WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ARCHIVE   BACK TO ARCHIVE INDEX

31 Jul 02 - lunches; Netflix; discards; junk mail; cell phones; green building; exchanges ** WASTE PREVENTION FORUM ** -- A project of the National Waste Prevention Coalition -------- Forum archive: http://www.reuses.com/nwpcarchive -------------------- From Jeffrey Smedberg, County of Santa Cruz Public Works Department, recycling programs, Santa Cruz, CA: Folks on the Forum might be interested in the message below from Amy Hemmert. I've worked with her local start-up company that produces a lunch box called Laptop Lunches to facilitate less waste. They've gathered a wealth of info on waste-free lunches on the way. E-mail: recycle [ AT ] co [ DOT ] santa-cruz [ DOT ] ca [ DOT ] us ---------------------- Excerpted from a message from Amy Hemmert, Laptop Lunches, Santa Cruz, CA: The purpose of our Waste-Free Lunches website - http://www.wastefreelunches.org - is to provide waste-free lunch information for teachers, parents, school administrators, municipalities, and environmental groups. Viewers can learn about how we implemented our waste-free lunch program at Gateway School in Santa Cruz, CA. They can copy our materials for use in their own programs, including our letter to parents, interactive lobby display suggestions, and waste audit procedures. Our hope is to make it easier for schools (and businesses?) to start waste-free lunch programs. We've also included a page where we're posting waste-free lunch success stories from across North America. If you know anyone who has a story to tell, please send them our way. They can contact us at info [ A T ] wastefreelunches [ D O T ] org So far we have about 20 schools who have responded. Finally, we've included links to other waste-free lunch sites for those who want information pertaining to their own geographical area. Thanks. -------------------- From Tom Watson, King County Solid Waste Division, Seattle, WA, and the National Waste Prevention Coalition: PRODUCT ALERT - PRINGLES SNACK STACKS Procter & Gamble recently introduced a new product in its Pringles line of potato chips - the single-serving Pringles Snack Stacks. Here's how this product - a small number of chips in a hard plastic container - is described on the Procter & Gamble website: "Perfect for school lunches, snack time, on the go, or anytime your kids crave the fun and irresistible taste of Pringles! Snack Stacks are .81 ounce plastic single-serve tubs specially designed to conform to the shape of the Pringles Crisps. Original and Sour Cream & Onion Snack Stacks are available in 8-packs and 24-packs. Pop one in your kids' lunches today!" -------------------- Also from Tom Watson: On a more positive note: Kinley Deller here in my office just told me about a company that has an impressive, waste-preventing system for sending and receiving DVDs (digital video disks) through the mail. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, CA, rents DVDs through a membership program. The DVD, which the member orders online, arrives by mail in a simple paper envelope - no cardboard, no plastic. To send the DVD back to Netflix, the member simply reuses the same envelope (after tearing off a flap with the original address). Since DVDs and CDs are pretty much the same thing (in the physical appearance of the disks themselves), Netflix stands in stark contrast to America Online (AOL). On the one hand you have Netflix - now the largest online entertainment subscription service in the U.S., according to its website - sending and receiving its reusable DVDs through the mail, with minimal, reusable packaging. On the other hand, you have AOL using metal tins, or bulky unrecyclable plastic boxes, to send out millions of UNWANTED, un-reusable promotional CDs. No wonder AOL Time Warner is in financial trouble. Hats off to Netflix! -------------------- Excerpted from a message from Bill Sheehan, Athens, GA, GrassRoots Recycling Network, responding to the item from the New York Times, posted 7/25/02, giving the breakdown of materials in U.S. municipal solid waste (the source was a Waste Policy Center analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data): These numbers appear to be for all discards, before reuse, recycling, etc; they do not reflect the percent of materials wasted in landfills and incinerators. The Waste Policy Center works for the waste industry, and it is in their interest to perpetuate the myth, developed by Franklin Associates for EPA, that all products and materials are waste, whether reused, recycled or wasted. That's clearly not a position that's in the interests of resource conservatives who care about reuse, etc., so I suggest we not perpetuate such terminology without comment. The data are apparently from Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste, Chapter 2, Table 1, Materials Generated in the Municipal Waste Stream, 1960 TO 2000. ("Generation before materials recovery or combustion. Does not include construction & demolition debris, industrial process wastes, or certain other wastes.") Website link to this info: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/msw99.htm#links Bill's e-mail: zerowaste [AT] grrn [DOT] org -------------------- From Woody Raine, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, recycling markets program, Austin, TX, responding to the 7/25/02 posting about how the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Mail Preference Service has two different mailing addresses for the service: The following quote from that 7/25/02 message reminds me of a game I used to play: "When doing promotions, companies will often use different post office box numbers, phone extensions, or other codes in order to track how people are hearing about the promotion." We can play the same game. If you don't already have a unit number or other suffix to your address, try adding a different one to your address each time you have to provide it - memberships, purchases, credit cards, etc. - and keep track of which one you gave out to whom. Later, you can see who provided your address to what junk mailer by the addresses they use to find you. E-mail: WRAINE (AT) tnrcc (DOT) state (DOT) tx (DOT) us ---------------------- Link to a 7/26/02 Business Week Online article about CollectiveGood, a second-hand cell phone company (forwarded by Desmond Machuca): http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isyn/default.asp?newsid=20027269 ---------------------- Link to the website for the City of Austin (TX) Green Building Program (forwarded by Katie Jensen): http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/greenbuilder ---------------------- Link to the website for "NW Materialsmart," a referral website to online materials exchanges in Oregon, Washington and Idaho (forwarded by David Allaway): http://www.nwmaterialsmart.org This is a nice example of an online "gateway" to various online materials exchanges in a particular region, in this case the Northwest. - end -