WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ARCHIVE   BACK TO ARCHIVE INDEX

10 Jan 08 - mail; Oregon; boxes; Clorox; bags; jobs; consuming; PVC; Taiwan ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.nwpcarchive.org --------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition (NWPC): There have been some interesting new developments on the junk mail front. The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) announced Jan. 8 that they are no longer charging people $1 (I used to call that the "inconvenience fee") to sign up for the Mail Preference Service. Here is their press release about that: http://www.the-dma.org/cgi/dispannouncements?article=949 DMA is clearly responding to Catalog Choice (http://www.catalogchoice.org), the new national opt-out service launched last fall by the Berkeley, CA-based non-profit Ecology Center. As of today, more than 360,000 people had signed up for Catalog Choice. But DMA wants to control opt-outs, so they have told their members to ignore the Catalog Choice requests. DMA is also retooling their Mail Preference Service to make it seem more like the user-friendly Catalog Choice. In addition to taking off the $1 fee, DMA has introduced a shorter (and similar) website name, http://www.dmachoice.org Here's an article by Burt Helm in the 12/20/07 Business Week, describing DMA's initial reaction to Catalog Choice: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_53/b4065035213195.htm?chan=magazine+channel_news Now, here's where it really gets interesting: The DMA Mail Preference Service used to be generic, taking people off all lists. Then Catalog Choice came along, letting people specify which catalogs they wanted to opt-out of. So now, DMA has decided they like that idea better, and they have changed the Mail Preference Service so that you just select the mailers you don't want mail from, rather than opting out of everything. Ironically, the end result may be that less junk mail gets reduced. And even though the DMA finally took off that ridiculous $1 fee, they still require you to give a credit card number when you sign up for their Mail Preference Service, supposedly to verify the request. I think that's just as much a barrier to some people as the $1 fee. The DMA is doing its best to outsmart the environmentalists at their own game. And maybe they'll succeed. But I applaud the efforts of Catalog Choice, and I really appreciate the way they have put pressure on the direct mail industry. I think government agencies should continue to promote Catalog Choice (while warning people that some catalog companies may not honor those opt-out requests), despite DMA's heavy-handed efforts to snuff out Catalog Choice. E-mail: tom [D O T] watson [A T] kingcounty [D O T] gov -------------------- Oregon Department of Environmental Quality's new Waste Prevention Strategy (forwarded by David Allaway): http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/sw/wasteprevention/wpstrategy.htm This 4-page strategy and workplan were adopted in December, 2007. -------------------- U-Haul Box Exchange (first seen in the Resource Recycling electronic newsletter): http://www.uhaul.com/boxexchange Click on "Let me exchange boxes!" to go to a messageboard that you can use to trade, sell or buy reusable boxes and moving supplies. Then scroll down and click on your region, on the left, for either "Free used boxes" or Buying, selling boxes" to see the listings. ------------------- Green Works, a new line of household cleaning products from Clorox: http://www.greenworkscleaners.com/products Also see http://www.cloroxgreenworks.com This line includes an all-purpose cleaner, toilet bowl cleaner, dilutable cleaner, bathroom cleaner and glass & surface cleaner. According to the 1/8/08 "Sustainable is Good" blog by Rider Thompson, which covers developments and trends in green products and packaging (http://www.sustainableisgood.com/blog/2008/01/clorox-green-wo.html), this line will begin appearing on retailers' shelves nationwide this month. Clorox says all the products in the Green Works line will sell nationally for between $2.99 and $3.39. As another front in its foray into green products, in November Clorox spent $913 million to buy Burt's Bees, which makes eco-friendly products such as beeswax lip balm, lotions, soaps and shampoos. Here's an article about that by Louise Story in the 1/6/08 New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/business/06bees.html ------------------- Excerpted from a 1/10/08 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news service article: AUSTRALIA TO ACT ON PLASTIC BAGS The Australian government says it wants to phase out the use of free plastic bags, following a similar move by China earlier in the week. Environment Minister Peter Garrett said that action was critical, because plastic bags were harming Australia's land and wildlife. He said he would meet state leaders to discuss the plan in April, with a view to implementing it by the end of 2008. On Jan. 8, China said a ban on free plastic bags would start in June. It also banned production of extra-flimsy plastic bags, attributing both decisions to the need to reduce pollution and save resources. On Jan. 9, New York City passed a bill requiring large shops to provide recycling bins for plastic bags. Other U.S. cities, such as San Francisco, have already banned plastic bags from grocery shops. The full article is at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7180365.stm ------------------- Position opening for an Education and Outreach Specialist for the Thurston County Department of Water and Waste Management, Olympia, WA: http://www.co.thurston.wa.us/cm/hr/o-positions.asp#886 The salary range is $3,925 to $5,221 a month (2007 rates). The deadline for applications is Jan. 25, 2008. This position will have an organics focus, and will have waste prevention elements. It will include school presentations. ------------------ Several position openings at Global Footprint Network, a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=jobs None of the listings give salaries or application deadlines. ------------------- Excerpted from an opinion piece by Jared Diamond in the 1/2/08 New York Times: 32 TIMES HIGHER The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people on Earth, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce. The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world's other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1. People who consume little want to enjoy the high-consumption lifestyle. Governments of developing countries make an increase in living standards a primary goal of national policy. And tens of millions of people in the developing world seek the first-world lifestyle on their own, by emigrating, especially to the United States and Western Europe, Japan and Australia. Each such transfer of a person to a high-consumption country raises world consumption rates, even though most immigrants don't succeed immediately in multiplying their consumption by 32. Among the developing countries that are seeking to increase per capita consumption rates at home, China stands out. It has the world's fastest growing economy, and there are 1.3 billion Chinese, four times the United States population. The world is already running out of resources, and it will do so even sooner if China achieves American-level consumption rates. Already, China is competing with us for oil and metals on world markets. Per capita consumption rates in China are still about 11 times below ours, but let's suppose they rise to our level. Let's also make things easy by imagining that nothing else happens to increase world consumption - that is, no other country increases its consumption, all national populations (including China's) remain unchanged and immigration ceases. China's catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent. If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates). - Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs and Steel." Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02diamond.html ------------------- Excerpted from a 12/12/07 Reuters news service item: SEARS, KMART TO PHASE OUT PVC Retailer Sears Holdings Corp. said Dec. 12 that it would reduce over time the use of polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, in its packaging and products. The operator of Kmart and Sears, Roebuck stores said in a statement that it would identify safer alternatives to PVC, urge its vendors to reduce or halt use of the material in goods and packaging, and encourage labeling of goods as PVC-free when true. PVC is a plastic used in building materials, packaging, toys and clothing. The material has come under attack from environmental groups that say it releases chemicals linked to cancer and birth defects. Other retailers that have moved to reduce the use of PVC include Wal-Mart Stores and Target Corp. ------------------- Opinion piece by Julia Ross in the 12/2/07 Washington Post (forwarded by Patty Moore): WHAT I PICKED UP ABOUT TRASH IN TAIPEI When I planned for my year in Taiwan two summers ago, trash was the last thing on my mind. The more obvious challenges of moving abroad - finding an apartment, buying a cell phone and navigating the bus system - preoccupied me in the weeks before my departure. I worried most about studying Mandarin full-time, the difficulty of mastering the language's four tones and the intricate arcs, fishhooks and grids that make up written Chinese. But strange things happen when you cross cultures. Unexpected frustrations vex you, and habits ingrained over years suddenly come up for negotiation. So it was for me and waste disposal. On this leaf-shaped island of 23 million people 100 miles off China's coast, trash matters. My Taipei landlady was the first to make that point, when she gave me a crash course on how to dispose of household waste like a local. First, buy city-approved trash bags at the corner 7-Eleven. Then, meet the garbage truck five nights a week at the mouth of a nearby alley. Finally, heave the bags onto the truck yourself. You'll recognize the truck, she said, because it plays music - a tinny version of the Beethoven classic "Für Elise," as I soon discovered. With help from the melodic warning, I figured out where and when to show up. Understanding the mandatory recycling system was more troublesome. In Taiwan, recycling trucks tag along behind trash collectors, but they accept only certain items on certain nights. According to the strictly enforced schedule, plastic bottles must be separated from plastic wrapping and bags, and flat recyclables, such as Styrofoam trays and cardboard dumpling boxes, are collected only on Mondays and Fridays. Show up with bundled newspapers on the wrong night, and you'll get an earful from the sanitation worker. Feigning ignorance of Mandarin won't absolve you, either. Waiting for the garbage truck is one of Taiwan's liveliest communal rites. Many evenings I watched food vendors from the night markets, buckets of eggshells in hand, chat up convenience store clerks alongside Filipina nannies who traded kitchen appliances as if they were at a Sunday morning swap meet. Freelance recyclers keen to make a few dollars showed up to collect cardboard and newspapers, which they would sell back to the city. An alderman with a whistle kept traffic at bay. These curbside jaunts were my initiation into Taiwan's broader waste-disposal network, made up of municipal employees and regular citizens all doing their part to keep the system humming. Watching the city's disparate trash tribes at work shamed me into compliance after years as a half-hearted recycler back home. I even came to feel a peculiar solidarity with the "ladies with tongs," the city transit and university sanitation workers who spend their days sifting through garbage bins in subway stations and on university campuses in search of aluminum cans. And I admired the swift vigilance of food court employees as they swept fast-food wrappers and Styrofoam cups off my table into shallow baskets before I had time to look for a trash can. (There aren't any.) Then you have nosy landlords, who, depending on the housing arrangement, are sometimes tasked with sorting their tenants' trash. One American friend, upon surrendering several bags of refuse soon after he moved into a studio apartment in Taipei, was dumbfounded when his landlady scolded him for eating too many candy bars and not enough fruit. Humiliated, he bought a bag of oranges the next day, hoping she would notice the peels he planned to leave on top of the pile. Taiwanese friends tell me that 10 years ago, their capital's sidewalks were drowning in rotting garbage. You'd never know it today, thanks to the introduction of a per-bag trash-collection fee to discourage consumption, a charge for plastic bags at supermarkets and the rigorous recycling policy now in effect. These changes created an infinitely cleaner city. Even more impressive, they fueled a sense of civic responsibility in a place where democracy is still taking root. Just as the Taiwanese invest in their young representative government, they invest in a clean environment. There's a palpable appreciation for hard-won progress. Back in the United States, green awareness has seemingly taken a quantum leap in the past year, with talk of carbon offsets - a term I hadn't heard when I boarded my plane for Taipei - lacing the passenger conversations on long-haul flights. But I've been home for three months now, and U.S. consumption patterns look as robust as ever, with the same limited patchwork of recycling opportunities available. Reducing your "carbon footprint" is a hip way to fight global warming, but what about the trash generated by last night's takeout? Before my year in Taiwan, I was a lazy environmentalist, dutifully recycling wine bottles and newspapers and opting for paper over plastic, but never willing to go the extra mile if it wasn't convenient. It's no longer so easy to make excuses. Living in a place where I was expected to use what I bought and recycle every last yogurt cup and juice box left me with a new appreciation for what clean streets mean in a civil society, and the realization that I'm responsible for everything I consume. That's as good a Chinese lesson as any. - Julia Ross (e-mail - juliaross2002 [AT] yahoo [DOT] com) is a writer and former U.S. Fulbright scholar in Taiwan. - end -