Today's Topics:
Environmental Summit Call for Papers
Milk Bottles & Other Refillable Systems - Info Request
Recycling - not so good to its neighbors...
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Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 15:45:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: CRRA@aol.com
Subject: Environmental Summit Call for Papers
Anyone want to submit a paper on Zero Waste? Sounds like a good forum.
TO ENVIRONMENTAL EDITOR:
Environmental Summit `98 Call For Papers Preparing For The New Millennium
CARY, N.C., Aug. 4 -/E-Wire/-- Plans are underway for Environmental
Summit `98 - a conference and exposition being held the week of May 11,
1998 and we invite you to be a part. This event in Research Triangle
Park, North Carolina, recognized worldwide as a center for the
advancement of science and technology, will bring together leaders of
industry, government and academia to discuss and evaluate not only
traditional, but also emerging, environmental and safety issues and
initiatives. The summit will set the tone to jointly develop strategies
assuring proactive compliance in the present and the future. The new
millennium will require these initiatives aimed at protection of human
health, the environment, and the earth's natural resources.
Emerging Issues
Several voluntary initiatives are already underway such as Project
XL, EPA's Environmental Leadership Program, and ISO 14000. EPA and the
states are actively working to apply these initiatives to permits,
permit approvals, site inspections, etc. In order to focus resources
and avoid fragmentation, companies and organizations must look at
initiatives in the early stages of implementation to set the most
beneficial course of action.
Other emerging issues to consider are:
-- National Ambient Air Quality Standards for the combined effects
of multiple compounds as required by the Clean Air Act Amendments
-- Cradle-to-grave factors for sustainable development of products
being produced, distributed, used and disposed
-- Alternative communication methods and tools for presenting
environmental and safety data to special interest groups and the general
public
-- Assessment of the relative risk of multimedia environmental
impacts
Workshop Sessions At Environmental Summit `98
In order to meet the demand for information on the above mentioned
issues, workshop tracks are planned for the following subjects at the
In order to meet the demand for information on the above mentioned
issues, workshop tracks are planned for the following subjects at the
conference:
-- Environmental Management Plans for the 21st Century
-- Pollution Prevention
-- Regulatory Overview
-- Tools for Environmental Improvement
-- How to Integrate EMS Value into Core Business Functions
-- Risk Assessment and Risk Management
-- ISO 14000 and Other Voluntary Initiatives
-- Air Quality
-- Water Quality
-- Hazardous Waste Management
-- Site Restoration and Remediation Technology
-- Safety and Emergency Response
-- Transportation and the Environment
Workshop presentations may be as brief as 15 minutes or as long as an
Workshop presentations may be as brief as 15 minutes or as long as an
hour depending upon topics and the formation of panels.
Submission of Papers
If you would like to make a presentation at Environmental Summit `98,
please submit an abstract of 300 words or less describing the presentation
you wish to make and the expected duration of your presentation by August
31, 1997 using one of the methods listed below:
E-Mail: tnielsen@ercweb.com; Fax: (919) 469-4137
Mail: Tammy Nielsen
Vice President
101 Center Pointe Drive
Cary, NC 27513-5706
Speakers will not be compensated or reimbursed for travel expenses but
will be given free admission to conference general sessions and the
exposition. Speakers will be informed by October 15, 1997 of acceptance of
will be given free admission to conference general sessions and the
exposition. Speakers will be informed by October 15, 1997 of acceptance of
their submission and provided further instructions.
We look forward to your participation in Environmental Summit `98.
SOURCE Environmental Resource Center
-0- 8/4/97
/CONTACT: Tammy Nielsen, Vice President, Environmental Resource
Center, 919-469-1585 ext. 226/
***************************************************************************
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E-Wire Is Broadcast To Millions Of Readers Worldwide.
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Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 15:49:39 +0900
From: oldxeye@crisscross.com (Hop)
Subject: Milk Bottles & Other Refillable Systems - Info Request
Dear Friends,
Following is a request for information about milk bottles (and other
successful refillable systems) from Sydney, Australia, where recently
introduced waste minimisation legislation requires the reintroduction of
refillable milk bottles and an education campaign to ensure their high rate
of return.
A reintroduction plan is currently being developed by the New South Wales
(State) Government, in consultation with the dairy industry, so any
specific or otherwise relevant information you can provide would be greatly
appreciated.
Please post your replies directly to John Denlay (jdenlay@acay.com.au) as
well as to GreenYes.
Info request follows .....
>From: jdenlay@acay.com.au (John Denlay)
>Subject: Milk Bottles
>
>Would you be able to put a general request out through your "GreenYes"
>network for good case studies of refillable systems.
>
>I'm tracking down some uk examples, but would like more.
>
>I'm keen to know about programs that have
>- consumer support
>- good return rates
>- are cost competative.
>
>And what makes them so good.
>
>Cheers, John.
