Most of these short articles were published in Mountain Xpress as bylined "Buzzworm" or "Notepad" news items.
(Clips are listed in reverse chronological order.)
When President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement to curb global warming by reducing fossil-fuel emissions, a grassroots movement sprung up in municipalities across the country to commit cities to the international agreement's pollution-reduction goals.
Now, Asheville's outgoing mayor, Charles Worley, has become the 188th city leader to sign the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection agreement. On Nov. 16, as Mayor-elect Terry Bellamy looked approvingly on, Worley publicly accepted an award from the Sierra Club designating Asheville as a "Cool City" in an auspiciously chilly ceremony on the steps of City Hall. Holly Jones and Robin Cape, the top two vote-getters in the recent City Council election, also attended the presentation, which was organized by the locally based Clean Air Community Trust and the regional Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The mayors' agreement is a nonbinding commitment to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in each city to 7 percent less than 1990 levels by 2012. Asheville is already well on its way toward that goal, Worley noted, thanks to measures the city's taking that will reduce carbon emissions by more than 1,000 tons per year. These include a pending purchase of hybrid Ford Escapes for the city's fleet, a nearly completed compressed natural gas filling station by McCormick Field that will also be open to the public, a fleet of electric vehicles used by the city's parking enforcers, and a new Transportation Demand Management office, funded by the state Department of Transportation, that will take steps to improve public transit and make carpooling easier for Asheville-area commuters.
"We talk about these things on a national and international level, but it all begins locally," Worley declared. He said that signing the agreement was "something I've been contemplating for a number of months," and that he was "delighted" to do so when Marjorie Meares, the director of the Trust, approached him about it several weeks ago.
Thanks to Sierra Club member and Mission Hospital employee Richard Fireman, the agreement also won enthusiastic support from the area's largest employer. Mission Hospital CEO Joe Damore spoke in favor of ride-sharing options for commuters as a means to reduce the region's high pollution-related asthma rates. Rev. Steve Runholt, pastor at Warren Wilson College, also expressed the support of the N.C. Council of Churches.
"Cities are taking steps toward cleaner cars, energy efficiency and renewable energy, and in doing so are renewing themselves," said Sierra Club spokeswoman Christa Wagner. She's making stops in her gas-sipping hybrid car at Durham, Chapel Hill and Charlotte as well, as part of the organization's "Cool Cities" tour throughout the Midwest, New England and the Southeast to recognize mayors in those coal-dependent regions who have joined the carbon-reduction agreement. The Sierra Club has released a new guide for citizens and local officials, "Cool Cities: Solving Global Warming One City at a Time."
Visit www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/coolcities to learn more.
-- Steve Rasmussen
Seven $1,000 scholarships are waiting for college-bound high-school seniors who research and suggest potential solutions to Buncombe County's air-pollution problems. The funds are part of a $35,000 grant that the Western North Carolina Air Quality Agency awarded June 7 to the Clean Air Community Trust (CACT).
The nonprofit trust, whose mission is to educate the public about air pollution and encourage innovative approaches to cleaning it up, is asking bright young minds to identify, investigate and explain the sources of an air-quality issue in a 5-to-7-page paper. Then it asks the students to create a solution-focused educational tool -- such as a Web page, mural, PSA video or PowerPoint presentation -- that will be a useful contribution to the community.
"This project is really exciting, and moving forward," says trust director Margie Meares, following a middle-school air-quality contest that brought the trust into contact with several hundred school kids. The trust has also created a presentation for the Asheville Board of Realtors called "Environmental Issues: Resources for Healthy Choices." (For full details of the Air Pollution Solutions contest, visit www.airtrust.org, e-mail info@airtrust.org or call 258-1856. The deadline for entries is Nov. 30.)
The air-agency grant marks a milestone for the clean-air trust, which got off to a rocky start four years ago when a local business group sued the air agency over its original plans to fund the trust with money from penalties levied on polluters. The lawsuit helped lead to a far-reaching court ruling that has forced all fines collected by state regulators to be turned over to public schools.
Another honor the agency's board announced on June 7 was an Excellence in Public Service Award that Buncombe County bestowed on agency staffer Ashley Featherstone, who initiated a popular indoor-air-quality inspection and education program for local homeowners. Although indoor air pollution -- from mold and cleaning chemicals, for example -- in houses and schools isn't subject to environmental regulations, notes Featherstone, it can be a more serious health threat than outdoor pollution when its concentration builds up in an enclosed space. Concerned homeowners can call the air agency at 255-5655 to schedule a free voluntary inspection of their homes.
