Talk About Funny MoneyDeluxe Check Printers of...
Talk About Funny Money
Deluxe Check Printers of St. Paul, Minn., is offering new checks with pictures of Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, Tweety and, of course, Bugs Bunny.
The company has a two-year licensing agreement with Warner Bros. and hopes the pricey checks--$13.95 for 200--appeal to men 25 to 34.
Research shows many of these guys join their kids for Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings.
Quick, Hide the Copier
Smith & Hawken, an environmentally aware catalogue concern in Mill Valley, Calif., that sells fancy garden tools, clothing and supplies, recently announced plans to cut back on mailings, use recycled paper and plant trees.
The press kit included a cover letter, a two-page explanation, two good-sized catalogues and a brown-paper brochure reiterating the whole message. The good news: It was all printed on recycled paper.
As Music, the Tapes of Wrath
In an odd twist of the uneasy detente between agribusiness and farm workers, Firestone Vineyards in Los Olivos instituted a dawn exercise regimen for its migrant grape pickers.
Each morning during the recent August-through-October harvest, 30 to 40 farm workers gathered for a short period of stretching and bending before hitting the Santa Barbara County fields.
For Firestone, the benefit was simple: By getting its pickers to loosen up, the company incurred fewer costly workers’ compensation claims.
The harvesting staff, which worked out on company time and has no union, gets $6 an hour.
“At first they thought it was a little silly,” says vineyard spokeswoman Katie O’Hara. “But I think they enjoyed it. . . . It gets the juices rolling.”
In more ways than one: The program also supposedly boosted productivity. The agricultural aerobics were so successful, O’Hara says, that Firestone will repeat them at next year’s harvest.
Logging, Dumping and Sierra
Those who wonder if politics and business really do make strange bedfellows can call the Sierra Club.
In Arkansas, the earthy organization helped persuade the U.S. Forest Service to free up thousands of acres for logging. That’s right. The club complained that the government was holding the trees back in a scheme to keep small, local loggers from using selective cutting instead of dreaded clear-cutting techniques.
In Arizona, the sole recycling initiative on the ballot this week is opposed as a “wolf in green clothing” that would actually dismantle much existing environmental law.
The unlikely coalition of opponents includes the Arizona Farm Bureau, the Tucson Metro Chamber of Commerce and . . . the Sierra Club.
And in Northern California’s Contra Costa County, a landfill proponent enlisted the support of a renegade club member and now, according to Michele Perrault, club national director, simply lists the Sierra Club as a proponent in some ads. The club plans to run full-page newspaper ads today to explain that it really opposes Measure E on the local ballot.
Perhaps most galling to the club, GOP gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson ran TV ads saying that Sierra agrees with the senator that San Diego doesn’t need a new sewage treatment plant.
“Wilson refused to waste tax dollars on unneeded water treatment. Scientists and the Sierra Club agree,” said the ad.
In fact, says Carl Pope, Sierra Club conservation director, the club has called for a sewage plant since Wilson’s days as San Diego mayor.
Sierra just thinks the proposal costs too much. “They ran this spot knowing it was false,” said Pope.
