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14 Dec 07 - consumption; mail; Blackle; job; margins; clothes; tools; bikes; water bottles ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org --------------------- Link to the short film, "The Story of Stuff" (forwarded by Sarah Grimm and many others): http://www.storyofstuff.com This 20-minute film was made by Annie Leonard, an activist from Berkeley, CA. A Contra Costa Times interview with Annie Leonard about the film is at: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_7630983 --------------------- Link to the website for Catalog Choice (forwarded by David Assmann): http://www.catalogchoice.org This catalog reduction service, launched this fall, is a project of the non-profit Ecology Center in Berkeley, CA. --------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition (NWPC): I recently heard about a "National Do Not Mail List" operated by a for-profit direct marketing company, DirectMail.com. Here is their website: https://www.directmail.com/directory/mail_preference Personally, I do not trust this one (as opposed to Catalog Choice above, which I do trust). This company does not even identify on their website where they are located, as far as I can tell. Because of the somewhat-deceptive name, it appears some people may be getting this website confused with the long-standing Mail Preference Service (https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS), operated by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). So, those of you who do public education about junk mail reduction may be getting inquiries about this, especially since DirectMail.com promotes its service as free, and the DMA service costs $1. And, just to confuse things even more, I also just heard about another new, free, junk mail opt-out service operated by a for-profit company, called ProQuo: http://www.proquo.com This one seems a little more legit to me (they identify who they are), but I don't know of anyone who has used it. If anyone has used ProQuo, DirectMail.com or Catalog Choice (and enough time has passed so you can get a sense of how well they are working) , please write and let me know what you think. Thanks! E-mail: tom [ D O T ] watson [ A T ] kingcounty [ D O T ] gov (Note that my e-mail address has changed - Please change it in your address book.) --------------------- Link to the website for Catalog Cutdown, a campaign by the non-profit Forest Ethics (forwarded by Katie Jensen): http://catalogcutdown.org This project seeks to prod catalog retailers into reducing the environmental impacts of their catalogs. --------------------- From Bruce Nordman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, responding to the 10/1/07 posting about Blackle.com, a website designed to reduce energy used in website searches by starting Google with a black screen: Our lab is perhaps partly responsible for this as we have been cited in a 2002 study noting this effect for CRTs (cathode ray tubes). I dimly recall seeing the effect to a much smaller degree in LCDs (liquid crystal displays) back in the 2002 timeframe but am not sure. In any case, any such effect has apparently declined, and in some cases reversed (as Scientific American recently reported) for current LCDs. In any case, the effect is small enough to not merit people's time thinking about - much more energy could be saved other ways in the area of electronics. So, Blackle is "eco-spam." E-mail: bnordman [A T] lbl [D O T] gov --------------------- Position opening for a Waste Reduction and Outreach Manager for Metro, in Portland, OR (forwarded by Meg Lynch): http://www.metro-region.org/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=25915 The annual salary range is $74,881 - $106,353. The deadline for applications is Jan. 4, 2008. This person will manage the Waste Reduction & Outreach Division in the Solid Waste & Recycling Department at Metro, the regional government in Portland. The division has a $5.6 million annual budget and a staff of 20. --------------------- Excerpted from an article by Betty Patton in the October 2007 newsletter for Recycling Advocates, a Portland, OR, non-profit (forwarded by David Allaway): CHANGE THE MARGINS Open a new Microsoft Word document. From the drop down File menu, click on Page Setup. From the Margins tab, change the Left, Right, Top and Bottom margins to 0.75". At the bottom of that screen, select Default. This one change will reduce paper consumption by about 4.75 percent. If it spread nationally, that would result in 380,000 tons less paper consumed. This idea has been formalized by Tamara Krinsky. She has created a website to promote the idea (http://www.changethemargins.com), has started a petition to Microsoft, and has gotten some national press through a story on National Public Radio. A study for Penn State University found that the campus could save $120,000 per year if they adopted this practice throughout the university. If the financial motivation isn't enough, consider the environmental impact. