Minimize your snail mail!

I often think of all the junk mail we get. One gets it in email as well as in the mailbox. The mailbox is just annoying to me, because I throw 90% of what comes into that box into the garbage can! It's nice to know I'm not alone.

I recently read an article that was published in the Dec 15, 2008 edition of Time magazine. (vl124, i24, p58). In this article the writer, Jeremy Caplan, points out statistics about the multitudes of catalogs, credit card offers, and other direct mail pieces that clog up our mailboxes. Did you know that the average American gets 848 lbs of junk mail a year? That's a lot of paper that I don't need to put into my garbage!!

As an alternative, Mr Caplan describes some websites and services that help consumers to minimize by allowing you to opt-out of many of these offers! Some charge, some are free.

So - minimize your unnecessary mail / paper and avoid lots of shredding to save yourself from identity theft all at the same time!

Is bodiesal the way to GO?

Biodiesel can be made from oils that are found in many different types of products. These include algae, winter rapeseed grown in northern Idaho, soybean and corn vegetables, waste vegetable oils or animal fats. Rapeseed, corn or safflower, can be used as a diesel fuel without further processing. However, the process of transesterification reduces the high viscosity of vegetable oil, resulting in a higher-quality fuel. In the transesterification process, vegetable oil reacts with alcohol (methanol or ethanol) in the presence of a catalyst. When rapeseed oil is the feedstock, the products of the reaction are glycerol and rapeseed methyl or ethyl ester (RME or REE). As biodiesel fuels, RME or REE can be used straight or in a blend with petroleum diesel.
The use of algae is the most in intriguing. The same method that is used in converting crop seed oils into biodiesel is employed to harness biofuels from algae and micro algae oils. Unlike land based crops having long growing seasons, it is possible to harvest algae every one or two days. Moreover some forms of algae have an oil content that is more than 75% of its dry weight. The great thing about algae biodiesel is that it has the capacity of producing a maximum of 10,000 gallons of oil per acre of land. Moreover, algae or pond scum is grown practically everywhere. In addition to all this, algae use carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere to help in its photosynthesis of triglycerides. So it is possible to eliminate 90% of the CO2 emissions from a CO2 producing smokestack with the help of an algae farm. So with algae, you not only have an additional source of energy, you also find a means of eliminating all unwanted CO2 from the atmosphere. Biodiesel is the way of the future and we should give as much as we can to help research more ways to make biodiesel.

Green & Healthy Workplace

Today I attended a business breakfast and the guest speaker’s topic was on The Green Workplace. The business group was Human Resources professionals, so the focus of the morning was options to make the workplace healthier for employees.

The speaker, Jan Dacri offered several suggestions for accomplishing a healthier workplace. Her overall message was that a healthy workplace causes healthy employees. Healthy employees mean healthy business. This is a growing trend worldwide.

First she discussed that the management and HR team should be healthy themselves. That would start with building good habits in the three key aspects of life: health, relationships, and work. Then one needs to work on the 7 essential habits of natural health:
· Breathing – feed the brain oxygen
· Water – keep the brain and other cells hydrated
· Nutrients – stressed vegetables, fruit
· Exercise the body – the body needs you to work up a sweat several times a week
· Exercise the mind – work on the memory – make the brain work
· Relax – rest – really rest
· Self-talk / visualization

After working on yourself, work on the work place. Key elements that can make a workplace healthier are adding plants, offer a place to rest in the day, and modify lighting.
· Plants will add oxygen to the workplace.
· Plants also offer comfort and relaxation to people.
· Full spectrum lighting offers sunlight type lighting that a body needs.
· This type of lighting can increase productivity as employees gain the effects they might with natural sunlight.
· A place to rest is necessary for people and research shows it can increase productivity.
· Many countries, and even some employers in the US, are even going so far as to offer nap rooms!

Jan has two websites where she offers services for MindBody Tuneups (the first part described above) and a Green & Healthy Workplace. Her theory here is that taking good care of the human part of human resources is more important in business than ever before.

For more on Jan, see www.jandacri.com or www.mindbodytuneup.com .

New thoughts on Wind

Today I am going to talk about wind turbines. First, let me start out by saying that I grew up on a farm in Iowan and my husband grew up on the beach in southern California. I’d see the wind in the fields, and with tornados. He certainly never saw wind turbines. My husband I noticed the wind was when it whipped up some ocean spray in his face when he was surfing.As I said, I grew up on a farm in the Midwest (Iowa). In days gone by there had been windmills that harnessed the wind from early on to run pumps and things for the farm. This is where I first came in contact and thought of the wind in a different manner. But in the years of my youth, most of these windmills had become inactive following the days of electricity. About 18 months ago we were visiting my family and friends in Iowa and attended a BBQ at a friend’s farm. They now have a few massive wind turbines at the edge of his fields and as we sat outside enjoying the weather we looked on this amazing marvel that was before us and watched those big blades turn slowly yet as they were generating massive amounts of power.The thought of green energy finally hit home to me and became personal. The thought that we as mankind can try and harness even a small amount of what mother nature throws at us everyday and use it to help that same mother nature to extend it’s life another day is amazing to me and should be for everyone else.The property owners profit financially as well for the lease to the land the turbine sits on as well as the easement for the management company to monitor them. This is significant as they typically are in areas that aren’t farmed at fencelines or other non-productive land. I know some people do not want these wind turbines in their backyard because of how they look and I think there are places they should not be. But with the knowledge of the good that they are doing, I think we should be more accepting of them and more creative in their placement to better mankind and of course mother nature, the only environment we have.Susan Jimenez