Posted by Snow in 
I just got my Sierra Club newsletter and I thought I would share some special bits. Normally I never have time to read a lot of newsletters because I don’t have time, they are poorly designed, or they have a lot of information not as important as any task I need to get completed ASAP. But this one was different, it had a lot of juicy bits that snagged my attention.
My post yesterday about Ecomodding found a resonance in the Sierra Club story about Travel & Transportation. “A well-tuned car burns less gas, so change your air filters and oil regularly…”
One entry of the Sierra Club library caught my eye, ‘Reduce recycle, and re-use. How familiar that is to readers of www.recycledjunk.com !
“…What about the 800 million wrappers discarded each year? Now they and other selected junk can be sent to, TerraCycle, a company that’s making big business out of household garbage.
- Collect your wrappers, juice pouches, and plastic yogurt containers, send them to TerraCycle and see them reincarnated as purses, backpacks, and planter pots on the shelves of Target and Home Depot.
- To participate, sign up for a specific programon TerraCycle’s website. The company will provide you with postage-paid collection bags.
- For every wrapper, juice pouch, and yogurt container received, TerraCycle makes a donation to the school, charity, or nonprofit organization of your choice”
Funny thing, I had been unwrapping a power bar earlier in the day and realized the wrappers were hard to get off and always seemed to cause a spare bit of foil to go flying. Checking out www.Terracycle.com may end the cycle of throwaway wrappers choking landfills and refuse trucks everywhere.
The last bit in the Sierra Club newsletter before I had to move on was an article about take back programs.
“Congressional-watchdog agency GAO published a report on high-tech toxic trash exports and Greenpeace released its ninth annual Guide to Greener Electronics. Refer to these when choosing your digital technologies.
- Some companies have established take-back programs, collecting their own products and can turning them into new gadgets. So opt for purchases from companies (like Nokia, the high-scorer in Greenpeace’s latest report) ready to take back what they sell.
- Unwanted devices from manufacturers without these programs can be brought to Best Buy stores.
Fast Fact: Americans toss out more than 100 million cell phones every year.
Fast Fact: Less than a fifth of obsolete computers are reused or recycled. Find a responsible recycler for your old PC or Mac at www.computertakeback.com”
I suggest someone who has the back side of a group of flyers reprint some of this stuff and leave it in mailboxes all over the neighborhood. it’s sobering stufffor device lifestyle consumers to ponder. The report alone should have you tossing and shreeding and compsting for days.
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