REDUCING WASTE

Tips for Making an Eco-Friendly Move.

Moving may be inherently unfriendly to the environment given that carting stuff around means expending lots of fuel and emitting a lot of pollutants, but there are ways to “relocate responsibly.”

Tips for Eco-Friendly Moving

For starters, the less stuff we accumulate in the first place the less we have to pick up and move elsewhere—so fighting the pack-rat urge and minimizing trips to shopping malls in the first place are good prerequisites.

Beyond what may already be too late to undo, though, one can lessen their environmental footprint when moving by first giving away or selling any non-essential items.

Neighbourhood yard sales and giveaways are one way to go, while websites like EBay, Craig’s List and Freecycle provide virtual ways to unload unwanted stuff. Books can be donated to local libraries, and most schools will be happy to make use of old computers. And Goodwill and other charities will gladly take old clothes for resale in thrift outlets.

While all that’s going on, the environmentally-conscious mover would also want to be hoarding bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, padded envelopes and other packing materials instead of going out and buying them new. Many liquor, grocery, hardware and other retail stores are happy to give away large cardboard boxes they no longer need and would have to otherwise discard or recycle. Calling around first will save the headache and the emissions of driving around to individual stores one-by-one to ask them.

Move with Recyclable or Reusable Packing Materials

As to the move itself, if you’re fortunate enough to be relocating within Orange County, Los Angeles one green option is to rent “RecoPack” moving boxes from Earth Friendly Moving. The company, which has plans to expand nationwide over the next five years, provides five different stackable sizes of durable moving cartons made from recycled plastic bottles. The rental cost is just a dollar per box per week—and the company’s biodiesel-powered trucks will drop-off and pick-up the boxes before and after the move.

Not in southern California? Rent-a-Crate, which has 13 U.S. locations coast to coast, also rents re-usable (though not recycled) plastic moving crates that they’ll deliver to and pick up from any location. The company works extensively in the office relocation business, too, and rents other reusable accessories such as dollies for rolling heavy crates and crates for delicate items like computers and even medical x-ray films.

Don’t Forget Eco-Friendly Cleaning Supplies

And remember, there is more to moving green than just moving. Use only eco-friendly cleaning products when scrubbing down the old place. If you live in the Washington, DC or Baltimore, MD area, a crew from Green Clean will send a professional crew that uses only non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners. Otherwise, health food stores all carry green cleaners that you can use yourself or instruct the hired help to use.

After the Move: Cut Down on Junk Mail

A tip from the Care2 “Green Moving Guide”: File a temporary change of address with your post office rather than a permanent one to cut down on junk mail at the new place. The U.S. Postal Service sells lists of permanent address changes to direct marketers, but doesn’t bother doing so with temporary addresses.

Zero Waste Starts with Responsible Design

In essence, “Zero Waste” is a design principle writ large, whereby products are conceived, produced, packaged, distributed and retired with their long-term environmental impacts in mind. According to the non-profit GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN), “Zero waste maximizes recycling, minimizes waste, reduces consumption and ensures that products are made to be reused, repaired or recycled back into nature or the marketplace.” GRRN is calling on companies to take responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products and packaging, and on governments to not subsidize non-recyclable waste processing.

“Waste is the result of bad design,” says Eric Lombardi of EcoCycle, a recycler in Boulder, Colorado.

“The concept of zero waste leads upstream to the designer’s desk, where waste needs to be designed out.” Lombardi, a leading light in the fledgling U.S. zero waste movement, lays out four basic principles for achieving zero waste: (1) Make producers responsible for the waste their products create; (2) invest in infrastructure rather than in more landfills and incinerators; (3) end taxpayer subsidies for wasteful and polluting industries; (4) and create jobs and new businesses around the re-use of discards.

While the concept has been slow to catch on here, it has been standard practice in parts of Europe and elsewhere for over a decade. In fact, some 25 countries require companies to take back their packaging, and some have gone so far as to mandate “Extended Producer Responsibility” laws, whereby companies must pay for the waste generated in the production, packaging and distribution of their products.

