Bath and Body Works and Victoria's Secret. Both brands, owned by
Limited Brands of Columbus, Ohio, packaged personal-care products in PVC
bottles.
"We told them we were going to tell the world about 'Victoria's dirty little
secret' - its PVC bottles," recalls Lisa Finaldi, a Greenpeace activist. The
idea was to make Victoria's Secret a public example and gain media attention
for the anti-PVC cause. But a few days and several thousand faxes and
e-mails later, company officials met with the activists and agreed to
eliminate PVC from all products by 2003. Today, the Limited Brands website
touts its reduction of 4.3 million pounds of PVC per year. In the past four
years, a cadre of companies - from Mattel (toys) to Nike (shoes and sporting
equipment) to General Motors (auto interior panels) - have moved to phase
out PVC. Since December, Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson said they were
giving it up.
Although it has retreated from some product areas, the plastic has made huge
inroads into housing products, an industry where its malleability and low
cost make it a favorite. Plans for a new PVC manufacturing plant are nearing
approval south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Yet, even in the construction
industry, there are new rumblings of discontent. Firestone Building
Products, a major manufacturer of commercial roofing material, this month
will begin phasing out its PVC roofing products, citing a desire to be
environmentally responsible. "I believe people are going to look more and
more at buildings from the point of view of how it affects the people living
or working in it," says Ted Boylan, a Firestone distributor in Woburn, Mass.
"We actually are winning the battle, but it's a hard battle to win, because
we are going product by product, sector by sector," says Gibbs of CHEJ. "At
some point, there will be a critical mass."
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Note from Tom - I will be out of the office on Monday and Tuesday, April
11-12.
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