We are rubbish at dealing with our rubbish

I recently read an article about just how much waste we New Zealanders generate each year. In 2018, it was 734kg per person (Blake-Persen, 2018). Yet by 2022, in the midst of lockdown, we had managed to inflate that to 781kg (Sensoneo, 2022). Even worse, 706kg of that 871kg per person doesn't get recycled (Ministry for the Environment, 2024; also based on 2022 figures). Ouch.

We are the 29th worst recycling nation on the planet (Sensoneo, 2022). Ahead of us, with better green credentials, are - at number 1 with 400kg - South Korea. And they make cars and electronics, for goodness sake! The shining example that is South Korea is followed by all those great European countries who have not shelled out tax breaks, but have truly invested in cleaning up their act: Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, and Sweden. Japan is the only other Asian nation rounding the top 10. Australia is at 19. The USA comes in at number 25. And we trail in behind the Eastern European nations - who are better at this stuff than we are - in 29th place. Our saving grace is that we have come five steps up the ladder from the last time: improving 34th place (Sensoneo, 2022).

Interestingly, the most common rubbish item found on the planet is plastic drink bottles (44%), food wrappers (28%), other drinks containers (think cups, lids and straws; 16%), yoghurt containers (8%), and cheese packaging (5%) (Break Free From Plastic, 2023). If we stopped allowing single use drinks containers, we could - in theory - get rid of 60% of waste. If we consider a lot of the food wrapping might also arise from fast food items, we could get rid of maybe 80% of planetary garbage by outlawing single use items. We don't need to do away with fast food; we just ban all single use wrapping and containers.

Coming back to New Zealand, I could easily take my own container to my favourite sushi and Thai places - which then makes me think: why have I not done that before, and reduced my footprint further?! Sigh. We New Zealanders generate the 4th to highest kilograms of waste per person (Sensoneo, 2022). Yes, we have got rid of single use plastic bags, and now plastic cutlery, but we don't appear to have changed our habits. We could save so much stuff needlessly going to landfill if we were more thoughtful... and the best way to avoid waste is to not create a need for more items to be manufactured or imported in the first place. 

We need to keep telling the shops that we don't want plastic. That we will go somewhere else to avoid it. Then actually vote with our feet. We could also invest in some modern waste to heat plants which burn rubbish cleanly and safely instead of putting stuff into landfill. We could rebuild our old make-do and mend mentality. Recover our old furniture. Mend our clothes. Sell or give away things that we no longer need. We don't have to be totally hippy dippy about it, but we make things last longer, purchase less - and without packaging; buy local, and collect people around us who can fix our toaster, rewire that plug, and put a new graphics card in the old PC. And thank you Consumer for the "Right to Repair" campaign (2024) so these things get easier!

Of course, Right to Repair is a global trend, not solely New Zealand. California and the EU are passing legislation to allow us to mend our kit, and to prevent obstructive technology giant behaviour. Check out the Cold Fusion episode on this here (2024).

Let's create a little inconvenience for ourselves, so we can feel the warm glow of satisfaction in making a tiny bit less impact on the planet :-)

Sam

References:

Blake-Persen, N. (2018, January, 17). Revealed: Kiwis generate 734kg of waste each per year. Radio New Zealand. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/348261/revealed-kiwis-generate-734kg-of-waste-each-per-year

Break Free From Plastic. (2023). Brand Audit: Holding the World’s Worst Plastic Polluters Accountable Annually Since 2018 [Report]. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YFyfRv4m_viZZXa8b1HdpucDX3WEwJzv/view

ColdFusion. (2024, July 17). How Companies Profit off Unfixable Devices (ft. Louis Rossmann) [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/6IZe7KjIJg4

Consumer. (2024). Help us get a product repairability label: Unrepairable products cost you and the planet. https://campaigns.consumer.org.nz/right-to-repair

Ministry for the Environment. (2024). Ngā tatauranga para | Waste statistics. https://environment.govt.nz/facts-and-science/waste/waste-statistics/

Sensoneo. (2022). Global Waste Index 2022: These are the biggest waste producers in the world. https://sensoneo.com/global-waste-index/

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Considering water use

In New Zealand, most councils have moved to a water metering system, using loggers on the mains supply where it enters the property. There is a certain amount of use which is considered the 'base line', then households are billed for what is used above that.

Our household water use has always been quite low. We have always planted low maintenance gardens because, basically, we can't be bothered faffing about watering plants. We plant natives, and they grow by themselves. The main consumer of water was always our vegetable garden, our washing machine, and our dishwasher.