In Germany, a 1991 ordinance seeking to address packaging waste was a huge success. By 2000, the agencies charged with collecting and recycling such materials were recovering over 90 percent of the plastics and glass used in German packaging. (In the U.S. we reclaim 5.3 and 26 percent respectively.) Another success story comes from Australia, where its capital city, Canberra, embarked on a “No Waste by 2010” campaign in 1996. By 2001 the city had reduced waste sent to landfills by 40 percent and more than doubled the garbage it captured for reuse. The city also began fuelling two of its power stations with re-captured methane gas from its landfills, which is plentiful enough to power 3,000 homes for 30 years.

In the U.S., industry has continually put up roadblocks to any serious consideration of adopting such initiatives at the federal level. But, according to the Zero Waste International Alliance, at least 18 local communities have taken it upon themselves to adopt their own strategies for achieving zero waste. These include a dozen California cities and towns; Boulder and Summit counties in Colorado; Carrboro, North Carolina; the Central Vermont Waste Management District; and the cities of Seattle and New York.

“Zero waste is about challenging the ruling paradigm that says we can manage waste safely in landfills and incinerators,” says GRRN's national coordinator, Bill Sheehan. GRRN helps coordinate efforts to implement zero waste campaigns in the U.S., and offers a wealth of free resources on its website.

Reduce waste paper, save time and money with online bill paying

Fortunately for the world’s dwindling forests, a growing number of financial institutions, utilities and universities are implementing paperless billing options like online bill paying, that not only save paper, but time and money, too.

Many Forward-Thinking Companies Offer Online Bill Paying

Students at hundreds of educational institutions across North America are already using online bill paying to receive and pay their tuition bills—avoiding the hassle of receiving paper bills and paying by mail, while also saving their schools hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in paper, postage and administrative costs.

Forward-thinking companies already offering their customers similar online bill paying options include Bank of America, BellSouth, Citibank, Qwest, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Southern California Edison, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual, among many others.

BellSouth offers “e-bills” that you can print out any time but don’t have to.

With the click of a mouse you can view your bill, access details and billing history, and make secure payments. You can pre-schedule so that each monthly bill gets paid on time, or set it up so that funds are remitted only when you authorize it. Southern California Edison’s Online Billing and Payment service involves the same routine, with no paper exchange needed between company and consumer, and no need to print out your bills. Both companies send e-mail notices to let you know each time a new bill has been tendered.

Online Bill Paying from One Location

At least two companies, PayTrust and XPress Bill Pay, will coordinate the receipt of all of your bills and present them to you for online bill paying so you can pay any and all routinely from your desktop, even with different bank accounts, and using credit or debit cards or electronic funds transfer. The company lauds this service as one step removed (and paper saved) from “bill pay” services that still require you to “watch your mailbox, collect your bills on the kitchen table and remember to make a payment.”

Online Bill Paying Offers Convenience and Cost Savings

“Electronic bill presentment and payment via the Internet is one of the fastest-growing areas in business,” says Nick Rini, a columnist for Telephony, a trade magazine for communications service providers. “With more than 63 billion checks written annually where 80 percent is some sort of bill payment--either business-to-business or consumer-to business--substantial cash-management benefits and customer-service opportunities exist for those who use interactive billing and payment,” he adds.

One advantage of paperless billing, says Rini, is that companies can get paid faster than when they must print, fold, stuff, meter, sort and mail paper bills. Rini estimates that, in the U.S. alone, companies could save $200 million collectively each day if they switched to paperless billing.

“The obvious cost savings come from decreasing, and eventually eliminating, printing and mailing expenses,” says Rini, adding that companies usually pay between 75 cents and $2.00 for each document generated and mailed. Meanwhile, the same companies end up paying another $1.25 for each paper check payment they must process, most if not all of which could be eliminated through online bill payment.