Re: Christmas Cards - Alternative to Landfills...

[WasteMin@aol.com]

Happy Holidays, everyone. We set up a program for the Department of Energy to 
recycle their holiday cards, and I had a chance to tour the St. Jude's youth 
ranch. Let me add a bit to Warren and Tracy's note. St. Judes is a home for 
abused children outside Las Vegas. It is a marvelous refuge with a dedicated 
staff. Sometimes the love they find at St. Judes is the first love these kids 
have ever had. The love is mixed with firm but even handed rules--- and 
sometimes that too is the first loving discipline these kids have ever seen. 
They do wonderful work there.

The ranch recycles cards by cutting off the covers and gluing them to new 
card stock. They then resell them in packets of 10, I believe, sorted by the 
picture on the front (Christmas, kittens, bells, etc, or you can buy an 
assortment). They accept and recycle cards for all occasions. I recommend 
screening out the raunchy ones before you send them to the ranch!

They receive old greeting cards from all over the world--- thousands and 
thousands of them. When I toured St. Jude's they had bags and bags of them in 
a warehouse. They have a workshop just to recycle and package the cards.

When I was there the guide said an interesting thing. He said that many 
people spend more in postage to get the cards to them than the ranch makes in 
profit--- so he would almost prefer people send them a donation equivalent to 
the postage. And naturally there are two sides to the recycling equation--- 
buying recycled is the key to making the economics work.

In our program at DOE, we made sure to distribute information about buying 
St. Jude's cards. Buying recycled is the real key to helping the ranch, or to 
making any recycling program work. If you collect cards from people in your 
organization to send to St. Jude's, I would recommend you send out that 
information too.

Happy Holidays, and thanks for an ongoing treasure trove of information.

Mark Boylan
General Manager
WASTREN, Inc.
22 Executive Park Court
Germantown  MD  20875
301/540-0022
(f) 301/540-0088
wastemin@aol.com



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Subj:    Christmas Cards - Alternative to Landfills...
Date:   12/20/00 6:49:47 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:   wjw5@psu.edu (Warren J. Weaver)
Sender: owner-p2tech@great-lakes.net
Reply-to:   wjw5@psu.edu (Warren J. Weaver)
To: p2tech@great-lakes.net, envgroup-list@mep.nist.gov (envgroup-list)

Here's an option for you to consider...

Happy holidays.

Warren

>From: "Shutica, Tracy" <tvs6@psu.edu>
>To: PENNTAP Staff <PTP-TS@respark.rttonet.psu.edu>,
>        SBDC Staff
>         <SBDC@respark.rttonet.psu.edu>
>Subject: What to do with old Christmas Cards . . .
>Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 12:34:17 -0500
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>
>Hello everybody!!  Thought you might be interested . . .
>
>When the season is over . . . cut the cover off of your cards and send them
>to:
>
>St. Jude's Ranch for Children
>Box 60100
>Boulder City, NV  89006-9505
>

wjw5@psu.edu

Warren J. Weaver
PENNTAP
PO Box 5046
York, PA 17405

Certified ISO 14000 Auditor (#E051734)

fax 717-854-0087

ph 717-848-6669

PENNTAP website:
           www.penntap.psu.edu