So when we built our own house way on a 10Ha block out in the country, one of the many things we considered was water. How we would get it, how we would store it, and how we would ensure that we had enough. We had long ago shifted to a front loader washing machine (because it used 66% less water than a top loader). I bought a Swedish dishwasher (washing up machine) that used less water than I would if I washed the dishes in the sink... and got them cleaner! That left us with pretty much only the vegetable garden as our largest water user, but as it fed us, it was a necessary use of water. The toilet moved up the list as a significant water consumer, so I bought dual flush toilets, and put a brick in each cistern to artificially reduce the water volume. Sorted.

In our planning process, we worked out how much roof space we had to collect rainwater, and how much tank volume we would need to store it. Then we could be sure that we could reasonably stay off a mains supply scheme. With 200 square metres of roof (sheds and house) and an average rainfall of .75m/annum, we put in 71,000 litres of storage tank capacity. We knew we had rain enough to fill the tank volume roughly four times each year.

The trickiest part was working out how much water we used annually. We knew we did not use more than the base-line rating level, because we didn't get water bills in the city. In the end, we decided to suck it and see. Well, in 11 years, we only ran out of water once (when the builders were building the house, and emptied the tanks by accident). I now know that we use between 1,000 and 2,000 litres of water a week, INCLUDING our garden. That average weekly use works out to about 78,000 litres/annum. Our tanks are always full.

Now, we are not hairy-toed stinkies who never wash. While we mostly shower (and have a water-conserving shower head), I love running a bath in winter and having a lovely soak. I just don't do it all the time. We know that water is a valuable resource, and - as we have to collect it and look after it - we need to ensure that we have enough for any time of scarcity.

Recently I was watching a DW documentary (2021), looking at water use in Las Vegas. They examined how the city was conserving water, with household use having fallen by a third. It all sounded great until I realised that in 2018, Las Vegan (!) households used an average of 100,920 gallons (Mullenix, 2020); an appallingly high 382,023 litres/annum. And that was with a 33% reduction! I was gobsmacked. I still am.

We use 78,000 litres of water per year, and Las Vegans use five times more water per year than we do (and their consumption used to be almost six and a half times ours!). I am still staggered that this was considered to be 'good'.

So I looked at what New Zealanders use on average. While not so ghastly as in Las Vegas, it is still high at 236,520 litres/year (2.7 people x 240L/day; Catley, 2017; Greater Wellington, 2011).

No wonder water is considered to be in short supply with use like that.

Sam

References:

Catley, C. (2017). What does the average New Zealand household look like?. https://rwtakapuna.co.nz/news/what-does-the-average-new-zealand-household-look-like

DW Documentary (30 May 2021). The world of water [video].https://youtu.be/YxzYzv8ijEs

Greater Wellington (2011). Section Five: How much water are we using?. http://www.gw.govt.nz/assets/Our-Environment/Water-Supply/PDFs/Turning-on-the-tap/Turning-on-the-tap-Section-5.pdf

Mullenix, B. (2020). The Average Water Bill In Las Vegas (See My Water Bills). https://www.feelingvegas.com/average-water-bill-las-vegas/

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Reviewing business tasks, processes and plant

While any time is a good time to review what we do, sometimes it is easier to think about those things at the start of a new year, and the start of a new decade. With that in mind, recently I read an article on the Houzz website (Revell, 26 January 2020), which suggested that we ask six questions of ourselves about our belongings. In reading the article, I could see how the six questions could relate to any aspect of business: but particularly tasks, processes and plant.

Those questions are (with a list items to consider that I propose alongside each one):