-- Steve Rasmussen
Letters of objection some 80 citizens sent to Raleigh have put on hold a change in state rules that would weaken clean-up requirements for grandfathered power plants. The N.C. Division of Air Quality sought the change to align state standards with new federal rules that would allow many of the nation's oldest and dirtiest coal-fired utilities to avoid installing pollution-control devices when they renovate or expand, a measure mandated by the Clean Air Act's New Source Review provision for Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD). (See "Blowin' in the Wind," March 9 Xpress.)
Over the last few months, as the DAQ's proposed rule wound its way through various rule-making commissions on the track toward becoming law, the Canary Coalition launched a letter-writing campaign to stop it. The Sylva-based clean-air advocacy group took advantage of a little-known law that requires a new regulation to be submitted for legislative review if the state's Rules Review Commission receives at least 10 formal letters of objection.
Now, the rule change must wait for a year, until the General Assembly's 2006 session. If a legislator then introduces a bill disapproving the new rule and the bill passes, the change will be canceled -- and the state's current stricter PSD standards will remain in place.
"We will find sponsors for a bill of disapproval," vowed Canary Coalition Director Avram Friedman in a press release. "And we'll fight hard to get it passed."
-- Steve Rasmussen
After medical experts linked a sharp regional rise in childhood asthma and other lung disorders to Western North Carolina's polluted air, the WNC Regional Air Quality Agency launched a program in 2003 to reduce kids' exposure to harmful diesel emissions from their schoolbuses. Agency staffer Justin Greuel obtained grant money to retrofit schoolbuses in Buncombe, Haywood, Madison and Transylvania counties with clean-diesel technology that cuts particulates, carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons by 20 to 40 percent. The agency also helped schools implement policies discouraging bus drivers from idling their engines while their buses filled up with children -- and with noxious fumes.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the success of the project -- the largest of its kind in the region -- with the Children's Environmental Health Excellence Award. One of 15 given nationwide, it "recognizes individuals, communities and organizations who are leaders in making our environment healthier for our children," according to the EPA's Office of Children's Health Protection. No other agency in the Southeast received the honor, which was announced at the local agency's May 2 board meeting.
A surprise announcement at the same meeting revealed that agency Director Bob Camby has decided to accept an early-retirement offer from Buncombe County, which administers the independent agency's employees, effective June 30. A former agency staffer who had gone to work for the Skyland coal-fired power plant owned by Carolina Power & Light (now Progress Energy), Camby was greeted with skepticism by local environmentalists when he was appointed in 1999 to direct an agency then wracked by scandals over allegedly lax enforcement of air- pollution rules and budgetary impropriety. But he evenhandedly helped steer the agency to its current course of financial and administrative stability, winning widespread praise for his clean-air outreach and education efforts to businesses, organizations and schools.
Board Chairman Bill Church designated Engineering Supervisor Melanie Pitrolo as interim director. The board will meet on June 20 to take up the business of searching for a new director.
-- Steve Rasmussen
Drivers on Interstate 26 are often alarmed by the plume pouring out of the smokestack on Progress Energy's coal-burning Skyland power plant. It just looks so bad for our air. And soon, the company warns, it's going to look a lot worse.
But hold the cell phone, Martha. That plume will be more visible because it will actually be much cleaner. Between this year and 2009, as the company's flagship power plant -- already one of the cleanest coal-fired utilities facilities in the Southeast -- installs state-of-the-art smoke-scrubbing technology on its two boiler units, the plume of steam the Skyland plant emits will be increasingly reduced to pure water vapor. And in cool, moist weather, it will look opaque and cloudy, not unlike the steam from your breath.
The most prominent parts of the new system will be the scrubber towers, which rise up like oversized concrete smokestacks but have no opening at the top. (The first will begin operation this fall.) Flue gas from burning coal flows into the scrubber, where it's met with a wet slurry of finely ground limestone. The SO2 (sulfur dioxide) in the gas -- the pollutant that causes acid rain -- reacts chemically with the limestone and forms gypsum, which falls to the bottom of the chamber. Gypsum is harmless; it's the main component of wallboard.
