Top 5 perplexing problems selected from our viewer mail. Dear Ms. Waste Wise please help. We throw away tons of paper every day in my office. My boss thinks we should recycle our paper after one use. My co-worker thinks we should use paper that is printed on one side in the copier for drafts and I think we should send messages via and store final copies on disk. What should we do? We must come up with a solution soon or I’ll be reusing old paper for my resume. C.A. Nunn, Abbotsburg, NC Odrivepresentationsgameshow.ppt

Dear Waste People, I work in a school cafeteria and I feel really bad about the amount of food that we throw away every day. We currently have a serve program in which we just plop food down on the plates as they come through and then we throw everything away that does not get consumed. I think we should offer the food to the darling children and let them take what they want to eat. You never can get them to eat lima beans anyway. Tilda, our salad cook thinks we should give all our good unused food to a food rescue place and Ol Mattie, she’s been with the school since 1953, thinks we should keep all the food slop separate and give it to one of the local hog farmers. What should we do? Adam Sandler, Lunch Lady

Dear Waste Folks- I’ve been working in the warehouse for 20 years and can you believe that some supervisor from somewhere in the office said we had to quit throwing away old pallets. We’ve been throwing them away since the beginning of time. Anyway I asked my crew to come up with some ideas and this is what they said: 1.Build birdhouses from the damaged wood 2.Chip the wood for use as mulch or compost 3.Use a durable, reusable, plastic pallet and not have any wood waste. What’s the best choice? B. A. Champ Ernul, NC

Dear P2 People, I work in shipping and receiving. We have been told that budgets will be cut in all departments and that funding is really tight. I have noticed that some of the people in our facility use a lot more stuff than others. For example, some of our workers seem to use a lot more cleaners at the end of the day than others- while it seems that other folks are going to the closet for a new pen, or other supplies, every day. I have a suspicion that there are a lot of things around here just being wasted, lost, allowed to dry-up, or sometimes things in the back of the closet expire and we have to throw them away. Do you have any suggestions? O.C. Box Boomer, NC

Dear Waste Assistance, I don’t like to complain, but I have worked very hard to set up a reduce, reuse, recycle program in my office. I have placed information on the bulletin board on ways to reduce waste. I have set up a closet for items that can be reused, and I have placed recycle bins in the hallway to collect office paper, aluminum cans, cardboard, and plastic bottles. I did all of this myself, while still keeping up with all my other duties. I didn’t ask for help from anyone. I was enthusiastic when my supervisor asked me to do this, but now I feel like I did all this for nothing! As I glance in staff offices I see all kinds of recyclables in the trash. I don’t think anybody reads the bulletin board or that anybody else even cares! We have not made a dent in the amount of garbage that we throw away. Please help! Betty Rubble Stone Mt.

AND THE MORAL OF TODAY’S PROGRAM IS: