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Wastesavers began life in 1986 as an environmental, interest group promoting the importance of reuse and recycling. In the mid 90’s it became more proactive and began picking up old newspapers from peoples doorsteps for recycling, and hand sorting these at the local paper mill. In 1995 Wastesavers collected and recycled 22 tonnes of paper. Today Wastesavers recycles more than 15,000 tonnes of material a year and can’t imagine hand sorting the 5000 tonnes of paper it collects! That’s more than 85,000 trees per year! Progress has certainly been made in Newport with residents now receiving a weekly kerbside recycling collection of not just paper, but cans, plastics, glass, textiles, mobile phones and toner cartridges as well food waste and small electrical items.

This report provides an introduction to sustainable community activities and ways in which supporters of pollution prevention can take advantage of such efforts. A "sustainable community" effort consists of a long-term integrated and systems approach to developing and achieving a healthy community by addressing economic, environmental and social issues. Fostering a strong sense of community and building partnerships among key stakeholders are also important elements of such efforts. This report discusses how hundreds of communities across the United States are taking "sustainable community" approaches to deal with their most pressing problems. Such approaches have been applied to issues as varied as urban sprawl, inner-city and brownfield redevelopment, new economic development, a strong local economy, environmental justice, ecosystem management, agriculture, biodiversity, green buildings, energy conservation, watershed management, and pollution prevention. This report explains such activities by examining the process of developing a sustainable community initiative, describing sources of support, and presenting detailed community examples. Then, it explores the relationship between sustainable community activities and pollution prevention. The author includes an extensive annotated bibliography giving points of contact with phone numbers, web page addresses, and published documents about sustainable community activities throughout the United States.