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E-News: Green Star's Electronic, Environmental Newsletter!
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Green Star E-News Vol. 3, No. 8 August 7, 2002 "Recognizing Alaska businesses committed to environmental responsibility." In this issue: * Shining Stars * There’s a New Recycler In Town * Last Call for the State Fair * Eagle River Recycling Reminder * Green Team Leaders in the Community * Waste Prevention 101: Office Paper * Recycling 101: Scrap Metal * This Month’s Hot Link: National Recycling Coalition * Thank you 2002 Sponsors SHINING STARS Welcome and thank you to our newest members: Business Members: Anchor Park United Methodist Church, Nabors Alaska Drilling, Schroeder Consulting Services In-kind Contributor: Hartig Rhodes Hoge & Lekisch PC Thank you to our individual volunteers who have donated their time to assist with a variety of Green Star office projects: Jonathan Nelson and Beverly Churchill ================================== THERE’S A NEW RECYCLER IN TOWN Looking for someone collect your recyclables? There’s a new name in town. New Moon Curbside Recycling offers weekly, twice monthly, or monthly recycling pickup service to residents and small businesses for reasonable rates. For more information about New Moon’s services, contact Rebecca Mohlman at 868-1512 or NewMoonRecycling@netscape.net. Other curbside recycling services in Anchorage include: Girmscheid Enterprises 770-1720 Recycle Alaska 563-6045 Anchorage Refuse 563-3717 ================================== LAST CALL FOR THE STATE FAIR As the days get shorter, it can only mean one thing – the Alaska State Fair is just around the corner! Green Star, Valley Community for Recycling Solutions, and the State Fair are gearing up to recycle at the Fair and we still need your help. We are closing in on our goal to recruit 600 volunteers for the job, but we need a few more people. If your organization has a small group (6-12 people) interested in recycling for a 4-hour period during the Fair, please contact us. Or if you are an individual who wants to help out, we can find a spot for you on the schedule too. Volunteers receive free parking and free entrance to the Fair on the day they volunteer. Organizations get recognition for helping to make recycling a success at the Fair! In addition, we are looking for sponsors willing to donate refreshments or funds to purchase refreshments for the volunteers while they work. Contact: Jeanne Carlson 278-7839 jeanne@greenstarinc.org or Mollie Boyer (907) 357-4765 solutions@valleyrecycling.org ================================== EAGLE RIVER RECYCLING REMINDER The third Eagle River One-Stop drop-off for recyclables will be held this coming weekend. Clean out your garage and come on down! When: Saturday, August 10th, 10am – 2pm, Where: Eagle River Wal-Mart parking lot. What: All materials accepted at the Anchorage Recycling Center (newspaper, magazines, cardboard, mixed paper, office paper, aluminum cans, steel cans, glass bottles, #1 plastic bottles, #2 plastic jugs, and plastic bags/film). Why: To support the establishment of a permanent drop-off site for recyclables in or near Eagle River. Show your support for recycling by coming out with your recyclables. This is the halfway point in the Eagle River One-Stop program. By next February, the volunteer group organizing the events hopes to have identified the next steps toward permanent recycling drop-offs. All input is welcome so please feel free to attend the next meeting on Monday, August 12th, 7-9pm at the Eagle River VFW (basement). ================================== GREEN TEAM LEADERS IN THE COMMUNITY Profile of Amy Hutmacher, Summer Intern at BP It is the individual within a business or organization that makes it all happen. A strong Green Star program requires at least one dedicated individual to follow through and keep everyone else motivated. Amy Hutmacher has been filling this role at BP for the past two summers. Soon to be a junior in Environmental Studies at University of the Pacific, in Stockton, CA, Amy began her intern program with BP last summer in the fitness center. BP’s need for someone to take responsibility for its internal Green Office Initiative (GOI) gave Amy the opportunity to work within her field of interest. Since then, she has been working with a wide range of BP staff to gather the information necessary to identify and improve upon BP’s internal environmental initiatives. The guidelines for the GOI are similar in many ways to the Green Star standards, leading Amy to contact Green Star. BP first earned its Green Star award ten years ago and, since that time, much has changed. Few of the staff originally involved in the Green Star team remain and some of the programs have slipped away. On the other hand, numerous new initiatives have been implemented during the past ten years and BP is proud of the changes that have been made. “To be honest, I was sort