The most innovative part of the system, however, is an artificial wetland that will filter the scrubber water before it returns to the environment -- much as natural wetlands do. The biofilter's plants, soils and water will remove the toxic metals in the scrubber water, such as mercury and selenium. This particular system was developed with Clemson University's help; similar artificial swamps have been created recently at the North Carolina Arboretum and UNCA to filter runoff from parking lots.
The two other principal pollutants in coal smoke -- fine particulates and NOx (nitrogen oxide, the chemical precursor of ozone) -- will be cleansed by precipitators and selective catalytic-reduction units. Similar to a car's catalytic converter, an SCR creates a chemical reaction with ammonia that splits NOx into nitrogen and still more of that water that's due to come steaming out of the Skyland stack.
When all these upgrades are complete, Progress Energy will have invested $190 million to clean up its WNC plant and achieved a 93 percent reduction in ozone-generating NOx since 1997, according to company spokespersons Robert Sipes and Selenah Seabrooks, who spoke at an April 26 press conference called by the Land-of-Sky Regional Council on behalf of its Ozone Season Kickoff media event. The cleanup is required by the N.C. Clean Smokestacks Act, which WNC legislators Martin Nesbitt and Steve Metcalf co-sponsored in 2002.
-- Steve Rasmussen
Lonely singles hook up on the Internet -- so why not lone commuters? A new Web site is designed to help you find someone near you who shares your commute and work hours, and maybe even your interests -- in saving gas money and reducing air pollution, at any rate.
Share the Ride NC, at www.sharetheridenc.com (or .org, if you prefer) is a new state-sponsored ride-share matching service that quickly and securely allows North Carolina commuters to find carpool partners. After logging on to the free service and registering, visitors get access to contact information for other interested carpoolers with similar destinations. Interested participants can then make contact via phone or e-mail and, if everyone's simpatico, they can establish a carpool that will reduce their costs while relieving each of them of some driving chores (not to mention the boredom of waiting out a traffic jam with no one but an '80s-rock station for company).
"It's the greatest innovation in carpooling since the four-door sedan," Margie Meares, executive director of the locally based Clean Air Community Trust, proclaimed with a smile at the Land-of-Sky Regional Council's Ozone Season Kickoff media event on April 26. And after registering your carpool with the trust (at www.airtrust.org), participants will be eligible for an emergency-ride-home program the group is developing, for days when people have to leave work early or stay late.
Once Progress Energy's power-plant cleanup system goes online (see "That's Steam, Not Smoke" elsewhere in this issue), autos will be the largest source of ozone pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions in Western North Carolina. Decreasing that pollution is the trust's main goal in helping to administer the program.
And partly out of concern for relieving downtown's worsening parking pressure, the city of Asheville is getting involved, too. A transportation-demand-management coordinator will be hired to work with Share the Ride.
-- Steve Rasmussen
A personal computer seems so clean. No gas-guzzling engine spins its hard drive; no trees need to die to produce its paperless documents -- just plug it in and play in the stream of electrons.
But when the source of those streams is a coal-fired electric power plant, your computer can indirectly produce a surprising amount of dirty air. For every 24 hours you leave it running at full power, about three pounds of carbon dioxide -- the "greenhouse gas" linked to global warming -- pours out of the power plant's smokestack. If you left your PC running an entire year, you'd be personally responsible for some two pounds of ozone-producing nitrogen oxide, six pounds of haze-producing sulfur dioxide, and 10 milligrams of toxic mercury entering the atmosphere.
Now consider that 60 percent of America's 54 million office computers are left running overnight when their users go home. That's more than 9 million tons a year of needless CO2 emissions -- and $900 million in extra electricity bills -- just to keep a bunch of spreadsheets and screen savers flickering through the wee hours. More than half the electricity used to power computer monitors, energy experts say, goes to waste.
That's why the Western North Carolina Regional Air Quality Agency estimates that installing and activating Energy Star Monitor Power Management on the 1,300 computers in Buncombe County's government network and the 500 city of Asheville computers could reduce local CO2 emissions by up to 1.6 million pounds per year -- along with up to 3,600 pounds per year of NOx, about 10,000 pounds of SO2, and up to 15,000 mg. of mercury. And, along the way, the reduced electric bills could save the two governments as much as $63,000 in taxpayers' dollars.
Monitor power management, or MPM, puts a computer monitor into low-power "sleep" mode when it's been inactive for a while. It "wakes" the monitor when the user presses a key or moves the mouse. Most computers nowadays have the feature, but it's disabled on an estimated 40 percent of them. (MPM is not the same as a screen saver, which saves comparatively little power -- none at all if the background isn't dark.)