1. Can the business do without this? Review communications; such as fax numbers (NZ Pharmacies have been told at long, long last that they have to ditch fax machines in 2020); landlines, 0800 numbers, etc. Do we have IT systems, furniture or cabinetry which is no longer fit for purpose? Do we have equipment for areas which the business has now moved away from? Are we renting more space than we need? Could we lease out part of our building? Could we share car parks and reduce the number we have? Does that review mean we could convert a car park to a bike park instead? Does the business pay for web statistics which are never used? Are reports written which are no longer read?
2. Has this task or process been replaced by new methods? Do we have plant which has been superceded? Is any of it likely to be back in service - and - if it may be - will it still be fit for purpose? Do we have equipment, software, or space that was used for stepped tasks which has now been automated, with the intermediary steps now being redundant? Do we have loads of old copies of software which could be passed on? Do we still have machinery - such as binder coil machines, laminators, large staplers - which we no longer (or hardly ever) use? Do we have duplicates of now rarely used equipment, so could get rid of at least one?
3. If this item broke down, would it be replaced? This is an excellent question to ask about plant, equipment and software that is currently in service. This can also be applied to regular training or suppliers: for example, if a small supplier closed, would we seek another? Does the business see a benefit in the regular, scheduled training?
4. Does this particular item or process simplify doing business? What a superb question! We can all do with reviewing our processes to see if there is an easier - and less costly - way of doing business. If we still have a manual book keeping processes, we could move to Xero, reducing both our internal administration time and cost, reducing financial accounting costs, and simplifying our tax regime. Review backup procedures (can we cloud-automate it?). Review how and where important company documents are kept. Review legal providers, requirements and signatories.
5. Could items, processes or services be hired in? We don't necessarily need to own everything ourselves. If we use something once or twice a year, it might be worth booking and hiring it when we need it, rather than owning it and leaving it unused for 95% of the year. Hiring in also removes the tasks of maintenance and updating, reducing complexity.
6. Could we outsource? Sometimes we are so used to doing things ourselves to ensure that it meets our quality standards, or our particular customisation, that we don't stop to think about whether we could contract out to an expert in the area and outsource an entire task or process. This is a long list, but we can think through elements such as design, technical drawing, cost surveying, HR tasks, advisory boards, marketing, distribution, websites, social media management, technical writing, pool cars, premises, maintenance, secretarial services, book keeping services, archival and digitisation.

The list above contains a lot of elements we need to consider. But in reviewing each of the six items above, all of these are an opportunity for us to (a) re-clarify to ourselves just what our core business is, (b) focus on what we need to do, (c) hive off distractions, and (d) reducing unnecessary costs.

All good business practice.


Sam

• Reference: Revell, A. (26 January 2020). 6 Questions to Answer: Could I Become a Minimalist? Retrieved from https://www.houzz.co.nz/magazine/6-questions-to-answer-could-i-become-a-minimalist-stsetivw-vs~107566209?utm=

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Watching the tide go out

I have a 'soft' rule that each new thing coming into the house needs to have two things going out so there is a net decrease on possessions. I am not making this a revolution, but an evolution; as and when I feel ready.

To do that, I try to go through one 'space' each week in the house. That 'space' might be a single drawer some weeks, or half a room in another. This also applies to the office.

When parting with things, I am not rushing into divorce. Instead, I put the items into 'the waiting room', which is an intermediary space for me to think about it until I am happy that I have disconnected from them emotionally (my 'waiting room' is the spare room). Then I can decide objectively what the next best place for those things to go is.

Where things go to from the waiting room is varied. I pass things which I am not using to friends, volunteer groups or charity shops. I will try to sell some items if, (a) they have resale value, and (b) I have time. That is where the waiting room comes in handy: if I hear that someone needs something, while I am thinking about when and how to part with an item in the waiting room, I can give that thing to meet a specific need. This is the most rewarding aspect of purging possessions.

Additionally, I am trying to purchase as much as possible myself from second-hand sources. This is shifting my mindset to 'renting' items, as opposed to owning them. If we rent them, we know it is temporary. When we own them, we have a much more permanent mental hold on them.

My aim is to end up with fewer possessions, as naturally as the tide turns, over time. To have some empty spaces, and to not feel a need to rush in and fill those spaces with stuff. To break with unnecessary buying.

It is quite liberating, knowing that the high-tide mark is a millimetre further out each week.


Sam

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The Slow Work of Un-Stuffocation

We all seem to have lots of 'stuff'. Apparently many Westerners have a two car garage which cannot fit a single car in it (CBS Sunday Morning, 22 April 2018). We leave our expensive cars outside, while our garages drown in crap. Imagine! Whether in our workplace or at home, it seems that unless we are active, things pile up in drifts around us. Things could be as simple as recycling or unread emails, to unfiled paperwork or our intended reading pile.

I am a conscious tidier. When I was quite young - and lazy with it - I tallied up how much time I had to spend finding things through my own disorganised laziness. I quickly worked out that I could save SOOO much time and energy by having a 'one true place' for everything, then consistently putting things in that 'one true place'. Organised laziness. I have built this habit over the years. I streamline wherever possible. I do similar things together. I try not to repeat things. I reuse, regift, recycle, repurpose tasks to limit junk tasks as well as junk.