of surprised by all the green programs already in place in the building. Sure there’s always room for improvement, but there is a lot of good happening at BP,” says Amy. This summer, Amy’s goals include recertifying the company’s original Green Star award, earning an Air Quality award for the facility, and earning the Green Star award for the newly constructed Energy Center. To begin this process, Amy compiled large quantities of data, including waste hauling and recycling information, data about recycled-content purchases, and water and energy use figures. “In such a large office, it can be a challenge to pull together information, but the answers are out there and it has been great to talk to so many different people as I have this summer. Now we really have to work on spreading the word and getting every last employee involved,” says Amy. She also invited Green Star staff to conduct a site assessment, arranging meetings with staff from various departments to create a picture of the current operations at the BP offices. During the assessment, Green Star staff pointed out many of the positive initiatives they saw, and provided recommendations for improvements as well. As the summer draws to a close, Amy will present the results of her research and her recommendations to BP staff. When she returns to school, her efforts will be continued by other staff members. Carolina Torres, a BP employee who has been volunteering her time as a champion for green office practices, has been working with Amy for the past two months to gather data and brainstorm ways to reduce waste and conserve energy. Carolina hopes to launch an in-depth green office campaign in 2003 including an employee education program, incentives, and required behavioral changes. She also hopes to recruit further employee participation by sharing information and ideas at team meetings throughout the large BP building. ================================== WASTE PREVENTION 101: Office Paper Green Star is beginning a new series of articles for E-News. These articles will appear periodically over the next year or so, as our latest series – Recycling 101 – comes to an end next month. Recycling 101 focused on local recycling opportunities for 20 different specific materials. The new series shifts focus from recycling to waste prevention. Waste Prevention 101 will look at specific waste prevention (i.e., stopping waste before it is generated) techniques and tips for different business sectors. Our first article is about office waste prevention, because almost everyone has an office, no matter what type of business you have. Specifically, the article looks at office paper waste reduction. Future articles will tackle other aspects of offices. In later months, articles will get more specific by looking at waste prevention for retailers, restaurants, warehouses, hotels, health care facilities, and other business types. If you work in a particular industry and would like to learn more about specific waste prevention opportunities, please let us know. Office Paper Waste Prevention The largest waste stream generated in offices is paper. In fact, paper is the largest part of the entire municipal waste stream at 40%. Nationally, office paper generation is the third largest portion of the overall paper waste stream, after corrugated cardboard and newspaper. While recycling paper that would otherwise be discarded is a positive step toward conserving resources, there are many other ways to reduce waste paper generation and disposal. Photocopying accounts for one-quarter of all office paper use, or about 1% of the total MSW stream. You can double side (or duplex) your photocopies to reduce paper use. In theory, this should reduce paper use by 50% but in reality, one-page, single-sided originals and documents with an odd number of pages make the possible reduction closer to 30%. Currently the average duplex rate in offices is about 13%. In other words, out of every 100 copies, 26 copies are duplexed onto 13 sheets of paper while the remaining copies are single sided on 74 sheets of paper. For documents that will be passed around the office, then filed, consider various ways to reduce paper use. This also will save floor space and file cabinet space necessary for storing the documents. Simply double-siding documents will greatly reduce paper use. In addition, try to take advantage of the great leaps that have been taken in electronic commerce. Invoices, shipping orders, memos, reports, reporting forms, and almost anything else that was once done strictly on paper can now be done electronically. There are a few companies in Anchorage that will transfer all of your paper records to computer files and properly dispose of the paper version, if you wish. Granted, an office may never be able to do away with all paper documentation, but one can certainly reduce it in many cases. You also will save money and reduce waste by conserving paper when sending documents