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21 Jun 01 - magazines; electronics; credit card junk mail; green burial ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- Excerpted from a message from Susan Kinsella, Conservatree, San Francisco, CA, responding to an Associated Press article (posted 6/18/01) about magazine waste: Overproduction for the purpose of increasing advertising rates is one of the big issues that the Magazine PAPER Project raised about the environmental impacts of magazines. There's a whole section in our new White Paper report about it. Information on the PAPER (Printing Alternatives Promoting Environmental Responsibility) Project, and a link to the report, are at: http://www.ecopaperaction.org The Magazine PAPER Project is a partnership between Conservatree, Co-op America and the Independent Press Association. Highlights from the report include: - More than 35 million trees - equivalent to an area the size of Rocky Mountain National Park - are logged annually to print 12 billion magazine copies. - 90 percent of magazines are discarded within a year, yet less than 20 percent are recycled. - 3 billion of the 4.7 billion magazines delivered to newsstands each year never reach a reader - enough to circle the earth 20 times. - Less than 5 percent of magazine paper has any recycled content, and even these papers generally have no more than 10-30 percent postconsumer content. We are inviting magazines to work with us to convert to using recycled paper. Also, we have re-calculated the number of trees used to make a ton of paper, updating the old "17 trees" number, which Conservatree had popularized in the past. The new calculations are at http://www.conservatree.com/learn/Enviro_Issues/TreeStats.shtml and are more accurate for today's pulping processes and different types of paper. E-mail: seek [ A T ] susankinsella [ D O T ] com ------------------- Excerpted from a message and press release from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, San Jose, CA: A report published June 19 by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Californians Against Waste and Materials for the Future describes the growing piles of electronics waste in the U.S., the toxics contained in the computers and monitors, and hazards of improper disposal. The report estimates a cost to California taxpayers of almost $1 billion for handling e-wastes that consumers and businesses will throw away. The report, called, "Poison PCs and Toxic TVs: California's Biggest Environmental Crisis That You've Never Heard Of" is at: http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/ppc-ttv1.pdf It is in Adobe Portable Document Format. A recent announcement by the California Department of Toxics and Substance Control that clarified that it is illegal to dispose of televisions and computer monitors in municipal landfills has sent cities throughout the state scrambling to find alternative methods of collecting and recycling computer and electronics waste. "We're sitting on top of a gigantic e-wasteberg, and in order to find solutions, the manufacturers of computers must take life-cycle responsibility for their products," said Ted Smith, executive director of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, one of the lead authors of the new report. "They need to re-design their products to phase out the toxic materials and make computers and monitors recyclable. They should take the lead on recycling programs, not the taxpayer." The report is being released this week in San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento, where local elected leaders are also introducing resolutions to protect their communities against the costs of cleaning up toxic computers. Findings of the report include: - Consumers have, on average, 2 to 3 obsolete computers in their garages, closets or storage spaces. U.S. government researchers estimate that three-quarters of all computers ever sold in the United States remain stockpiled, awaiting disposal. - According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 1997, more than 3.2 million tons of e-waste ended up in U.S. landfills. European studies estimate that the volume of electronic waste is rising by 3 percent to 5 percent per year, almost three times faster than the municipal waste stream. Today, e-waste could represent as much as 5 percent of municipal solid waste disposal. - Each computer or television display contains an average of 4 to 8 pounds of lead. The 315 million computers that will become obsolete between 1997 and 2004 contain a total of more than 1.2 billion pounds of lead. This week, at the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative meeting in San Francisco, representatives from 12 states will meet with computer manufacturers to discuss how to solve the crisis and who will pay the high cost of keeping toxic computer and electronic waste out of the municipal waste stream. An article about this issue by Michael Coren in the 6/19/01 San Jose Mercury News is at: http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/toxic061901.htm For additional information on this issue, see these websites: - Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: http://www.svtc.org - Californians Against Waste: http://www.cawrecycles.org ------------------- Link to a column about credit card solicitations, by business columnist Bill Virgin in the 6/20/01 Seattle Post-Intelligencer: http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/virgin/28129_virgin20.shtml This column is a follow-up to his 6/11/01 column that was excerpted in the 6/18/01 Forum. ------------------- Excerpted from a 6/1/01 article from the Reuters news service (forwarded by Josh Marx from the U.S. Composting Council listserv): STOCKHOLM - A Swedish scientist investigating the most environmentally friendly form of burial has found a way of quickly recycling corpses into soil enricher, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reported on Friday. This method, approved by the Church of Sweden, turns the human body into organic matter in a few weeks compared with coffin burial, in which the body takes between 50 and 60 years to decompose. It was developed by biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, who found that cremation emits poisonous gases with unknown effects, making it even less eco-friendly than conventional burial. With the new system, the body is immersed in a bath of liquid nitrogen, producing up to 65 pounds of pure organic matter, which is put into a thin, easily degradable coffin. This is then buried near the ground surface, where it enriches the soil in the same way as autumn leaves. On the question of ethics, the Church of Sweden gave its blessing to the new burial method. "We are promised a new body at the resurrection and so we have no need for the old one," said Kerstin Lindqvist, a senior prelate. - end -