If you need another measure of the declining fortunes of Honolulu’s daily newspapers, check out Sean Hao’s story in today’s Honolulu Advertiser on curbside recycling.
Old newspapers account for the majority of recycled material collected via the weekly curbside pickups, followed by cardboard, glass, plastic and aluminum. However, during the past year, average household recycling of newsprint fell 3.6 pounds to 9.9 pounds a month. Declining newsprint consumption is a result of a weak advertising market, economic recession and a migration of advertising to Internet-based competition.
That’s a 26% drop in the amount of recycled newsprint in a year. In addition to the factors cited, could declining circulation also play a role?
On the other hand, you might want to check out editor John Temple’s description of the progress as Peer News begins to take shape.
And here’s a great list for creating browsing/loafing during the week ahead–“Best of the Web Nominees” from conference.archimuse.com, described as “a collaborative space for professionals creating culture, science and heritage on-line, hosted by Archives & Museum Informatics.” Click a few sites on the list and your creative juices are guaranteed to start flowing!
I’ve got to confess. I finally broke down and bought a big bag of Costco’s Kirkland cat food. I’ve held out for a long time, but with cat food prices rising way faster than other things, the prospect of substantial savings finally won out. This 25 pound bag sells for under $20, less than an 8 pound bag of Iams, a little more than a 4 pound bag of the prescription-only food from the vet that we’re feeding Duke. And the Kirkland bag screams “Premium” in large letters.
So far, the cats seem to like it. The biggest problem is lifting the bag to pour into a smaller container. But Google “kirkland cat food” and you get all kinds of entries from several years ago when so much pet food was being recalled and the news was full of stories of pets getting sick or dying from industrial glop in their food.
I “know” it’s all better now, right? Tell me it is.
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Peer News….ummm…Progress?? I checked the link and saw a wandering all over the place bunch of mish mash..I think the dress down approach (slippers and t shirts) is a bit much as well. Didn’t America go through that phase already?? Sorry, I just don’t get what they are trying to do and apparently neither do they.
My 2 cats hate Iams, but love Purina Cat Chow. We buy a 7 lb bag at Kmart about twice a month.
It’s okay, Ian. The Internet allows news to be recycled ad infinitum even when it is inaccurate! I am not greatly saddened by the decline in paper use, but I am concerned about the decline in professional news reporting.
We returned to the fold of cat ownership a couple of years ago, and jumped immediately at the Costco option for food and litter. Tragically, our kitten developed some kind of liver failure and passed away at age three… a crushing loss for our kids.
Our vet, as a purveyor of fancy cat food, fingered the Costco food as a possible cause. And I might have gotten over-paranoid after reports in the news last year of pet food recalls in general. So though there is almost no likelihood that the food had anything to do with it, when we adopted two young cats this year, we resolved to use a mix of “quality” health-specific food like Iams and “brand” food from here on out.
Of course, we still use Costco litter (who wants to overpay for sand?). And presumably, it’s a tougher decision when you’ve got a whole gaggle of cats to feed.
You can get rolling pet-food bins with latch-down tops at City Mill. Way easier than struggling with the big bags.
Just don’t leave them exposed for any amount of time to sunlight, even indoors. The plastic gets brittle and the bins bust.
I feed park cats and my own the same thing — Costco food mixed with Purina Cat Chow. All are healthy. I’m cat-sitting my sister’s cat who turns her nose up at anything but Iams — until last night when I bought the Safeway substitute brand of Iams (it was either pay $17 or $8 for 8 lb.).
As Burl says, decant the bag. We used a big plastic bin from City Mill; it held a 20lb bag of Science Diet dog food with room for another 5lbs if needed.
The Star-Bulletin switched to tabloid size in February last year, and the Advertiser shrunk and I think changed to thinner paper just after that (not sure of the timing). That alone might account for some of the decrease in paper in the trash. Unfortunately I don’t have any older papers to compare with the present size.