[GreenYes] Resolution of Dispute Concerning Tellus Packaging Study

["Peter Anderson" <anderson@recycleworlds.net>]

    Last month there was an email exchange on this listserve between Peter
Anderson and Karen Shapiro.  Peter first replied to a posting about Tellus'
1992 Packaging Study, to which Karen next took exception.  After chatting on
the phone, we decided that there was a good deal of mutual misunderstanding
and, having clarified the situation between us, we thought it might be
useful to post that resolution on the listserve.

    First, we both agreed that the Packaging Study was valuable in
demonstrating that production impacts are an important, often overlooked
part of the total impacts of packaging. Second, we concurred that the study
was a valuable addition to the technical literature of interest to
recycling.

    We also both agreed that the report's results do not indicate that
landfilling impacts are de minimus and any such interpretation, which
incorrectly became common at the time, is a mistatement.  As has become the
consensus in more recent years, the entire predicate for modern landfill
design is fatally flawed, and the elaborate system of barriers only, at
best, postpones pollution, and does not prevent it.

    In any event, even the analysis of the production side of packaging,
written in the period 1989-1992, is now significantly dated, and more
updated information is needed for informing decision making today.

                                                                    Karen
Shapiro amd Peter Anderson



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