| |
10 Feb 06 - plastics; toxics; Wal-Mart; mail; Rev. Billy; tips; calculator; tires; iPod
** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM **
-- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition
--------
Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org
---------------------
From Marybeth Gardam, Des Moines, IA:
Maybe readers of the Waste Prevention Forum could help me crack this
research challenge. Most of the detail I need is owned by the plastics
industry itself, which is not interested in making this connection, for
obvious reasons.
I am trying to find information about the link between petroleum processing
by-products (derivatives) and plastic packaging. I need to get solid
numbers about how much the plastic packaging industry depends on these
by-products, and thus is helping drive the nation's oil addiction in an
under-the-radar kind of way. I know that bubble-wrap, stretch wrap and
packaging film are made using natural gas, so it would be helpful to get the
same kind of statistics for how those products also drive up the cost and
production need for natural gas. The Styrofoam and packaging-peanut
products are dependent on styrene.
It is interesting that these plastic products were originally developed as a
way of making use of the petroleum product waste chemicals. But now I
wonder how much the petroleum industry is being driven by the need for these
waste chemicals to fuel the plastic processing industries. I'm sure the
amount of dependency is not as high as that of the gasoline industry or
heating fuel industry - or is it?
E-mail: mbgardam [ AT ] aol [ DOT ] com
Phone: 515-210-7928
---------------------
Excerpted from a message from Bill Sheehan, Product Policy Institute,
Athens, GA:
Some encouraging news from the western United States: San Francisco is
asking makers of toxic products to design safer goods and take
responsibility for managing them at end-of-life. See this article, "Who
pays the real cost of toxic waste?", written by Jared Blumenfeld, director
of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, that ran on the opinion
page in the 2/9/06 San Francisco Chronicle:
http://www.sfenvironment.com/articles_pr/2006/article/020906_2.htm
Product Policy Institute commends San Francisco for taking a leadership role
in getting producers to do their part. Local governments have a key role to
play in transforming how toxic products are designed, marketed and recovered
- starting with an examination of how current waste management services may
subsidize producers of toxic products. For more info, see:
http://www.productpolicy.org/resources
E-mail: bill [ A T ] productpolicy [ D O T ] org
---------------------
From Jay Donnaway, Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality, Land Quality
Division, Solid Waste Policy, Portland, OR, responding to the 1/31/06
posting criticizing Wal-Mart's new plastic bag recycling program in
California schools, since it could result in more bag consumption:
I sense another urban legend in the making. By paying approximately $1,110
per ton for old plastic bags (that as a private recycler, I never got more
than $180 for, even in the days when Trex was young), Wal-Mart will create
the perception that this stuff is worth major moolah, and some shoppers,
resentful that they've been "had," will actually throw the bags away or
hoard them rather than contribute to the standard grocery-store collection
bins. Misleading market subsidies do a disservice to recycling and sensible
resource use as a whole.
Aluminum recovery rates still bear the scars of the efforts of Ronald
McDonald House (and others) to collect aluminum can pull-tabs, which as far
as I know, is ongoing. I've encountered dedicated PTA volunteers who were
quite literally diving into dumpsters, yanking the tabs, and tossing back
the cans. Other well-meaning tab recyclers have told me that "the tab
contains more aluminum than a whole can" and "one five-gallon water bottle
full of tabs will pay for a kidney transplant." When these starry-eyed
recyclers came into my buyback center and were offered 30-50 cents per
pound, they would accuse me of robbery and sometimes take the tabs back home
rather than be "cheated. "
Please note that the aforementioned encounters were not part of my "Oregon
Experience."
E-mail: Donnaway ( D O T ) Jay ( A T ) deq ( D O T ) state ( D O T ) or ( D O T ) us
-------------------------
Link to a press release from the San Francisco Department of the Environment
about the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition's Junk Mail Reduction
Campaign (forwarded by David Assmann):
http://www.sfenvironment.com/articles_pr/2006/pr/012606.htm
This
release includes a photo of a 17-foot-tall tree made from junk mail that is
being used to help publicize the campaign. The tree is currently on display
in San Francisco.
The website for the Junk Mail Reduction Campaign is:
http://www.stopjunkmail.org
--------------------------
Link to "Preacher with an Unknown God," a short film by Rob VanAlkemade
about Reverend Billy, following up on previous postings about Reverend Billy
(film link forwarded by Albert Kaufman):
http://festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=433
You need Macromedia Flash Player 8 to view the film. (For info on how to
download the player, see http://www.macromedia.com/downloads
)
This 16-minute film received an Honorable Mention award at the 2006 Sundance
Film Festival held in January in Park City, Utah. It follows the exploits
of Reverend Billy (New York performance artist Bill Talen), the leader of
the Church of Stop Shopping.
-------------------------
Link to Ideal Bite, a website that features environmental tips (forwarded by
David Assmann):
Note from David: This site has great tips, including many on source
reduction.
http://www.IdealBite.com
Their archive of past tips is at: http://idealbite.com/tiplibrary
-------------------------
Link to the "Rate Yourself on Waste Prevention" calculator on the New York
City "WasteLe$$" website:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/at_home/rate_yourself.shtml
The WasteLe$$ website is maintained by the New York City Department of
Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling.