Thanks to a $5,000 grant the air agency has secured from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, county and city information-technology staff will now be able to use Energy Star software that the agency will buy for them to quickly and easily activate MPM throughout their networks. Engineering Supervisor Melanie Pitrolo announced the grant at the agency board's Sept. 13 meeting. Surveys conducted before and after the activation will measure actual pollution-emissions reductions, she noted, and the data will be forwarded to the Mountain Area Early Action Compact as part of the regional effort to reduce ozone pollution.
-- Steve Rasmussen
A crowd of state and local officials and citizens turned out on Oct. 15 to help the Woodfin Water District's new board of trustees celebrate a conservation easement on the 2,000 acres of watershed it manages. The easement will forever protect the pristine sources of Reems Creek, Laurel Fork and Sugar Camp Fork from logging and development.
Board member Robin Cape hearkened back to the intense controversy that erupted last year in the little town nestled next door to Asheville after residents got wind of the water board's plan to log the watershed to raise money for system repairs. Concerned citizens started organizing and attending the meetings, and in the 2003 election, all three board members -- one of whom had served for 20 years -- were replaced by first-time campaigners who argued that logging the watershed would irreparably harm its unusually high water quality.
"A small group of citizens saw a problem and were willing and brave enough to take on the status quo through the democratic process," declared Cape, who serves as vice chair of the new board. She appears to be the only person ever to win an election in Buncombe County as a write-in candidate.
A $4.1 million grant from the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund plus a $500,000 gift from Fred and Alice Stanback enabled the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy to buy the logging-and-development rights to the watershed from the Woodfin Water District. The money will be used to fund water-system repairs.
Watershed conservation easements are an increasingly popular option for both public and private landowners in development-prone areas of North Carolina, explained trust fund Executive Director Bill Holman. Like Woodfin's easement, many such agreements contain outright bans on logging and development; others (such as one recently approved in Waynesville) allow managed logging.
"There are a number of communities like Woodfin that have abandoned watersheds -- Woodfin's got one active and one abandoned one [the Laurel Fork property] -- where in fact they can sell the property, log the property, but they've been good stewards of it for the last 80 years, and they're offering it to the state at a bargain to protect water quality," said Holman. "So it's a real win-win for water quality, the state and the community."
Conservancy Executive Director Carl Silverstein stressed the preservation aspect, saying, "This is the time to do these kinds of transactions -- before the properties are lost." The Asheville-based nonprofit has recently worked with the towns of Canton and Montreat to help those communities obtain watershed easements, and on a smaller scale with numerous private property owners.
The Woodfin revolution did not go unnoticed by other local politicos in this election year. Several state legislators numbered among the Buncombe County incumbents who attended the lunch-hour event during the final weeks of their re-election campaigns: Rep. Wilma Sherrill, Sen. Martin Nesbitt, Rep. Bruce Goforth and Rep. Susan Fisher.
Buncombe County Commissioner David Gantt called Woodfin's conservation easement "exactly what needs to happen, on a scale that people can see what it is.
"The children and grandchildren of these people that are smart enough to do this are going to benefit from this," he continued. "And it's more about the future than it is just about sucking every cent out of the land today. That's a selfish and unreasonable point of view -- to think that, just because you have property rights to do it, that you ought to strip it void of any value and take it all today right now. That's what I like about conservation easements -- [they're] a real progressive, forward-thinking thing for our future."
-- Steve Rasmussen
It was the biggest fire in Western North Carolina's history. Now, seven months later, about all that's left of the Beacon Manufacturing plant in Swannanoa is 57,000 tons of still-smoldering debris. And someone's got to clean it up.
"It's very difficult to comprehend the absolute scale of destruction we've got here," Michael Sheehan told the board of the WNC Regional Air Quality Agency in early March. Sheehan's company, Pinnacle Consulting Group, is orchestrating the cleanup; the 14-acre area of devastation contains an estimated 4,200 dump-truck loads of charred rubble.
The heat from the Sept. 3, 2003 conflagration at the former blanket factory was so intense that workers are still uncovering glowing-hot embers, not to mention pools of melted wiring. And since the plant's buildings dated back as far as 1924, the site is littered with construction materials now banned as toxic. The old boilers were lined with asbestos, and a portable X-ray unit has detected lead paint in the rubble. Pinnacle, supervised by local regulators, is monitoring the site (including perimeter and surface waters) for signs of air and water pollution.
