| |
04 Jan 06 - survey; NYC; cups; review; TV; mail; books; paper
** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM **
-- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition
--------
Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org
---------------------
Excerpted from a message from David Jaber, Natural Logic, Berkeley, CA:
A team I am working with on behalf of the City of Palo Alto, CA, is
conducting a survey for concrete examples of local government initiatives to
design-out and/or eliminate waste, beyond recycling. Source reduction and
waste prevention policies and programs qualify under this definition.
Recycling of materials would not. We're particularly looking for policies
and programs that would be considered part of extended producer
responsibility (EPR) or product stewardship programs. As examples,
potential actions local governments have taken that would make a difference
at the local level might include:
- Product bans (such as for mercury thermometers, switches and thermostats,
or food packaging containers)
- Voluntary takeback programs (like Ottawa's program -
http://www.city.ottawa.on.ca/gc/takeitback/index_en.shtml
)
- Mandatory manufacturer takeback programs (like New York City's proposed
electronics waste bill)
- Mandatory retailer takeback programs for difficult-to-recycle materials
- Environmentally-preferable purchasing guidelines that specify source
reduction and EPR issues
- "Precautionary principle" for local government purchasing
- Garbage rate structures that give additional discounts for businesses
meeting specified EPR goals (such as taking back products, achieving 90
percent-plus reduction in waste, eliminating more than 10 percent of waste
generation through redesign of products or processes)
- Deconstruction policies and ordinances
- Adaptive reuse policies and ordinances for commercial and residential
construction
- Promoting and developing electronic material exchanges
For any community examples that come to mind, please provide, if possible:
Name of locality; brief description of initiative; results of initiative
(successes, barriers, etc); specific laws, policies, regulations, and
program write-ups that can be used as examples; a contact for more
information (e-mail and phone).
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to contact me at
djaber (AT) natlogic (DOT) com, or 510-849-5467, ext. 3. We will share our results
with all those who participate in this survey. Thank you for your
participation.
----------------------
Link to a 12/21/05 press release from the Center for Health, Environment and
Justice about new legislation in New York City to reduce city purchases of
products containing toxic materials (forwarded by Maggie Clarke):
http://www.chej.org/BESAFE/pvc/nycrelease.htm
Note from Maggie: Thanks to the work of a lot of people over many years -
and initially to those of us on the Manhattan Citizens' Solid Waste Advisory
Board's waste prevention committee, who in the early/mid 1990s crafted and
got introduced the omnibus Intro 509 of 1995
(http://geography.hunter.cuny.edu/~mclarke/intro509.htm
) and subsequent
bills to set up environmental procurement in NYC - we have made some
significant gains in waste prevention and environmental procurement.
----------------------
Link to a coffee cup waste calculator, on the Dzignism website maintained by
Kieran Lynn, of Portland, OR (first seen in E magazine):
http://www.dzignism.com/projects/coffee.waste
Enter in your number of
purchased cups of coffee a week. Then click on one of the other categories,
and it multiplies the first number times the estimated weight of a
disposable coffee cup (one ounce), to come up with the pounds of coffee cup
waste you generate per year.
----------------------
From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the
National Waste Prevention Coalition:
I was able to catch up on my reading a little bit over the holidays, so here
is my review of a new book:
"Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage," by Heather Rogers. The New
Press. 2005.
This is the first book I've read that addresses the need for waste
prevention (reduction and reuse) in a historical, political and social
context. It's a must-read for those of us who work on waste prevention and
recycling every day.
Some might find this book radical. It bashes corporations, from Waste
Management to Ford to Coca-Cola. It finds more negatives than positives in
recycling. It rips William McDonough, the progressive architect who is
practically a saint to many environmentalists.
But with a few small exceptions, I found this well-written,
thoroughly-researched book to be extremely convincing. After giving a
clear, insightful tour of the history of garbage in America, Rogers argues
that government needs to take a much more active role in limiting waste and
consumption. You may not agree with her that we're currently in a garbage
"crisis." But we should be thankful she has written this book (which
follows up on her 2002 short film of the same name), and that she's actively
promoting it and talking about these issues around the country. With this
book, Rogers has made a huge contribution to the case for waste prevention.
----------------------
Link to the website for "No Waste Like Home," an eight-part reality TV show
that ran last summer and fall on the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
Two network in Britain (forwarded by Mike Rosen):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/homes/tv_and_radio/nwlh_index.shtml
In this
series, host Penney Poyzer helps a different wasteful family each week cut
down on waste and resource use, and save money. Here is an item from the
Treehugger website about this show:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/08/new_bbc_show_no.php
----------------------
Link to the audio file for the 12/16/05 story "Take Back Your Mailbox,"
about junk mail, which ran on the national Marketplace Money public radio
show:
http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2005/12/16/take_back_you
r_mailbox
(You will need Real Player to listen to this story.) This
five-minute-long piece includes the perspective of the National Waste
Prevention Coalition and other groups working to reduce unwanted mail.
----------------------
Link to the website for BookEnds, a California-based non-profit that
collects "gently-used" children's books and gives them to schools and youth
organizations:
http://www.bookends.org/about.htm
----------------------
Link to the website for PaperBackSwap, a national paperback book exchange
club:
http://www.paperbackswap.com/help/hdtw.php
The website includes the
video of an informative news story about this club, which ran on WHDH-TV in
Boston.
---------------------
Link to a City of Seattle website with paper reduction tips:
http://www.seattle.gov/papercuts/whattodo.htm
- end -
|
