E-News: Green Star's Electronic, Environmental Newsletter!

Green Star E-News Vol. 2, No. 4 April 5, 2001

Recognizing businesses committed to environmental responsibility.


In this issue:
* Shining Stars: Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Conservation Foundation, Corporate Express
* Extra Materials? List them on the Discussion Board
* Eliminate Dust in Anchorage
* Earth Day is Coming
* Green Events Grows by Leaps and Bounds
* Recycling 101: Mixed Paper
* Join the Green Star Standards Committee
*This Month's Hot Link
* Welcome 2001 Sponsors


SHINING STARS
Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has submitted an application for the Air Quality Award. ADEC, who also earned the Green Star Award, will be reviewed by the Green Star Standards Committee this week.

Alaska Conservation Foundation recently invited Green Star staff to go over the Green Star Standards and Award process with employees and other businesses in their office building. ACF, currently pursuing the Green Star Award, has a strong office recycling program and is working with their building landlord install energy efficient lights.

Corporate Express will be reviewed by the Standards Committee for the Green Star Award. The organization has an active Green Star Team and motivates employees through innovative waste reduction ideas. The folks at Corporate Express recently invited the public to drop off used toner cartridges at their office and donated the profits from recycling them to the Special Olympics.

For a list of all Green Star Awardees, visit our web site at http://www.greenstarinc.org.
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EXTRA MATERIALS? LIST THEM ON THE DISCUSSION BOARD

Looking for extra packaging material? Do you go through a lot of cardboard boxes and wonder if someone else can use them? Before you recycle these items, post a message on Green Star’s discussion board. Smaller companies, nonprofits, or individuals can often benefit from excess packaging material or paper from larger companies. Green Star members are encouraged to develop end-user partnerships with other members and the Discussion Board is a great place to meet! This idea comes from Marcia Kidd of the Corporate Express Green Star Team. Go to http://www.greenstarinc.org/index.php.

Also, don’t forget about the Alaska Materials Exchange Catalog. This is published by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and has an extensive listings of products, including raw processed materials, available from all over Alaska. For the current Alaska Materials Exchange Catalog, go to http://www.state.ak.us/dec/dsps/compasst/ptnrshp.htm#anchor800489. The Alaska Materials Exchange has saved businesses over $1,437,971 since 1994.

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ELIMINATE DUST IN ANCHORAGE!

Here's a tip that will get you well on your way to earning the Green Star Air Quality Award
With the coming of spring in Anchorage, our beautiful winter white landscape is gradually changing to grungy brown as melting snow leaves behind a season's worth of traction sand on parking lots, sidewalks and roadways around town. As exposed dirt and sand dries out, wind and traffic stirs it up into the air. Not surprisingly, we usually experience peak levels of airborne dust during spring -- a particularly troublesome problem for children, the elderly, and people with asthma and other respiratory ailments.

Fortunately, there are things we all can do to help keep the dust down in spring. Cleaning your parking lots and sidewalks early and often is the first measure. Secondly, while cleaning lots and sidewalks, take appropriate measures to control dust.

Municipal road maintenance experts recommend using wet-sweeping methods. If you hire a sweeping contractor, make sure they use ample water for wet-sweeping. If a vacuum truck is used, make sure it has a functional filtering device, such as a bag house. Leaf blowers and similar devices should never be used to clean parking lots or sidewalks. While pre-wetting surfaces before sweeping is a good idea to suppress dust, please do not wash or hose debris into storm drains -- they usually empty straight into streams, carrying pollutants and sediments that harm fish and other stream life. It is better to sweep and pick up the debris for disposal or reuse. Sweep early and often, taking advantage of moisture from the melting snow to suppress dust.

For more handy lot cleaning tips that you can fax or email directly to your maintenance staff or sweeping contractor, download the flyer attached to this newsletter. You will need Acrobat Reader, a free program you can download from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html

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EARTH DAY IS COMING!