Fortunately, though, the fire spared a lab filled with flasks and drums of highly concentrated dyes, noted Sheehan, praising Chief Anthony Penland's Swannanoa Volunteer Fire Department for keeping the flames away.
"One drum could have dyed the Swannanoa River for miles," Sheehan remarked.
But while firefighters were preoccupied with the blaze, an unknown culprit got past a locked fence and released about 5,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil into a creek feeding into the Swannanoa River. Some of that very thick and hard-to-remove oil still remains, said Sheehan. He also confirmed that officials are still investigating the Beacon fire as a possible arson.
The plastic-wrapped truckloads of debris are being transported to the Palmetto Landfill in Spartanburg, S.C. The only fill going to the Buncombe County landfill are the remains of clean masonry walls. The plant's thick, concrete foundations will be ground up and recycled in a future building on the site.
Sheehan's South Carolina-based firm was hired by Carolina First Bank, which now owns the Beacon site. And when an Air Quality Agency board member asked whether Pinnacle was hiring former employees of the longtime local landmark to do the cleanup work, Sheehan replied wryly, "I haven't yet met anybody [locally] who hasn't worked in the plant."
To monitor the Beacon cleanup for yourself via live webcam, visit www.pincongrp.com.
-- Steve Rasmussen
You might as well run a freeway through your lawn.
No, we're not talking about the I-26 connector. It's that lawn mower you wake up your trying-to-sleep-in teenager with every Saturday morning.
But noise pollution isn't the only thing the old grassbuster emits: After one hour of operation, a typical two-cycle, gas-powered mower can produce more air pollution than 40 late-model automobiles, say air-quality experts. In fact, at least half of the ozone and particulate pollution that doctors have linked to the skyrocketing asthma rates among WNC children comes from the exhaust fumes spewed by their parents' yard equipment, older cars and trucks, and construction machinery.
The WNC Regional Air Quality Agency's Air Fair this Saturday will offer you and your family a chance to check out your lungs and your tailpipe at no cost. Free asthma screenings and vehicle-emissions testing will be available -- the latter aimed at giving Buncombe County residents a preview of the state-mandated emissions testing slated to begin next year.
You'll also be able to see and learn more about alternative vehicles (such as gas/electric hybrids), yard equipment (such as the electric chain saw that will be given away, along with other door prizes), and even a new alternative to open burning. And while local experts are giving you tips on how to help protect your children's health, the kids will be learning about how to protect the health of our air (and getting their faces painted) in an activities-and-fun tent.
Free pizza will help keep everyone fueled for these and many more clean-air activities and demonstrations that the Air Agency and a variety of local organizations and businesses are sponsoring Saturday, Sept. 20 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Air Fair takes place at the Air Agency's office, 49 Mt. Carmel Road (off the New Leicester Highway in the Erwin area). For directions or more information, call 255-5655 or visit www.wncair.org.
-- Steve Rasmussen
The combination keeps many a stressed-out CEO running. So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that scotch and Maalox can run a motor, too -- if it's powered by a fuel cell.
According to local fuel-cell inventor and entrepreneur Tony Iacovelli, fuel cells can extract energy from everything from hydrogen to methanol to grain alcohol, while utilizing no moving parts and generating only water for exhaust.
Many energy experts predict that this decentralized, pollution-free technology will soon begin replacing fossil fuels as the engine of the world's economy. And Western North Carolina's farmers, academics, investors and creative free spirits, Iacovelli believes, are in an ideal position to pioneer the fuel-cell industry of the future.
Find out why on Tuesday, June 24, in an evening of presentations and demonstrations on fuel cells at Homewood, 19 Zillicoa St. (off Montford Avenue) beginning at 6 p.m. Topics will include fuel-cell technology, the industry (including local manufacturer Porvair) and the challenges facing it, market applications, opportunities, investing and more. Those in attendance will have a chance to drive an electric vehicle, and catered food and beverages will be available. Want to attend? RSVP to Ashley Barker at 250-3513.
-- Steve Rasmussen
The next time you're in a local restaurant or bar, when you ask your server to bring you another glass of wine or beer or soda, the members of Better Asheville Recycling Coalition would like you to ask another question, too: "Do you recycle?" In most downtown eateries, they say, the answer will be "No."
