Use Less Stuff Day (November 20) coincides with the holiday season
-- that time of year when Americans produce more trash than at any other
time!
Included -- news of a recycling-idea contest for
students ages 6 to 12.
The last thing we want to think about while we deck the halls is holiday
clutter, but did you know... Each year between Thanksgiving
and New Year's Americans increase their trash by approximately 25 percent,
or an extra million tons per week!
And did you know...?
Annual trash from gift wrap and shopping bags totals about 4
million tons.
Third class mail adds another 4.4 million tons to mail bags
and, ultimately, to garbage bags.
In 1991, the average household received 142 mail order catalogs.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Americans send out more
than 2.3 billion cards. Laid end to end, that's almost 26,000 miles of
cards, enough to circle the Earth and then some.
On November 20, 1997, the Thursday before Thanksgiving, The
ULS Report, along with the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), Keep
America Beautiful, Inc., and a diverse group of more than 250 other
government, education, business, and community organizations, will kick
of the Third Annual ULS
(Use Less Stuff) Day.
To celebrate ULS Day, a new feature has been added this year -- a Use
Less Stuff Contest for school children ages 6 to 12. Students nationwide
will be challenged to think of innovative ways to reduce waste at home,
in school, or within the community. Prizes include a new bicycle for the
grand prize winner, and in-line skates, courtesy of Rollerblade, Inc.,
for the finalists. (In the spirit of using less stuff, a bicycle and in-line
skates have been selected because they are energy-efficient alternative
modes of transportation!)
Each participating student between the ages of 6 and 12 submits
a ULS idea on a contest entry form (see contest
rules for details) and submits that entry to The Use Less Stuff Contest,
P.O. Box 130116, Ann Arbor, MI 48113. One entry per student. The contest
begins on ULS Day, November 20th, 1997; all entries must be received by
February 1, 1998. A panel assembled by The ULS Report will judge
entries on the basis of originality, practicality, and waste-saving potential.
Five regional finalists will be announced on March 1, 1998. The national
ULS Contest winner will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 1998.
To help kids and their parents get the most from holiday shopping while
using less, this year The ULS Report will issue The
ULS Yuletide Guide: Tips and Gifts To Get More From Less. Free to
consumers, the guide offers tips, surprising facts about holiday trash,
and great gift ideas. Tips include:
- Make your own personalized, festive gift wrap using materials you
already have around the house: the comics for kids or the financial
section for your favorite banker; fancy shopping bags; material scraps,
etc.
- Plan ahead. And consolidate your shopping trips. Having a list and
spending fewer hours driving to malls and shopping centers (and trying
to find a parking place) means less wasted gas, time and stress.
- One of the best ways to save film -- and holiday memories -- is to
write legibly. Each year Kodak disposes of 400,000 rolls of film due
to illegible return addresses.
- Calling the 800 numbers and canceling 10 mail-order catalogues you
don't want will reduce your trash by 3.5 pounds per year. (If everybody
did this, the stack of canceled catalogues would be 2,000 miles high.)
- Keep it simple -- less can be more. Think carefully about what gifts
friends and family really need and want. One thoughtful gift may be
better than six wrapped packages of unwanted gifts.
This year, ULS day shares November 20th with a reduction crusade of
a different sort: The Great American
Smokeout. Although we will leave it to others to point out the health
benefits of reducing smoking, we would like to remind the public that
"Butt Reduction" has other benefits. In the U.S. each year, approximately
24 billion empty cigarette packs end up in the garbage, and cigarettes
represent roughly 20 percent of litter on roads and beaches, by far the
single largest source of litter.
For more information on the Use Less Stuff Contest or for a free copy
of the ULS Yuletide Guide, check out the ULS
Web site or send a self-addressed stamped envelope to The ULS Report,
P.O. Box 130116, Ann Arbor, MI 48113.
Article by Gary Hopkins
Education World® Editor-in-Chief
Copyright © 1997, 2005 Education World
11/10/1997
Updated 07/19/2005
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