to customers or clients. If a document can be sent to a client electronically, you have eliminated paper altogether. If you double side it and mail it, your postage costs will be less. A lot of the paper used in an office is filed away as archived documents. Companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to archive paper documents for the required amount of time, usually 10 years, before they can throw this paper trail away. For documents being used strictly for archiving, consider using computer zip disks, computer tape, or printing the documents two-up or four-up (printing two or four reduced-size pages on one piece of paper) and double sided. This dramatically reduces the amount of paper and therefore the amount of space necessary for storage. You will save money on storage, storage boxes, file folders, and paper, not to mention labor when it comes time to un-archive the materials. A Few More Simple Steps None of us should ever have to go to the supply room to get a pad of notepaper. Enough scrap paper is generated in offices that can be cut in half or quartered and used for notes and phone messages, we should all be set for life. If your office has a plastic comb binder or a glue binder, you can create scrap paper notebooks and pads. Just take the back from last year’s calendar desk blotter, cut it down to paper size and use it as front and back cover for your notebook. Bind together the covers with scrap paper placed blank side up and you’ll have a notebook for meeting notes. Designate a paper tray in copiers and/or printers that is filled with one-sided scrap paper. This tray can be used for printing or copying draft reports and internal documents. Use one-sided scrap paper to receive faxes. Better yet, install a fax program on your computer to receive faxes electronically instead of in hard copy form. Anything that needs to be printed can be and all those junk faxes can be deleted without wasting any paper. Save a Ton or More A ton of office paper is equal to about 40 cartons of letter-size copy paper, or about 200,000 sheets of paper. A ton of paper will take up 4 1/3 cubic yards of space in the landfill. It costs $45 to dump a ton of waste into the Anchorage Regional Landfill. This $45/ton fee is what the refuse company pays at the landfill, so you can bet that to make their necessary profit, your refuse hauler is charging you more to pick it up and haul it to the landfill. Still, a mere $45, plus a little extra tacked on for profit, may not seem like much to get rid of 200,000 sheets of paper, but the real cost, and cost-saving potential, is at the other end of the system. The cost of purchasing that ton of paper may be more than $2000. An office of 500 employees would generate about 30 tons/year of recyclable paper. That equals 1,200 cartons of paper at a purchase cost of $60,000. If your 500-person office is able to cut paper use by 40% by duplexing your photocopies, rethinking your need for printing and copying, and reusing scrap paper, you have just saved $24,000. Resources Progressive Imagining 344-5959 Will transfer paper files onto computer and can dispose/recycle files. The Alliance for Environmental Innovation http://www.environmentaldefense.org/Alliance “Changing the way business thinks about the environment” is the slogan of this project of Environmental Defense and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The site summarizes project topics such as Reducing the Impact of Copy Paper and Recycled Paper Availability. ================================== RECYCLING 101: Scrap Metal This is the nineteenth in a series of articles about recycling in Anchorage. In this season of construction in Alaska, scrap metal is generated at a much faster rate than during other times of the year. Scrap metal is anything metal not including steel cans, which are recyclable in their own category. Scrap metal can range from a few metal clothes hangers, to wire cables, ductwork, or I-beams from construction projects. The National Picture In 1999, 10.4 million tons of ferrous durable goods were generated (this includes appliances, furniture, tires, and miscellaneous items). About 2.8 million tons of this metal were recovered for recycling or about 27% of generation. The U.S. also generated 2.3 million tons of durable nonferrous metals, including aluminum, lead, copper, brass, zinc, and other metals. Only about 930,000 tons were recovered and this was all lead from lead-acid batteries. Finally, about 200,000 tons of non-durable waste aluminum products, not including packaging and containers, were generated, with no significant recycling of the metal. Overall, metals represent about 7.8% of the U.S. waste stream before recovery and about 7% of all discards. This metal includes scrap metal as well as metal packaging and containers. Scrap Metal in Anchorage According to a 1997 study in Anchorage, we generated 28,010 tons of metal waste. Of that figure, 17,847 tons were