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16 May 05 - milk; Appelhof; sustainability; BPA; e-waste; Envi. Day; mail; Value Village
Originally sent May 13, 2005.
> ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM **
> -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition
> --------
> Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org
>
> ---------------------
> Excerpted from a message from Susan Salterberg, Center for Energy and
> Environmental Education, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA:
>
> I am proud of the teachers in my "Waste Reduction: Addressing the
> Overlooked 'R'" course. In this message, one of the teachers describes an
> activity she did with her students:
>
> From Beth Sandstrom, Wilkins Elementary, Linn-Mar Community Schools,
> Marion, Iowa:
> My fifth-grade class measured the milk wasted in our cafeteria last Friday
> at both breakfast and lunch. We even strained the cereal! According to
> my student's calculations, this is what we decided the wasted milk would
> add up to if this was an average amount of milk wasted each day: 10
> gallons/day; 50 gallons/week; 200 gallons/month; 1,780 gallons/year.
> In terms of students' milk cartons, we would be able to fill the following
> number of cartons with this amount of wasted milk: 160 cartons/day; 800
> cartons/week; 3,200 cartons/month; 28,480 cartons/year.
>
> We then checked the United Nations web site on nutrition and learned that
> 6 million children in the world under the age of 5 die each year from
> hunger. This is roughly twice the population of the state of Iowa. In
> another source we read that 9 percent of the food we purchase is wasted.
> This was rather mind-boggling for all of us. We are now in the process of
> collecting and building a pyramid with 160 milk cartons recovered from the
> cafeteria (to represent the amount of wasted milk in our cafeteria each
> day), and creating posters for the lunchroom. We decided the data we
> collected would have more of an impact if we shared it with more people.
> (End of Beth Sandstrom's message.)
>
> Susan's e-mail: salterberg [AT] uni [DOT] edu
>
> ---------------------
> From Blair Pollock, Orange County Solid Waste Management Department,
> Chapel Hill, NC, responding to the 5/10/05 posting reporting the death of
> pioneering vermicomposting educator Mary Appelhof:
>
> Does anyone know if someone is setting up any kind of memorial fund or
> anything comparable? I'd love to contribute. Mary was a true genius in
> her dedication to this work. We should all have such zeal and focus that
> they can say that about any of us when we go.
>
> E-mail: bpollock [A T] co [D O T] orange [D O T] nc [D O T] us
>
> ---------------------
> From "Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way," a 2004 book by
> Jim Diers:
>
> Definition of sustainability: Meeting present needs without jeopardizing
> future resources.
>
> ---------------------
> Excerpted from a 4/13/05 article by Marla Cone in the Los Angeles Times:
>
> STUDIES POINT TO RISK FROM PLASTIC USED IN WATER BOTTLES AND BABY BOTTLES
> Evidence is mounting that a chemical in plastic that is one of the world's
> most widely used industrial compounds may be risky in the small amounts
> that seep from bottles and food packaging, according to a recent report in
> a scientific journal. The authors of the report, who reviewed more than
> 100 studies, urged the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the
> risks of bisphenol A and consider restricting its use.
>
> Bisphenol A, or BPA, has been detected in nearly all human bodies tested
> in the United States. It is a key building block in the manufacture of
> hard, clear, polycarbonate plastics, including baby bottles, water
> bottles, and other food and beverage containers. The chemical can leak
> from the plastic, especially when the containers are heated, cleaned with
> harsh detergents or exposed to acidic foods or drinks.
>
> The plastics chemical is the focus of one of the most contentious debates
> involving industrial compounds that can mimic sex hormones. Toxicologists
> say that exposure to man-made hormones skews the developing reproductive
> systems and brains of newborn animals and could be having the same effects
> on human fetuses and young children. Since the late 1990s, some
> experiments have found no effects at the doses of BPA that people are
> exposed to, while others suggest that it is estrogen-like and can affect
> the female estrus cycle and that it blocks testosterone and harms lab
> animals at low doses. Plastics industry representatives say the trace
> amounts that migrate from some products pose no danger and are far below
> safety thresholds set by the EPA and other agencies.
>
> In the new report, which was published online in Environmental Health
> Perspectives in April, scientists Frederick vom Saal and Claude Hughes
> said that as of December, 115 studies had been published examining low
> doses of the chemical, and 94 of them found harmful effects.
>
> In an interview, vom Saal, a reproductive biologist at the University of
> Missouri-Columbia, said. "You can't open a scientific journal related to
> sex hormones and not read an article that would just floor you about this
> chemical... The chemical industry's position that this is a weak chemical
> has been proven totally false. This is a phenomenally potent chemical as a
> sex hormone."
>
> In their study, vom Saal and Hughes suggest an explanation for the
> conflicting results of studies: 100 percent of the 11 funded by chemical
> companies found no risk, while 90 percent of the 104 government-funded,
> nonindustry studies reported harmful effects. One report, released by the
> Harvard Center for Risk Analysis last fall and funded by the American
> Plastics Council, concluded that "the evidence is very weak" that BPA has
> estrogen effects on males. The scientists assembled at Harvard reviewed
> the results of 19 experiments on male animals published before April 2002
> and found no consistent findings.
>
> However, vom Saal said the Harvard report was prepared before at least 60
> new studies found harmful effects in lab animals, and it was too narrowly
> focused because it looked only at effects in males.