-------------------------
Link to Pump 'Em Up, a website to encourage people to keep their car tires
properly inflated, to conserve fuel and extend the life of their tires:
http://www.pumpemup.org This project was started
by Savannah Walters, a 13-year-old in Odessa, Florida.
The project newsletter
(http://www.pumpemup.org/worksheets/PeU_newsltrfall2005.pdf
) includes
photos of Savannah meeting with U.S. senators Hillary Clinton and Maria
Cantwell in Washington D.C. to discuss conservation.
-------------------------
Excerpted from a 2/4/06 column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times:
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT BROKEN IPOD
If your Apple iPod - which may cost around $300 - breaks after the one-year
warranty has expired, Apple will charge you $250, plus tax, to fix it. There
is no mistaking the message: Apple has zero interest in fixing a machine it
was quite happy to sell you not so long ago.
Apple has sold 42 million iPods in less than four and a half years. You
wonder how many of those 42 million units have gone to people who feel that
they've just been taken to the cleaners by Apple. You may also wonder why
iPods seem to break so frequently. And why is Apple so willing to tick off
people who spend thousands of dollars on Apple products by refusing to deal
with broken iPods?
Customer support is the ugly stepchild of the consumer electronics business.
Companies like Dell and Palm and Apple have customer support centers not
because they want to but because they have to. Computers, personal digital
assistants and other digital devices are complicated machines. They break
down much more frequently than, say, old analog televisions. And consumers
expect the companies to deal with problems when they arise.
But customer support is expensive for gadget makers. "A phone call costs a
company 75 cents a minute," said the writer and technology investor Andrew
Kessler. "An hour call is $45." As prices have dropped sharply for computers
and other digital devices, keeping those phone calls to a minimum has become
supremely important to consumer electronics companies that want to maintain
their margins and profitability.
That's why all the big tech companies try to force customers to use their
Web sites to figure out problems themselves. It's why so many of them bury
the customer support phone number. And it's also why, when you do call,
companies like Dell teach its support staff to diagnose computer problems
over the phone, and then talk you through some fairly complicated repairs.
With its machines so inexpensive, Dell simply can't afford to allow too many
customers to ship the computer back to the company to be fixed.
Consumers, though, don't really understand this. As much as they like being
able to buy computers for less than $1,000, they don't realize that one of
the trade-offs is minimal tech support. Nor do the companies spell this out;
instead, they pretend that their service is terrific. Thus, there is a gap
between what customers expect from companies that sell them complicated
digital machines, and what companies feel they need do to ensure that those
machines make money.
With the iPod, Apple has turned this gap into a chasm. On the one hand,
because the price of an iPod is far lower than the price of a computer,
Apple has even more incentive to keep people from calling; one long phone
call turns a profitable iPod into an unprofitable one. Nor does it make
economic sense to repair even the iPods under warranty. Instead, Apple
simply ships you a new one.
On the other hand, an iPod is a very fragile device. The basic iPods are
built around a hard drive, a device so sensitive that "if it takes one shot,
that will pretty much kill it," according to Rob Enderle of the Enderle
Group, a technology consulting firm. Its screen cracks easily. Its battery
can't be easily replaced because an iPod can't be opened up by mere mortals.
All of these were conscious design choices Apple made, some of them having
to do with keeping the cost down, while others were done largely for
aesthetic reasons. But given how much wear and tear an iPod takes - the core
market is teenagers, for crying out loud - is it any wonder that they break?
"If you get two or three years out of a portable device," Mr. Enderle said,
"you're probably doing pretty well."
Which Apple doesn't tell you. Indeed, it doesn't say anything about how long
you should expect your iPod to last. And so consumers buy it with the
expectation that they'll put all their music on it and they'll carry it
around for a good long time. And when that doesn't happen, they feel
betrayed.
Steven Williams, a lawyer who brought a class-action suit against Apple a
few years ago over the failed battery problem, told me that he was amazed to
discover, as the litigation began, that Apple seemed to feel, as he put it,
"that everyone knew iPods were only good for a year or two." Thanks in part
to the lawsuit, the battery issue is one of the few Apple will now deal
with: if your iPod dies because of the battery you can send it back and get
a new one for a mere $65.95, plus tax. Of course, you then lose all your
music.
It seems to me that Apple is on a dangerous course. Yes, it has strong
incentives to minimize tech support, but to say "Not Our Problem" whenever
an iPod dies is to run the serious risk of losing its customers' loyalty. "I
believe that the iPod is one of the most brilliant platforms ever devised,"
said Larry Keeley, who runs Doblin Inc., an innovation strategy firm. But,
he added, he has long predicted that the "maintenance issue," as he called
it, would be the product's Achilles' heel. "Consumers are just not
conditioned to believe that a $300 or $400 device is disposable." Mr.
Keeley, whose daughters all have iPods, has come to believe that their
natural life "is just a hair longer than the warranty," and that Apple's
level of service is "somewhere between sullen and insulting." And, he warns,
the day will come when the iPod has a major competitor. At which point,
Apple will reap what it is now sowing.
A final note: You may have noticed there is no Apple spokesman defending the
iPod or Apple's customer support in this column. When I called Apple,
wanting to know, among other things, how long Apple believes an iPod should
last, I got a nice young woman from the P.R. department. She said she'd try
to find someone at the company to talk to me. I'm still waiting.
- end -
|