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Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1997 15:58:26 -0700
From: Robin Salsburg <robin@mrwmd.org>
Subject: Recycling - not so good to its neighbors...
/* Written 12:20 PM Jul 29, 1997 by ejdesk@igc.org in env.justice */
/* ---------- "Bacon: Recycling - Not So Green" ---------- */
RECYCLING - NOT SO GREEN TO ITS NEIGHBORS
By David Bacon
HUNTINGTON PARK, CA (7/28/97) - Recycling has an
environmentally-friendly image, especially in Los Angeles, where commodity
consumption is a secular form of worship. Any vision of a sustainable
future here at least mandates the reuse of the basic materials of everyday
life. That makes recycling the city's big growth industry.
Twenty years ago, when LA drew up its master plan, the industry
hardly existed at all. Today big industrial facilities are mushrooming,
collecting and processing glass, metal and concrete. The most
recently-opened plant recycles dirt, burning it to rid it of its petroleum
residues.
But low-income people living in southeast Los Angeles have a hard
time seeing recycling's green image. Their problem? They live near the
plants.
"There's always glass in the air here," complains Mercedes Arambula.
Arambula's home is catty-corner from the huge Container Recycling
facility on Leota Street in Walnut Park. Huge mounds of broken glass rise
to twice the height of an adult in the Container Recycling yard. Skip
loaders constantly fill open truck trailers with it. From their huge
scoops glass pours down in a dusty stream.
"I've lived here 18 years," she says. "My kids have asthma now,
and my littlest one, who's 1 1/2, is always sick. I won't even let them
play in the yard anymore. The trees around my house have all died anyway."
A neighbor, Ana Cano, wipes her finger across the windshield of a
parked van in front of her house, coated with a thick layer of dust.
Rubbing it between her fingers, it sparkles and feels grainy. "Little by
little, we're breathing this in," she says. "I feel like my lungs are
filling up with glass."
A little further down Alameda Street, the main corridor of the
city's industrial heartland, Alameda Street Metal Recycling crushes used
cars, trucks and metal appliances. These hunks of used metal travel to
Long Beach, and then on container ships to the other side of the Pacific,
fueling a global economy of trash.
The driveways and walls of the homes of Epifania Oliveria and
Thelma Diaz are cracking as the earth shakes from the bone-jarring thump of
the metal crusher. A thin film of oil coats their yards, and little metal
granules push up through the skin rashes of neighborhood children. When
the women brought their complaints to city authorities, they were defeated
by the most local laws of all - zoning regulations.
In balkanized southeast LA, divided into many small cities, they
discovered that the plant was located in Lynwood, and zoned industrial,
while their homes and the elementary school across the street were in Los
Angeles, and zoned residential.
"The city's message to us was that we live in the wrong place. In
their eyes, we just shouldn't be there," Diaz says. Ana Cano got the same
message when State Senator Gloria Molina came out to look at the impact of
the glass dust on their homes. "We have to expect this, she told us,
because we live in an industrial neighborhood," Cano recalls.
These neighbors are working-class people. They don't want
factories shut down or industry to disappear. That's where many of them
have jobs. "We understand we all need to work," Diaz says. "But these
places have to respect the people in the community which surrounds them.
The bottom line is that our community is poor. Everyone in our
neighborhood is Black or brown. Many like me are immigrants. And you only
find these kinds of companies in poor neighborhoods. Can you imagine a
metal recycler in Santa Monica or Hollywood? They just know we can't go
anywhere else."
Carlos Porras, Southern California Director of Communities for a
Better Environment, points out that recycling is exempted from most
regulation, because it's viewed as an environmentally-positive industry.
"Public policy has allowed recycling plants to crop up without oversight,"
he says. "This is environmental injustice. Regulations are simply not
applied to potentially harmful businesses which are located in low-income
communities of color, particularly in southeast Los Angeles."
But the burgeoning recycling industry is about to be challenged.
Southeast LA neighborhoods are discovering that they are helpless in the
face of environmental injustice if they don't get organized.
One concrete recycler in Huntington Park has faced an organized
campaign of neighborhood opposition for 4 years. Although residents of
Cottage Street started out simply trying to control the plant's operations,
the company's hardball defiance hardened neighborhood attitudes. They
stopped the operation completely, and made support of its owner the
political kiss-of-death at city hall.
"The council thought Sam Chew's concrete recycling business would
be the first of many such clean and green facilities," says Dean Hickman,
who's fought against the concrete mountain from the beginning. "But we not
only organized our own neighborhood in response, now we're going to the
neighborhoods around other plants, and helping them get organized as well."
Maybe the greenest thing produced by the burgeoning recycling
industry will be a new movement for environmental justice.
- 30 -
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david bacon - labornet email david bacon
internet: dbacon@igc.apc.org 1631 channing way
phone: 510.549.0291 berkeley, ca 94703
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End of GreenYes Digest V97 #195
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