If you are looking for an activity for this Earth Day, look no further than Anchorage’s Town Square. Several local groups, including Green Star, Sierra Club, Alaska Conservation Alliance, and the National Wildlife Federation are planning an Earth Day celebration for April 21st at the Town Square downtown. Between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. you can visit booths and tables of environmentally oriented businesses and organizations, listen to bands and speakers, and enjoy the great outdoors right in the heart of downtown between 5th and 6th Avenues, next to the Performing Arts Center. Kids activities will be organized throughout the day. The events is also a certified Green Event, so look for the recycling bins! For more information about participating or attending, contact DeeAnn Apgar at 522-5440 or deeannapgar@hotmail.com.

If you’d rather be a purist and celebrate on the actual Earth Day (April 22nd), then head over to Alaska Pacific University. Earth Day events at APU will be held on the University campus from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m. The festivities will feature informational and interactive booths and displays, earth-friendly activities for kids, live local bands, and much more. For more information about participating or attending, contact Courtney Sullivan at 564-8842 or casinalaska@hotmail.com.

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GREEN EVENTS GROWS BY LEAPS AND BOUNDS

Green Events continues to be a big hit with both event planners and event goers. Eight events have become certified Green Events since the program began, the most prominent of which was the Special Olympics.

For the Special Olympics, we deployed 120 recycling bins at the six sporting venues and the Egan Center’s Olympic Town. In addition, dozens of hotels, hosting the Olympic villages, collected recyclables. We organized approximately 30 volunteers to monitor the bins at each of the venues and to help sort recyclables at the warehouse to ensure that the recycling center received clean materials. Everyone we spoke to was happy to see recycling bins, and venue staff and volunteers worked hard to make the recycling effort a success.

We are still gathering numbers from the Special Olympics since the cleanup crews are still sorting excess event publications that will eventually be recycled. However, the preliminary numbers are in and they are impressive! We recycled 500 pounds of aluminum cans (that’s about 16,550 cans), 523 pounds of plastic bottles (about 7, 845 bottles), 740 pounds of mixed paper so far, and 5,400 pounds of corrugated cardboard. That’s a total of more than 3.5 tons of materials recycled.

Several more Green Events are already scheduled for the next few months and many other event planners have contacted Green Star to learn more about the program. Give us a call at 278-7839 if you are planning an event in the Anchorage area that you would like to be a certified Green Event or if you are interested in volunteering at an event.

April Green Events (scheduled as of this mailing):

April 7 – Slamming Poetry, Wendy Williams Auditorium, University of Alaska Anchorage, 8 p.m.
For more details, contact John at 786-1210

April 21 -- Earth Day in Town Square, Anchorage, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
For more details, visit http://www.akvoice.org

April 21 – Rummage Sale at United Methodist Church, Chugiak, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
For more details, contact Jan Wachsmuth at 694-2741 (h) or 694-5284 (w)

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RECYCLING 101: MIXED PAPER
This article is the third in a continuing series on the materials recyclable in Anchorage.

The National Picture

Mixed paper is a difficult category of paper to define. Therefore, exact figures of national generation and disposal are difficult to determine since so many communities include different paper types in the category. Some communities collect all paper together, while others have very specific rules about what can and cannot go into a category. It all depends on who is buying the waste paper and what they intend to make from it.

Total paper and paperboard generation has grown from 30 million tons in 1960 to 84 million tons in 1997. In 1997, paper products made up 38% of total waste generation. Discarded paper amounted to almost 50 million tons. Recycling rates vary depending on the type of paper recycled, according to the U.S. EPA. Cardboard has the highest rate at 70% of all cardboard generated. Materials often included in mixed paper, such as third class mail, folding cartons, and directories, are between 7% and 19%.

Mixed Paper in Anchorage

According to a study conducted in 1997, Anchorage residents generated 41,514 tons of mixed paper waste that year. Of that, 1,455 tons were recycled or about 3.5% of the total mixed paper generated. Since these figures were compiled, the mixed paper recycling program has been expanded significantly allowing better access, so these figures have risen and may be inching closer to the national average.

