2 R.A.G. TIMES
More Prisoners to process e-scrap
Nearly 500 additional federal prisoners soon will be tearing apart electronics scrap.
UNICOR (Washington), the quasi-governmental program that employs inmates at numerous federal prisons, has announced it will add e-scrap processing plants at several facilities (UNICOR already processes electronics at six prisons.)
Over the next year, UNICOR plans to develop a recycling facility at its Victorville, California high-security site. Eventually, the plant will employ 350 men.
At UNICOR’s Marianna, Florida site, where the program already employs 80 women, a second processin building will be opened in which 125 men will work. Marianna is a medium-security institution.
(source: Resource Recycing, Oct. 2002, p.48)
From the GRRN web site:
http://www.grrn.org/subsidies/index.html
Our federal, state and local government hands out billions of dollars a year in tax breaks, accounting tricks, preferential pricing, and direct give-aways to the very companies that drive our disposal economy – mining and timber firms, waste haulers and landfill owners – and giving them an unnatural competitive advantage over sustainable, resource-conserving enterprises. Today, as successful recycling programs fall victim to the budget axe, waste industries and elected officials promote new tax breaks that will increase rather than reduce what we put in landfills and call the gas from this rotten choice “renewable energy.”
Read GRRN’s Welfare for Waste report.
More Resources:
Welfare for Waste: How Federal Taxpayer Subsidies Waste Resources and Discourage Recycling
This 1999 report documents 15 tax and spending subsidies pouring $13 billion over 5 years into industries that compete directly with recycling.
(By GrassRoots Recycling Network, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Materials Efficiency Project, and Friends of the Earth.)
From National Taxpayers Union (NTU) comes this: “There are over 400 changes to the Tax Code which took effect last year. Do you know what they are? How they will affect your personal taxes? Do you have any idea what new loopholes have been opened that can protect you from paying higher taxes -- and, more importantly, reducing the amount you already owe? “
When I read this, I thought: “What nonsense !”
NTU wants me to buy something. I support NTU but why should millions of us have to waste our time with this. What it really means Is that our lawmakers have tinkered again with this horrible mess they call the US Tax Code.
Just visit www.fairtax.org to see how simple 15.April
could be….and still run our government.
Tell your computer manufacturer to recycle
You're a responsible consumer, but you don't want to pony up $30 to IBM. What are you to do with your oh-so-out-of-date box of mercury and silicon? Write to your computer manufacturer and plead with the company to help you safely recycle your toxic old machine. Action by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/4ht_letters.htm
According to the EPA, you (yes, just little-old-you) can reduce CO2 emissions by 2400 lbs. per year, simply by recycling one half of all the aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic, cardboard and newspaper that you use.
Another savings tip: Shampoo
When the bottle is empty, it may or may not be really empty. Store it upside down and over time the leftover shampoo will move to the spout end so that you may use the last few drops. Of course, this also means that it delays the day when the empty plastic container will have to go to the Ordot dump, too.
From the web site of Senator Ben Pangelinan:
http://www.guamlegislature.com/27th_Guam_Legislature/Bills-Introduced-27th.htm
If you receive this newsletter in its “electronic” form, you can simply click on the bill number and you will be able to read (or print) that bill. If you receive the “paper” version, from the internet you can type the Guam Legislature web address above and you will see the home page. Then you can see the new bills that have been introduced.
Bill No. 93 - An Act To Create A Recycling Enterprise Zone At The Port Authority Of Guam.
This would be like a centralized base-of-operations for recycling companies to deliver their collected materials for shipment off-island.
Bill No. 96 An Act To Create A Recycling Revolving Fund To Fund The Recycling Of Automobiles, Trucks, And White Goods As Provided For In The Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan As Adopted In Public Law 25-175.
This would create a value on certain items when they arrive on Guam so that because of the money in the fund these items would have a monetary value so they would be desired by recycling companies and thus shipped off-island.
Bill No. 100 - An Act To Create A Municipal Recycling Program. This would create small drop-off boxes or bins at the mayor’s offices for residents to keep recyclable items out of the trash and place them in these bins for collection by recycling companies.
2003 Curbside Recycling
Pick-up Calendar, Republic Services of Nevada….This newspaper clipping was provided by Ed Babauta who now lives in Las Vegas, NV. We could have something similar here on Guam. How will it happen ? You must tell your senator, mayor, the newpaper, and friends that you feel this is something we should all have. It seems to me that our lawmakers are really our hired managers. And, we’re the ones who hired them.