Alright, it's official.  We are now recycling at work, kind of.  At least plastics, cans, and cardboard.  So its a start.  I was told by my boss, and one coworker that they would make sure to NOT recycle, so that was encouraging . . . 

But it seems like its catching, everyone is obsessively looking for 1s and 2s on their food, and we've started buying recycled paper, plates, etc.  So we will see how this goes . . .

Spring Break (What's That?)

SustainableSpringBreakHaikus

just another week

helping the Man make a dime

exploitation, yeah!

nothing green thats new

the same old uphill battle

trash in heaps and piles

friends-costa rica

and that's where i should have been

good job be damn-ed

at least the roommates

flip the plastics over now

finding ones and twos

yet still there are those

who, trash cans they blindly choose

despite the green bin 

is this bitterness?

why yes, yes i think it is

bad haikus abound

Baby Steps

It's time for a confession.

Prior to this semester of IPE classes, I:

-Had never used my green recycle bin

-Was a Clinique junkie, as well as other silly and expensive shampoos/conditioners/crap (which I looked up on Skin Deep's cosmeticdatabase.com and found were HORRIBLE for me and the environment)

-Didn't really know what the big deal was about Ethanol, and filled the terrible inefficient Land Rover with whatever was closest when the gas light had gone ignored long enough

-Never Ever Ever took my lunch to work, but would get Charleston's, Olive Garden, Whatever

-Was vaguely aware that there were little triangles stamped on the bottom of  plastic products, but had no clue that there were numbers within them, or what they meant

So . . . I'm making baby steps, and though I know I am still incredibly ignorant, I'm just trying to keep reading and learning about changes that need to be made.

Progress . . . ?

Okay, so I have discovered Native Roots, Forward Foods, and The Earth, which all sell organic and locally grown produce as well as pretty much everything else you might NEED.  These places also seem to be frequented by intensely interesting people who offer good conversation.

I promise I'm not a sot, I have four roommates who contributed to this (and the other, we have to have two).  Okay, well only one of the roommates helped me consume the wine, but there ARE five of us.  
Stuff that's actually not full of chemicals and produced at the expense of the environment or people.

Not doing so well . . .

Still driving the Land Rover . . . I figure it would be worse to just toss it and buy a new car.  And I try to drive it as little as possible, and to plan ahead . . . Everything about this car and its life has been inefficient.  I bought it on a whim for my birthday several years ago because I had always wanted one.  I had also been wanting to go to Boston, so I flew to Boston and bought one there and drove it back.  Yeeeaaaah, not the best thing for the environment.  But solo road tripping is a lot of fun.  I think a lot of my ecological vices have to do with travel, and I'm not really sure how I am going to work that out.  

 

Zola Goes Green

It's funny . . . I've had my dog for a little over a year, and I have always refused to feed her any "human food," because I didn't want her to learn to beg, and because we are told that it is not good for them.  What a laugh.  It's really not good for us either a lot of the time, but that's beside the point.  I had not really thought to wonder what was in dog food until I read "Against The Grain" by Richard Manning, where he discusses the origins of the dog food industry as being just another way that large corporations are able to transform their scraps and undesirables into profit.  A little more digging, and I found that many of the brands whose commercials feature bouncing happy puppies next to savory dishes of lamb and beef are in fact helping us feed our dogs rotted grain and corn, grease, cow brains, sheep guts, and even EUTHANIZED ANIMALS.  Are you kidding me?!

I've since switched Zola to Life's Abundance.  I don't know if this is where I'll keep her, but initially I was just looking for ANYTHING better.  I don't know an incredible amount about what I should be looking for, but the ingredient list is full of things like chicken, brown rice, oat groats, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, lettuce, blueberries, broccoli, etc.  And their website maintains that their products have No artificial flavors, No artificial colors, No corn or corn gluten, and No wheat or wheat gluten.  I also love that the products have a shelf life and actually expire, as opposed to the stuff you buy at Walmart that is probably already as old as I am and could outlive me.  

The food is manufactured at three different sites in Illinois, California, and Florida, and ships directly to your house via UPS.  I don't know enough to know if this is necessarily a good thing, but it sounds good . . . I just have it shipped to my work, where I handle all the inventory and we get UPS shipments several times a week anyway.  

So yeah, here's to Zola going green . . . She loves the food, and is able to eat about 1/3 less than she did when I had her on Science Diet.  

It would definitely benefit my employers to implement more environmentally friendly practices.  We are constantly scoffing at the waste, both in terms of trash and budget.  

We could reduce energy costs:

-Turning off the lights, or at least most of them.  There is no reason for the back offices and bathrooms to be lit all night.

-Unplugging chargers and equipment when not in use.

-Turning the air up when we leave.

-Turning off the TVs when we are not there!

We have more than enough opportunity to recycle.  We receive huge shipments of inventory everyday, leaving huge piles of boxes.  We pay someone to throw them away, it would be just as easy for this person to take them to a recycling center!  Similarly, we need to STOP buying styrofoam everything.  It would be very easy for us to start some sort of reusable cup system.  

The amount of merchandising and advertising material (mostly paper or cardboard) we throw away is absolutely unacceptable.  That problem goes way above my head to some corporate office.

I think that by encouraging all their stores to recycle and use energy-saving practices my company would be able to save an incredible amount of money, encourage other businesses to get on board, and it would also generate some incredible PR.  

Potential Benefit At Work

As I said in my original post, the plac

e where I work (which you can probably guess...) is incredibly wasteful.   

So here is a (rather small) pile of boxes.  This was on a Sunday, so its about 1/5 of its usual daily size.  All of our boxes are thrown in the dumpster.  

There are twelve desks, each of which has its own small trashcan.  Here's a typical one, full of discarded paper.

A sampling of our incredible inventory of styrofoam!  Generally accompanied by styrofoam plates and bowls, as well as an assortment of plastic cutlery.  Everyone uses multiple of these in a day, not bothering to label or re-use.  Its pretty standard to see someone pull one out of the cabinet, fill it with a drink of choice, throw it back, then throw the cup out.  

Okay, kind of a lame picture, but multiply this by about sixty and you'll get the idea.  This charger isn't plugged into anything but the wall.  Nothing is ever ever unplugged when not in use.  

Our thermostat which is always set at 68 degrees, even when we are closed.  Our office is primarily made of glass as well, which makes it pretty difficult to cool in the summer.  

Our two massive tvs which are also NEVER turned off, even when we leave for the night.  

                                                                                  

So here are the light switches

 that control the lights for the entire show room of our store, as well as the back.  As you can imagine, from the all cap label DONT TURN OFF, we never turn them off.  I don't think it is even possible to turn the lights off in my office, there is a switch but it doesn't do anything.  So yeah, all of our lights stay on 24/7.

Trash can full of brochures.  They updated the photos on the front, so we had to throw all the old ones away. . .

Introduction

About me . . .

Well, I am kind of a senior, depending on your definition.  I hope to finish sometime this summer.  This is my second IPE class, the first of which, "Nature and Culture," I found rather intriguing, spurring my enrollment in this class.  I am what some call a Normanite because I have lived here since 3rd grade, but I hope to find myself identified by an entirely different continent in the near future.  I have a dog named Zola, who is a rhodesian ridgeback, and work for a corporation which uses and wastes an unbelievable amount of paper and styrofoam.  In this class, I hope to gain a working knowledge of environmental issues so that I can contribute to current conversations about environmentalism, and do my part.