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the paper industry is the number one consumer of fresh water. The industry is also the third-largest industrial producer of global warming pollution. ---------------------- Excerpted from an article by Betty Patton in the October 2007 newsletter for Recycling Advocates, a Portland, OR, non-profit (forwarded by David Allaway): THE RIGHT TO DRY Recently Susan Taylor of Bend, OR, was threatened with legal action because her neighbors object to her clothesline. Her residential community has covenants, conditions and restrictions that require clotheslines and other things to be screened from view. Her attempts at screening still did not please the neighbors, but it did get attention from the Wall Street Journal and a German television station. Her motivation for outdoor drying was strictly environmental. She wanted to save energy. She lives in a meteorological climate (central Oregon) that is ideal for outdoor drying, but not a political climate. Some U.S. states have Right to Dry laws (Florida and Utah), as well as some Canadian provinces. The Project Laundry List website (http://www.laundrylist.org/index2.htm) encourages statewide legislation and gives tips for both laundry and legislation. --------------------- Link to the website for William Good, a new line of clothing made from reused materials: http://www.shopwilliamgood.com This clothing line is a partnership between Goodwill and San Francisco designer Nick Graham, the founder of the Joe Boxer clothing line. Each item they produce is made from post-retail Goodwill donations that had been destined for recycling or salvage. Each item is cleaned and enhanced before being sold. Embellishments range from silk screening to unique sewing patterns. All items are remade in San Francisco. A San Francisco Chronicle article about this is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/21/LVQ0SQ96N.DT L ---------------------- Link to the website for the Phinney Neighborhood Association's tool exchange in Seattle: http://www.phinneycenter.org/programs/tool-lending.shtml (Note from Tom: This is an example of an innovative grassroots reuse program. Scroll down to see the tools they have in stock and their suggested donations for borrowing them.) ---------------------- Link to the website for Velib', the new bike-sharing system in Paris: http://www.en.velib.paris.fr/index.php/comment_ca_marche/utiliser_velib (Tom's EcoConsumer blog posting in October about Velib': http://www.metrokc.gov/dnrp/swd/ecoconsumer/blog.asp?ID=90&CatID=2&PostI D=65) --------------------- Link to the Center for a New American Dream's Responsible Purchasing Guide for Bottled Water for agencies and institutions (forwarded by Karen Hamilton): http://www.responsiblepurchasing.org/purchasing_guides/bottled_water --------------------- Excerpted from an article by Ian Austen in the 12/8/07 New York Times: CANADIAN RETAILER BANS REUSABLE POLYCARBONATE WATER BOTTLES A line of water bottles that had become a symbol of environmental responsibility has been removed from the shelves of Canada's leading outdoor gear retailer over concerns about a chemical used in its manufacture. The Mountain Equipment Co-op, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, removed the bottles, sold under the brand name Nalgene, and other polycarbonate containers from its 11 large-scale stores on Dec. 5. The retailer said that it would not restock the bottles, which are made by Nalge Nunc International in Rochester, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific, until Health Canada completed a review of bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., a chemical used to make hard, transparent plastics as well as liners for food cans. "We've been following the B.P.A. issue for at least three years," said Tim Southam, a spokesman for Mountain Equipment. "The decision we've taken this week does not mean that polycarbonate products will never return to our stores. We're just seeking some certainty about this chemical." Church and environmental groups in Canada have mounted campaigns against water in single-use bottles because of concerns about the huge amount of plastic used in containers. As a result, the reusable Nalgene bottles have become ubiquitous on college campuses and elsewhere. Polycarbonate plastic, which can only be produced by using B.P.A., creates bottles that are transparent and almost as hard as glass, but particularly shatter-resistant. Recently, however, the use of B.P.A.-based plastics in food containers has been questioned in Canada by Environmental Defence , a Toronto-based group. Environmentalists in the United States are also raising concerns about the chemical. Last year, San Francisco's board of governors passed a local law banning the use of the chemical in children's products. B.P.A. was removed from the ordinance before it went into effect, however, after an industry lawsuit. Critics point to studies dating back to 1936 showing that the chemical can disrupt the hormonal system. While there is little dispute about that, the plastics industry, supported by several studies from government agencies in Japan, North America and Europe, contends that polycarbonate bottles contain very little of the chemical and release only insignificant amounts of B.P.A. into the bodies of users. "Rarely has a chemical been the subject of such intense scientific testing and scrutiny, and still, important agencies across the globe agree that there is no danger posed to humans from polycarbonate bottles," Tom Cummins, the director of research and development at Nalge Nunc, said in a statement. Rick Smith, the executive director of Environmental Defence, said that a paper published by 38 scientists after a government-sponsored conference in the United States found that the lack of research on the effects of B.P.A. on humans was a concern that required further investigation. Steven G. Hentges, the executive director of the American Chemistry Council's polycarbonate group, takes issue with that report's worries and points to a separate expert panel report published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services last month. In its 396-page report, which looked only at the impact of B.P.A. on reproduction, the panel said it had "negligible concern" about the chemical's effect on adult reproductive systems but raised some concerns about its impact on children and pregnant women. Health Canada will release its first comment from its current study of B.P.A. and several other chemicals in May 2008. - end -