Thought you'd be interested in these figures I worked out and posted on the yahoo herbalife discussion board.

Forgive all the capital letters; I thought I'd better speak loudly and slowly to the herbalifers.

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Speaking of the environment, which IS germane to this board, because companies ARE responsible for the environmental damage their policies cause:

Let's be REAL conservative with the figures, and assume that ONLY 200 people in the WHOLE COUNTRY are putting up the signs, at the rate of 100 per month.

That's 20,000 signs per month, or 240,000 per year.

At two ounces per sign (8 per pound), that adds up to 30,000 pounds (FIFTEEN TONS!!!!) of coroplast going into the solid-waste stream in every year.

FIFTEEN TONS of NON-recyclable plastic, generated by an ILLEGAL activity.

That's a big responsibility on Herbalife's part.
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Redstone

Redstone calculates:

>That's 20,000 signs per month, or 240,000 per year.>

GW says whoa!.
Wellllll, you can just forget those figures and go back to the drawing board.
It's no wonder we're running out of land fill space and coroplast is basically non-biodegradable.

Houston (TX) says they get almost that amount themselves in a year.

Honest to gosh, that's what they publish. Last year was 210,000, yup, came straight from the horse's mouth, himself. They paid for two brand new "bandit sign trucks" with the fines collected. The trucks are one ton flat beds, with wire cages mounted over the beds. Cages are 6 ft high x 6 ft wide and 9 ft long. You can put a heck of a lot of signs in 324 sq ft or 36 sq yards if my math is correct. Behind the cab is a mini lift bucket that extends up to twenty-five feet.

Story has it they run both of these trucks 12 hours a day, six days a week, fifty weeks out of the year. That's a lot of miles and a heck of bunch of signs. But you'd need to go to Houston to see the problem, that was even hard for me to believe until I went down and participated in a "Bandit Sign Roundup" couple of years ago. We picked up over a 1000 signs in three hours, with 12 teams of 3 each. Each team had a deputy sheriff or county constable for escort.

Get any lip you say, yup, matter of fact one guy (a real life snuff dipping Bubba) started to give one of the lady drivers a hard time until the deputy drove up and made him a real life "Godfather offer". Bubba decided real quick that he didn't want any part of the deputy's program.

GreatWhite-BH (GW)
No.Texas Chapter - CAUSS

GW

Well, I DID say that I was being very conservative. Didn't realize just how much, though, and did not want the herbalifers to get a sense that I was exaggerating.

GW, do me a favor, and note that on the yahoo board, if you would. Just tell 'em that the figure is official count from the city of Houston, and ask them extrapolate from there.

Dang, things are heating up. I sense momentum.

Redstone

Wilco, be glad to.

Been on this dang computer most of the day answering emails from different ones across the US about some of the responses over on herba@yahoo.com.

Sure glad it was a wet, cold rainy fire place type day.

I'm really proud of our group for simply stating facts as they are and not flaming the herba bb. It just goes to show how civil our group is. Two thumbs up for our guys and gals.

GreatWhite-BH (GW)
No.Texas Chapter - CAUSS

GW

I did it myself. Here are my revised figures (which are still on the low side) that I posted on the yahoo BB:
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I made a big mistake in blaming herbalife distributors for 7.5 tons of unrecyclable trash each year.

Sorry.

It turns out that OFFICIAL records from the City of Houston report 210,000 illegal signs removed by City crews (at taxpayer expense) last year.

So: Again being conservative, let's assume that only half of those came from herbalife distributors.

Let's also assume that the 50 largest cities in the US average A QUARTER as many signs as Houston does. This gives us this total:

Houston: 105,000 signs; 49 other cities at 26,250 signs each equals 1,286,250 signs.

Grand total (again being conservative): 1,391,250 signs.

At two ounces per signs, we get a lovely 173, 906 poounds of unrecyclable, illegal trash (87 TONS) as herbalife's contribution to American society.

How nice.
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Redstone

Can coroplast be recycled into something other than another sign? The wooden stake can certainly serve as kindling or any number of other uses, but it would be nice if the plastic component of the standard street spam didn't go straight to the landfill.

>Can coroplast be recycled into something other than another sign? The wooden stake can certainly serve as kindling or any number of other uses, but it would be nice if the plastic component of the standard street spam didn't go straight to the landfill. >

This has been kicked around several times during the past eighteen months. Newbie, I believe, did some research on the matter and found out that it takes some where in the neighborhod of 4000#s in order to qualify for recycling. I can't even remotely imagine how many signs it would take to make up 4000#s, most likely a 40 ft trailer. There's only one place in the entire No. Texas area that will consider accepting the spent coroplast, but, they have to inspect it to ensure another product in not mixed in as a "filler"

And even at that, it has to be the same identical material as there are supposedly several different types of coroplast. To the layman and inexperienced eye, the coroplast looks identical but in reality it isn't.

There have been numerous suggestions on how to use the coroplast, but the bottom line is, when the projects are done, there's only one place for it to go. And that's to the landfill, which is too bad.


GreatWhite-BH (GW)
No.Texas Chapter - CAUSS

GW