GreenYes Digest V97 #74

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Fri, 22 Jan 1999 16:57:28 -0500


GreenYes Digest Thu, 10 Apr 97 Volume 97 : Issue 74

Today's Topics:
CHINA: OFFICIALS PLAN TO SEND POLYSTYRENE PACKING
Del Norte Endorses Zero Waste!
Fwd: C-NEWS: Promoting Smart Environmentalism
Outside Continental U.S.A.
Outside Continental U.S.A. -Reply
RECYCLING: NEW VIEW ACKNOWLEDGES TRADEOFFS, LIMITS

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Date: Wed, 09 Apr 97 12:28:14
From: "dk" <Koplow@indecon.com>
Subject: CHINA: OFFICIALS PLAN TO SEND POLYSTYRENE PACKING

Is the replacement of polystyrene with wood pulp a good thing or a
bad thing? Polystyrene is relatively inert in landfills. Even though
it is made from oil, the elimination of PS will do very little to
reduce the amount of oil extracted or the number of refineries or
petrochemical plans.

You can be sure that China's massive need for new wood pulp sources
will not be met in a sustainable manner. Given their fairly corrupt
system of governance, I would bet a fair portion of the wood pulp will
come from clear cut logging in Malaysia or Indonesia. Chinese demand
for pulp could well be a significant driver of demand for illegal
timber. If so, I'll bet continuing with polystyrene is the
environmentally-correct choice -- even if it is not the politically
correct one.

______________________________ Forward Header __________________________________
Subject: CHINA: OFFICIALS PLAN TO SEND POLYSTYRENE PACKING
Author: cdchase@qualcomm.com (Carolyn Chase) at Internet
Date: 4/9/97 8:25 AM

CHINA: OFFICIALS PLAN TO SEND POLYSTYRENE PACKING

*18 CHINA: OFFICIALS PLAN TO SEND POLYSTYRENE PACKING
Chinese officials on 3/31 announced plans to discontinue use
of non-biodegradable polystyrene food containers and instead use
easily-biodegradable containers made of wood pulp, according to
the CHINA DAILY . Polystyrene containers take about 200 years to
disintegrate, and have been widely used by the Chinese since the
1980s.
The "white pollution" of polystyrene containers makes up
about 4% of the country's 120 million tons of garbage annually,
according to National Environmental Protection Agency Vice
Director Wang Yuqing.
A Beijing company has invested $3.6 million to build a
production line that will create about 300 million wood pulp
containers per year (Deutsche Presse-Agentur).

Greenwire 4/3/97


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Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 14:53:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tedd Ward <ncol0043@telis.org>
Subject: Del Norte Endorses Zero Waste!

At our monthly meeting, to my delight and surprize the Del Norte Solid Waste
Management Authority endorsed the three main messages of the Agenda for the
Next Millennium and the GRN:
Zero Waste, End Welfare for Wasting, and Jumpstart Jobs with Design and
Discards.

If our local government can do this, yours can too. Garbage IS an unfunded
mandate.

Tedd

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Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 01:42:18 -0700
From: Bob Harsell <riverboy@injersey.com>
Subject: Fwd: C-NEWS: Promoting Smart Environmentalism

KAT10@aol.com wrote:
>
> THought you might be interested in this.
> ---------------------
> Forwarded message:
> From: ertelt@indy.net (Steven Ertelt)
> Sender: c-news-approval@world.std.com
> Reply-to: ertelt@indy.net (Steven Ertelt)
> To: ertelt@green.indy.net (Steven Ertelt)
> Date: 97-04-07 09:19:25 EDT
>
> Promoting smart environmentalism
> by Steven Ertelt
>
> This month, environmentalists around the world will celebrate Earth Day to
> raise awareness of environmental concerns. In the 25 years since the first
> Earth Day in 1970, the environmental movement has spawned a new generation
> of "scientists" asking vital questions about the true state and fate of
> the planet. But some of their answers - and even the questions themselves
> - contradict the movement's deepest beliefs.
>
> It should first be made known that those who do not advocate a
> traditionalist environmental position have similar, if not higher,
> academic credentials than those who spout gloom and doom theories.
> Professors at major universities and researchers from prestigious
> institutions support the notion that environmental policy must be based on
> the facts at hand rather than doomsday predictions.
>
> If past predictions on the part of the environmental lobby are any
> indication, those favoring radical changes in public policy are faced with
> a bruised track record. For example, the global famines expected to occur
> in the 1970s never happened. Global warming, despite so many continuing
> reports, does not appear to be a major problem. And it turns out that the
> damage to human health and the natural world caused by pesticides is far
> less than Rachel Carson feared it would be when she wrote Silent Spring in
> 1962.
>
> One current example of environmentalism gone amuck is in the area of
> forestation. Former Washington State Governor Dixy Lee Ray notes that
> there is considerably more forested land in America now than even a few
> decades ago. Reforestation has caused this increase of about 450 million
> more acres of forested land and about 23 percent more free-standing trees
> than forty years ago. Fully two-thirds of the deforestation of the U.S.
> occurred in the sixty years prior to 1910, and most of the other third
> before 1850. Although the United States has been the world's largest
> timber producer since World War II, net growth has topped net removal in
> each decade since. Finally, during 1993 alone, an estimated four million
> trees were planted in the United States daily.
>
> On a worldwide scale, though nearly 75 percent of the total industrial
> wood production comes from the Northern Hemisphere industrial countries,
> the temperate forestlands of this region are expanding. Commercial logging
> is not a major cause of deforestation; expanding low-yield agriculture
> is. In temperate countries reforestation is the rule, while in tropical
> countries forestland conversion to low-yield agriculture remains common.
>
> Economic development and tree plantations worldwide are promoting forest
> stability through well-defined and recognized property rights, the absence
> of government subsidies to encourage land clearing, and high levels and
> growth rates of high-yield agricultural productivity. In the 21st century,
> it will be clear that the preservation of natural resources and the
> expansion of human ones are tightly linked. This concept may be very hard
> for traditionalist environmentalists to understand and accept, but history
> has shown that environmental improvement depends directly on rapid
> economic progress.
>
> Only if policy makers and citizens have access to sound scientific
> information and careful analysis of past policy successes and failures can
> they make the critical decisions about how to best preserve the world's
> natural heritage for future generations. We must close the gap between
> environmental activists and environmental science. We cannot solve
> problems by doomsaying but by developing new structures of responsibility
> that allow the vast human resources that we already enjoy to be employed
> for ensuring the safety and abundance of the natural resources we desire.
>
> --
> Steven A. Ertelt serves as the Coordinator for the Indiana Republican
> Liberty Caucus. He holds a B.A. in Politics from Hendrix College. Contact
> him at ertelt@indy.net.
>
> Permission to reprint given provided the above information appears.
> -------
> To subscribe to c-news, send the message SUBSCRIBE C-NEWS, or the message
> UNSUBSCRIBE C-NEWS to unsubscribe, to majordomo@world.std.com. Contact
> owner-c-news@world.std.com if you have questions.

