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[GreenYes] Zero Waste Communities List in Waste News, 1/5/06


Apologies for Cross-Postings

From: Waste News Daily E-mail for January 05, 2006 (subscribers can access this at: http://www.wastenews.com/inbox2.html?id=1136413348)

Inbox
A twice-weekly online column written by Waste News Assistant Managing Editor Pete Fehrenbach.

...Let´s close the Inbox today with an item from our Why-Didn´t-Anyone-Think-Of-This-Sooner Department. At the behest of New York City Zero Waste Campaign chief Timothy Logan, solid waste consultant Gary Liss has compiled a list -- The Liss List? -- of communities that have adopted zero-waste goals or developed plans to achieve such a goal.

Zero waste: Whenever I see that term, I get disturbing flashbacks of Gomer Pyle, I mean Jim Nabors, on his TV musical variety show circa 1970 booming out, in his baritone profundo, a song called "The Impossible Dream": This is my quest/To follow that star/No matter how hopeless/No matter how far ...

If history teaches us anything, it´s that important changes usually start with a small group of hard-headed eccentrics hatching an impossible dream.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive at http://www.wastenews.com/inbox.html.

Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 17:54:28 -0800
To: pfehrenbach@no.address
From: Gary Liss <gary@no.address>
Subject: List of Zero Waste Communities
Cc: zwiaplan@no.address (ZWIA Planning Group)

Peter,

Thanks for your coverage of our new List of Zero Waste Communities on the website of the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA) at www.zwia.org. ZWIA was founded several years ago because there are people actively working throughout the world to achieve Zero Waste and there is a need to share information about the wonderful successes being achieved. If you liked the "Liss List," check out the list of Zero Waste businesses that have already diverted over 90% of their wastes at http://www.grrn.org/zerowaste/articles/companies_zw.html. I encourage you to do some articles on these businesses that are demonstrating that we CAN achieve Zero Waste, or darn close!

Gary Liss

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerry Gillespie
Sent: Friday, 6 January 2006 8:36 AM
To: 'editorial@no.address'
Subject: re the Liss List

Dear Mr Fehrenbach,

I can only assume that it is the somewhat vague nature of the American sense of humour that compelled you to write your wee article in regard to Zero Waste in a recent issue of your Inbox in Waste News.

I could not for the life of me ascertain whether you were inferring that Zero Waste is errant nonsense or that your intelligence is somehow linked to that of the now somewhat remote and defunct Gomer Pyle.

Given that some parochial magazines in your country seem to hold that little exists beyond New York and the western border of the world is somewhere near the Golden Gate, I felt I should write to inform you of the breadth and indeed the depth of feeling held by members of the Zero Waste movement around the world.

Some us may in fact be 'hard-headed eccentrics' Mr. Fehrenbach but we are by no means a 'small group'.

We are a movement that is growing at a very rapid rate - a reflection of the awakening of people to the fact that over-consumption of the worlds resources is destroying any hope of a future for our grandchildren.

If you have not done so already perhaps you would be good enough to publish Mr. Liss' List so that your readers can judge for themselves the size of the movement world wide. Indeed, publish the contacts so that they can see that we are all real.

Zero Waste as an international movement is a logical step in the progress we have all made beyond recycling. Recycling is a pointless business if we stop halfway through the game.

Statistics often used by Mary Lou Van Deventer, of Urban Ore in Berkeley, California indicate that in the year 2001, the waste industry in the US was worth a meagre $40 billion, recycling industries on the other hand were worth $236 billion - we are on the right road, Mr Fehrenbach.

We are winning - and Zero Waste is the only road home.

It is obvious to us all that we cannot have sustainability in a world which continues to turn its resource base into waste and toxic ash.

Would you expect, Mr Fehrenbach, that your local baseball team would go into the field to do 75%?

No of course not - They must be out there to achieve 100% or you and your fellow fans, would no doubt regard them as losers.

Take your mind out to the ballgame Mr. Fehrenbach.

Zero Waste is like your team in that ballgame - aimed at 100%.

We will win! We must win - or there is little hope!

No joke! There is no alternative!

Gerry Gillespie
Chairman
Zero Waste Australia





Gary Liss
916-652-7850
Fax: 916-652-0485
www.garyliss.com

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