B.A.R.C. was born last fall when a group of UNCA students, discussing the world's most pressing environmental concerns in Kara Rogers' humanities class, realized that the local restaurants where many of them worked were not recycling the large volumes of aluminum cans, glass bottles and cardboard boxes they generate -- even though most had been approached by several recycling services. Asheville's ordinances focus on the residential waste stream; businesses are not required to recycle.
"It's kind of silly, because a lot of places downtown don't realize that they would save money if they recycled," observes B.A.R.C. member Lela Stephens, a senior at UNCA. "Their trash gets hauled away by the pound, and glass is so incredibly heavy, they would save money by recycling even glass."
It's also illegal in North Carolina to throw away aluminum cans, Stephens notes. (N.C. General Statute 130A-309.10 (f)(6) prohibits knowingly disposing of aluminum cans in landfills.)
"I think there are a few reasons why businesses aren't doing it," explains Laura Wolf. She should know -- as an employee of local recycling company Curbside Management, Wolf makes presentations about recycling to schools, businesses and other organizations. "First, they think it's going to be another huge expense, like their garbage bill. Then there are the issues of training their staff to participate. A lot of people in the restaurant industry that I've talked to almost have the fear that 'I can't ask my employees to do one more thing.' But if you make it a business policy -- part of their routine during the day, part of their side work that they do anyway -- that might be one way to tackle that issue."
Many businesses, says Wolf, imagine that setting up a recycling program will be more difficult than it actually is.
"It's really not rocket science. There's not a whole lot of difference between throwing something in a recycling bin and throwing it in the garbage, and we all have gotten quite good at throwing things in the garbage. It's just a matter of awareness, of making the recycling bins look a little bit different, a bright-yellow or bright-blue color."
A more intractable problem that confronts many restaurant recyclers is limited storage space.
"They usually have a string of bins lined up against some wall on the back of their building that, first of all, is kind of an eyesore, because it's cluttered and looks like a bunch of garbage. And that's one thing that the perception of recycling needs to get away from -- it is different from garbage. It's a resource that has another life somewhere along the stream."
Wolf's company has designed a compact 4-by-8-foot wooden bin into which restaurant workers can place bags full of sorted recyclables. The more sorting the restaurant does up front, the less it pays for recycling.
Stephens tallied a list of Asheville restaurants that she knows are recycling: the Laughing Seed, Jack of the Wood, the Early Girl, Salsa's, Zambra's, Max & Rosie's, the City Bakery and La Paz.
Tom Kearns, co-owner of Rio Burrito on Broadway, says he hasn't had any problems training new employees to toss empty bottles and used shipping cartons into the neat row of sealed recycling containers perched near the back door. Inside the restaurant, labeled containers enable customers who bus their own tables to get in on the action too.
Surprisingly, another restaurant that has instituted a recycling policy is none other than McDonald's -- the fast-food chain that has drawn worldwide ire as an icon of American "throwaway" culture. According to its corporate Web site, www.mcdonalds.com, "McDonald's USA recycles as much of its waste as possible, particularly behind the counter, where 80 percent of a restaurant's waste is generated. Most of McDonald's corrugated shipping boxes are recycled. Corrugated represents the largest single component -- more than one-third -- of a restaurant's waste." The company also says it "focuses on both sides of the recycling equation" by using recycled materials in nearly every aspect of its business, from paper napkins and Happy Meal boxes to playground equipment, patio tables and chairs.
B.A.R.C. members, meanwhile, have just begun circulating a petition urging local restaurants to recycle. The group is also surveying restaurant owners -- both those who recycle and those who don't -- to learn more about why they've made their respective choices. Another B.A.R.C. project is a sticker that restaurants that do recycle can display. The group, which is opening its doors to the general public, will continue meeting weekly to carry out its mission: creating "environmentally responsible, healthy and sustainable communities by encouraging local restaurants, bars and eateries to participate in recycling programs through a positive campaign of education, awareness and community activism, so our local businesses reflect our local values."
The Better Asheville Recycling Coalition meets Thursdays at 5:15 p.m. on the UNCA campus. For more information, e-mail ashevillebarc@hotmail.com.
Pullquote:"That's one thing that the perception of recycling needs to get away from -- it is different from garbage. It's a resource that has another life somewhere along the stream."
-- Laura Wolf, Curbside Management