>
> Steven G. Hentges, executive director of the polycarbonate business unit
> of the American Plastics Council, said that unlike the Harvard report, the
> new report listed numbers of studies and pieces of data without analyzing
> them to determine their strengths or weaknesses and whether they were
> relevant to human beings. "The sum of weak evidence does not make strong
> evidence," Hentges said. "If you look at all the evidence together, it
> supports our conclusion that BPA is not a risk to human health at the very
> low levels people are exposed to. This paper does not change that
> conclusion. It has an opinion, not a scientific conclusion."
>
> Polycarbonate plastics, which are useful in items such as baby bottles and
> water bottles because they are durable, lightweight and shatter-resistant,
> cannot be made without BPA. The chemical, used in plastics manufacture for
> half a century, is not subject to any bans.
>
> ---------------------
> Excerpted from a 4/29/05 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news item:
>
> E-WASTE MAN MOUNTAIN IN LONDON
> A three-tonne humanoid figure made out of electronics waste is now
> standing on London's South Bank. To illustrate the size of the e-waste
> problem, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) has built the stylized sculpture,
> which stands seven metres tall. It is made up of the average quantity of
> WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) an individual disposes of
> in a lifetime, including five refrigerators, 12 kettles and 35 mobile
> phones. The "WEEE man" will be displayed outside City Hall on the South
> Bank for 28 days (until late May) before touring other parts of the
> country. The RSA hopes the striking figure will raise public awareness of
> electronics waste and prompt consumers, retailers, designers and
> manufacturers to focus on recycling, reuse, repair, refurbishment, and
> sustainable manufacturing.
>
> A photo is at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4490211.stm
>
>
> ---------------------
> Link to information on World Environment Day 2005:
>
> http://www.unep.org/wed/2005/english/About_WED_2005
> World Environment
> Day, a project of the United Nations Environment Programme, is
> commemorated around the world on June 5. The theme for 2005 is "Green
> Cities." The main international celebrations for World Environment Day
> 2005 will be held in San Francisco, this year's host city. This is the
> first time a North American city has hosted World Environment Day.
>
> For more information on World Environment Day activities June 1-5 in San
> Francisco, see: http://www.wed2005.org/0.0.php
>
>
> ---------------------
> Link to the website for the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition's "Junk
> Mail Reduction Campaign":
>
> http://www.www.stopjunkmail.org This
> campaign is a partnership of 110 cities and counties in the San Francisco
> Bay area. The campaign began in January, 2005. A press release about the
> project is at:
> http://temp.sfgov.org/sfenvironment/articles_pr/2004/pr/121604.htm
>
>
> ---------------------
> Excerpted from an article by Kristen Millares Bolt in the 5/4/05 Seattle
> Post-Intelligencer:
>
> SAVERS/VALUE VILLAGE THRIFT STORE CHAIN GROWING RAPIDLY
> Savers Inc., the privately-held thrift-store chain, will add 50 to 75
> stores in the next five years, according to Chief Executive Ken Alterman.
> The 197-store company, which operates as Value Village in the Northwest
> and Canada and as Savers in other U.S. regions, has been posting
> same-store sales growth of 12 percent, said Alterman. After slowing down
> growth for a few years, the Bellevue, WA-based company is targeting the
> Northeast, the Southwest, and the Upper Midwest for clusters of its
> for-profit thrift stores, which depend on purchases of secondhand goods
> from non-profit organizations.
>
> "A lot of our strength is in Canada," said Alterman, explaining the focus
> on expansion in the United States. The 8,500-employee company has 88
> stores serving Canada's population of 32.2 million, and 104 stores serving
> the U.S. population of 295 million. He said the company reached $432
> million in sales last year, an 8 percent increase from the prior year's
> $400 million in sales, and a 15.2 percent two-year compound growth.
>
> The single most important factor in determining the nature and speed of
> the company's expansion, Alterman said, is its relationship with its
> non-profit partners, on whose bulk-rate deliveries the company's profits
> depend, whether for clothes, books or furniture. Alterman is simplifying
> the company's pricing system and updating technology to allow more precise
> tracking of merchandise, which he said typically stays on the floor for no
> longer than a month.
>
> He said that the fastest-growing segment of the chain is its "on-site
> deliveries," by which customers bring clothes and goods directly to the
> store, rather than donating at an off-site collection center. The savings
> on gas, labor and delivery trucks for the non-profits mean lower costs for
> Savers. While the company pays an average of $3 per pound to its
> non-profit partners who deliver the goods, it renegotiates its buying
> contracts when using the in-store collection center to pay about $1 per
> pound to the non-profit in whose name the clothes were donated.
>
> Last year, the company bought 4,800 tons alone from the Northwest Center,
> a Seattle-based non-profit that provides services to disabled children and
> adults. "It's the most important financial relationship we have," said
> Jean Kantu, the vice president of associative enterprise at the Northwest
> Center. "We have contracts with the county and federal governments, but
> all that money has strings attached to it - the money we get from Value
> Village is a terrific form of freedom for us."
>
> In order to secure a steady supply of donations, Savers has incubated more
> than 120 non-profits in its history, paying for the business costs of the
> startup until it has become stable enough to operate on its own.
>
> - end -
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