The mixed paper that we recycle is baled at the Anchorage Recycling Center and shipped to the Lower 48. Since the Recycling Center is owned by Smurfit-Stone, a company whose roots are in the pulp and paper business, much of the paper is shipped to Smurfit’s own mills and plants.

Mixed paper is a lower grade of paper than office paper waste, and is often be used to make facial and toilet tissue, construction paper, paperboard (e.g., cereal boxes), egg cartons, paper towels, and other similar grades.

Mixed paper is a lower value category of paper than office paper but, in a pinch, can include office paper. However, the Recycling Center gets a better price for office paper, so separating paper into the two categories will help to maintain the viability of recycling in Anchorage. Local processing and shipping costs currently exceed market values for mixed paper. The money made through metals recycling helps to offset the losses realized by mixed paper.

How Do I Recycle Mixed Paper?

In Anchorage, mixed paper includes glossy paper, file folders, paperboard, paper ream wrappers, softbound books and manuals, paper egg cartons, brown clasp envelopes, and other similar types of paper. During months of the year when specific phone book collections are not taking place, you can also put phone books in this category. Or you can wait until spring when phone books are collected in specially designated bins.

Mixed paper does NOT include paper cups and plates, tissue paper, napkins, carbon paper, photographic paper, paper lined with plastic or metal, milk or juice cartons, waxed paper, paper towels, facial tissues, or hardcover books. None of these materials are recyclable in Anchorage. To avoid having to discard them, consider not purchasing some of these items, such as paper plates and cups.

Mixed paper also does NOT include cardboard, newspapers, or magazines. These materials all have their own recycling bins at the Recycling Center. When recycling mixed paper, all metal and plastic bindings and clips should be removed, although paper clips and staples are acceptable.

Mixed paper can be recycled by dropping it off at the Anchorage Recycling Center, 6161 Rosewood Street. The facility is one block west of the Seward Highway off the Dowling exit, behind the NAPA store. Or at The Home Depot's collection bins on Tudor Road. Both locations offer a 24-hour drop-off bin for mixed paper.

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JOIN THE GREEN STAR STANDARDS COMMITTEE

Employees of Green Star award-winning organizations are invited to join the Standards Committee. The Committee meets a maximum of once per month for 1-2 hours to review and approve Green Star Award applications and conduct site visits. The next meeting is this Friday (April 6th) at noon at Green Star. We will be reviewing the Green Star application from Corporate Express and an Air Quality application from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Send email to sean@greenstarinc.org or call 278-7809 for more information.

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THIS MONTH’S HOT LINK

2001 ENERGY STAR for Small Business Awards Call for Nominations!
Earth Day, April 22nd, 2001 is the deadline for applications for the 2001 ENERGY STAR for Small Business Awards. These national awards honor small businesses that effectively reduce their own costs by increasing the efficiency of their business through energy efficiency and pollution prevention. Small businesses may nominate themselves or service providers may nominate their small business customers. To apply, simply visit http://www.epa.gov/smallbiz/awardsapplication.html.

Last year, 29 small businesses, congregations and organizations who have made significant contributions to both the environment and their own bottom lines through energy-efficiency won this national award. The winners collectively saved an estimated $328,999 and 7,519,977 pounds of CO2 pollution annually due to their upgrades.

Check out this list of last year&Mac226;s winners, and read in detail how they prevented pollution at a profit.
http://www.epa.gov/smallbiz/winners2000.html
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WELCOME NEW 2001 SPONSORS

Platinum: Phillips Alaska
Gold: AT&T Wireless
Supporter: Alaska Wildland Adventures, Yukon Equipment, Inc.
In-kind: National Bank of Alaska, Data Pro, Phillips Alaska, 2011 Enterprises

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Please send comments, questions, or suggestions for future E-News topics to us at betsy@greenstarinc.org. Forward this newsletter freely. Send us any e-mail 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
Betsy Goll, Membership & Communications Coordinator

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