ferrous (including steel), 5,091 tons were aluminum, and 5,072 tons were other nonferrous metals. This figure includes metals processed in Anchorage, but received from other parts of the state. Overall, these figures show a 50% recycling rate for all metals. The recycling figure of 14,002 tons in 1997 also may include multiple years of accumulation so actual annual recycling may be lower. There are several industrial metal recyclers in Alaska, but no local metal smelters or remanufacturing businesses. The recyclers sort and process the metals for shipment to Lower 48 markets. How Do I Recycle Scrap Metal? Alaska Metal Recycling accepts all metal, as long as it is not radioactive or toxic. The company does not pay for ferrous metals, but will pay 70% of current Seattle market value for nonferrous metals. Alaska Metal Recycling accepts aluminum cans, aluminum scrap, brass, copper, stainless steel, radiators, lead, and tin. Aluminum cans are currently worth 28¢/pound. The company also will accept vehicles but will charge for them if the battery, tanks, glass, foam/plastic, tires etc. have not been removed. Mobile Metals will pick up nonferrous metals. Call to arrange a pick up. The company will take aluminum cans with other nonferrous metals but will not pick up aluminum cans alone. Smurfit-Stone Recycling Company (Anchorage Recycling Center) will accept nonferrous metals, such as copper, brass, aluminum, and stainless steel, during business hours. To receive a higher price for the metals, remove all foreign objects. Smurfit also will accept insulated cables, which contain metal. The company does not accept iron or white goods. Hilltop Recycling in Chugiak accepts nonferrous metals and will pay for them. Only drop off is available unless you have large quantities. Hilltop does not accept white goods. (See E-News June 2002 for information about white goods, E-News August 2001 for information about steel cans, and E-News May 2001 for information about aluminum cans.) Resources Alaska Metal Recycling 9705 King Street 349-4833 Hours: M-F 9am – 4:30pm Hilltop Recycling Mile 4.5 Old Glenn Highway, Chugiak Hours: M-F 8am - 5pm, Sat 9am – 2pm Mobile Metals, Inc. 277-7777 Hours: 8am – 6pm Smurfit-Stone Recycling Company 6161 Rosewood Street 562-2267 Hours: 9am – noon and 12:30pm – 4pm Scrap Recycling Institute http://www.recycle-steel.org ================================== THIS MONTH’S HOT LINK: National Recycling Coalition http://www.nrc-recycle.org NRC is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of recycling, source reduction, composting, and reuse by providing technical information, education, training, outreach, and advocacy services to its members in order to conserve resources and benefit the environment. Learn about the NRC’s Annual Congress and Expo, to be held September 8-11, 2002 in Austin, Texas. This is one of the largest gatherings of recycling professionals held each year. ================================== THANK YOU 2002 SPONSORS Green Star could not exist without the generous financial support of many individuals and leading local businesses. To become a Green Star individual member or corporate sponsor, please call (278-7827) or visit our web site http://www.greenstarinc.org. A huge thank you to our 2002 sponsors! Platinum: BP Exploration Alaska, Municipality of Anchorage Solid Waste Services, Phillips Alaska Gold: Alaska Conservation Foundation, KTUU Channel 2, Wells Fargo Silver: Anchorage Refuse (A Waste Management Company), National Association of PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), Phone Directories, Inc., Princess Tours, The Home Depot Bronze: Data Pro, La Mex, Odom Corporation, Sam's Club, Smurfit-Stone Recycling Company, Pepsi-Cola Bottling of Anchorage, Wal-Mart ‘A’ St. Store Supporter: ALPAR, Anchorage Daily News, Bear Tooth Grill and Theater Pub, Café Del Mundo, Chugach Electric Association, Corporate Express Alaska, Denali Commission, Moose’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria, Nabors Alaska Drilling, Side Street Espresso, Snow City Cafe Contributor: Alaska Center for the Environment, Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Serigraphics, Alaska Wildland Adventures, Arctic Wire Rope & Supply, CH2M Hill, Fowler & Associates, Green Connection, Shoot-N-Edit, Spenard Builders Supply, The Body Shop, Webb Consulting & Management Services ================================== Past issues of E-News are available on our web site, sorted by topic or date. Please send comments, questions, or suggestions for future E-News topics to us at enews@greenstarinc.org. Forward this newsletter freely. Send us any email addresses you wish to add to our mailing list. Thank you! The staff of Green Star, Anchorage: Sean Skaling, Executive Director Jeanne Carlson, Recycling Program Coordinator If you would like to discontinue receiving E-News, please write to enews@greenstarinc.org |
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