Of course I'm very interested. Environmental policy should not be
based upon facts at hand. Nor should environmental policy be based upon
doomsday predictions or any other predictions. To do either is to go off
half-cocked, very unwise considering how much there is to lose for the
human race.
Credentials can be and are for sale. The most money buys the most
credentials. There is big money in the extraction and sale of natural
resources. Who pays big bucks to preserve them? Did you ever see
conservation of resources on sale at any of the strip malls that
increasingly spread across the landscape?
Sound science is only sound science when all the facts are known.
Within the rigorous discipline of sound science, facts are usually
arrived at only at the end of exhaustive experiment. There is only one
Earth we know of with which to experiment. Only a fool experiments on his
own body with drugs. How can experimenting upon our cradle of life in the
wide universe possibly be done in the name of sound science?
My guess is that the experimentation is being carried out by
people who don't care if the world goes to hell as long as they're on top
of it for the ride.
How about environmental policy based upon caution, common sense,
respect, frugality, pride, wisdom, love, humility, and human excellence?
-riverboy-

------------------------------

Date: 09 Apr 97 08:18:00 (-0400)
From: horace.morancie@gsa.gov
Subject: Outside Continental U.S.A.

--UNS_gsauns1_2589699615
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Hi folks:

Looking for information and/or sources of information on what's
happening in Solid Waste Management, Recycle, Reduce, Reuse and
Compost out side the continental U.S.A.

e-mail to <horace.morancie@gsa.gov>

Appreciate and many thanks.

Horace

--UNS_gsauns1_2589699615--

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 09 Apr 1997 14:33:54 -0400
From: Wayne Fenton <Wfenton@city.london.on.ca>
Subject: Outside Continental U.S.A. -Reply

Horace,

If you are interested in waste management happenings in Canada,
particularly the Province of Ontario, I would be happy to try to assist you.
Are there any specifics that you are looking for?

Wayne Fenton,
Project Manager
London/Middlesex Waste Management Plan
wfenton@city.london.on.ca

>>> <horace.morancie@gsa.gov> 04/09/97 08:18am >>>

Hi folks:

Looking for information and/or sources of information on what's
happening in Solid Waste Management, Recycle, Reduce, Reuse and
Compost out side the continental U.S.A.

e-mail to <horace.morancie@gsa.gov>

Appreciate and many thanks.

Horace

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 23:15:30 -0700
From: cdchase@qualcomm.com (Carolyn Chase)
Subject: RECYCLING: NEW VIEW ACKNOWLEDGES TRADEOFFS, LIMITS

Greenwire 4/1/97

*6 RECYCLING: NEW VIEW ACKNOWLEDGES TRADEOFFS, LIMITS
"While efforts to get Americans to sort and recycle their
garbage have been hugely successful and have had significant
environmental benefits," many local governments are starting to
evaluate whether the costs of expanding such programs outweigh
the benefits, the WASH. POST reports.
The nation currently recycles about 26% of its municipal
solid waste (MSW), and "experts say that without too much extra
expense" that figure "could be pushed as high as 40%." But more
ambitious goals "could send costs much higher" and could require
raising local taxes or cutting other services. J. Winston
Porter, a former US EPA asst. administrator who in 1988 set a
national goal of recycling 25% of MSW, thinks that is still about
the optimum figure. Porter: "It's not like we can't get too
much recycling, because the truth is we can."
Dave Gatton of the US Conference of Mayors says local
governments "are not debating whether to abandon their programs,"
but "they are debating how to make recycling more effective."
Even the Sierra Club recognizes the limits of recycling; in a
report last summer, the group said: "Recycling is not a panacea
for our environmental problems, nor should it be pursued to the
point of diminished returns or at any cost."
The "ultimate" answers, local officials and industry experts
say, include reducing household waste, improving information on
recyclable commodities through a national "Recyclables Exchange"
(GREENWIRE, 10/18/96), and developing products that use less
energy and raw material in the first place (Kathleen Day, WASH.
POST, 3/30).

Maybe Bill or the Waste Committee of the SC would care to respond?

--cdc

Carolyn Chase, Editor, San Diego Earth Times, http://www.sdearthtimes.com
Please visit ;-)

Tel: (619)272-7423 (SDET)
FAX: (619)272-2933
email: earthday@qualcomm.com
P.O. Box 9827 / San Diego CA 92169

'You've got to conserve what you can't replace'
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Every citizen is involved in politics; it's just that some people do
politics, some have it done to them."

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End of GreenYes Digest V97 #74
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