(Interestingly, people don't believe me when I tell them it is because I am lazy that I am organised. Ha: I save my limited time on earth for my one true love - reading - by cutting out unnecessary faffing about).

Lately my husband has been working offshore, and I have used this hiatus to consciously tidy our lives. Over the course of this year, and in consultation, I have gone through our house, our workspaces and our storage to recycle, regift and repurpose things that no longer have a 'one true place' in our lives.

While I have read the Marie Kondo book (review here), my printer does not 'spark joy', and folding my socks into neat little standing-on-edge soldiers just tells me that I have too many socks. Ms Kondo's philosophy doesn't fit me well. My philosophy lies more in the slow movement.

My preference is to consider what to tackle, how to tackle it, and to deal with junk a space at a time; sometimes a drawer at a time. Like eating an elephant, the tide of stuff does not have to be dealt with at a run. Just walking faster than the dross accumulates means that your stuffocation (Wallman, 2013) slowly reduces.

What has surprised me is how liberating getting rid of things has been. Even after only a couple of boxes of things going, I feel a lightening of spirit. And many, many boxes have gone since I started, and there are many, many boxes yet to go. This slow work in progress of paring back - of coming to realise what can be done without; then re-evaluating; then realising what else can be done without - is wonderful.

Try the slow approach. It might work for you.


Sam

References:

• CBS Sunday Morning (22 April 2018). A clean sweep: Getting rid of your clutter. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/W2oN7gTbHp0
• Kondo, M. (2014). The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. USA: Ten Speed Press
• Wallman, J. (2013). How We've Had Enough of Stuff and Why You Need Experience More than Ever. UK: Crux Publishing Ltd

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The Year of Less - a review

Cait Flanders, author of "The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store", wrote about how she pared down her expenditure in reaction to a combination of personal circumstances and crises while living in Canada in 2016.

The blurb says: "In her late twenties, Cait Flanders found herself stuck in the consumerism cycle that grips so many of us: earn more, buy more, want more, rinse, repeat. When she realized that nothing she was doing or buying was making her happy, she decided to set herself a challenge: she would not shop for an entire year."

This was a good book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Learning about the background to Cait's decision to live on much less as the book unfolded was interesting: as the reader, I felt that I was slowly getting to know the author, and to understand what were very human foibles accompanied by personal breakthroughs as the book went on. This was not a self-help book as much as a personal narrative accompanied by questions that we could ask ourselves.

Despite there being many of the sustainability, not-spending genre out there now, I recommend reading Cait's story. Much of what she relates will resonate with all of us, and some of it may change our own perspectives on our consumer society.

I would expect, at the least, that reading this will help to make all of us a little more thoughtful in what we need, and what we chose to buy.


Sam

References:

• Flanders, C. (n.d.). Cait Flanders. Retrieved from https://caitflanders.com/
• Flanders, C. (2018). The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store. USA: Trantor Media.

read more "The Year of Less - a review"

Leave the plastic behind

Consumer magazine recently published an article about plastic packaging. They investigated three supermarket chains - Countdown, Pak'n'save and New World - to see how much packaging consisted of recyclable material, and how much they were using that had already been partially recycled. As I mentioned in a previous article (here), Flight plastics in Wellington is the only company in New Zealand taking in PET and producing RPET (recycled PET plastics). The supermarkets themselves say they are trying to reduce plastic, but they don't seem to be really doing much, frankly.

But I think a better use is to REFUSE to take the plastic in the first place, so I popped a comment in saying just that. I related that I have started simply leaving the plastic from what I have bought behind at the checkout. I take in my reusable mesh bags, tip the tomatoes - or whatever - into my mesh bag, then after the containers have been scanned, I leave the containers behind at the checkout. I take the plastic off my cucumbers and leave that behind too. It not only sends a clear message, it pushes the problem and cost of disposal onto the retailer.

If enough of us do that, retailers will start asking suppliers or distributors to supply loose veg to avoid what is becoming a problem for themselves. Push the problem back up the chain, and that will, I suspect, effect a change.

Well, that's what I am hoping, anyway.

Sam

• Reference: Consumer (June 2018). Plastic Packaging. Retrieved from https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/plastic-packaging?inf_contact_key=e76338ff15cc263a35731b0aa211a2ca0c9ba97b06f832e18875da0c7a3830a4#

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Consuming to Refuse

I have written before about trying to become less wasteful, and of the seven priorities - in order for paying attention to consumption: (1) Refuse, (2) Repair, (3) Reduce, (4) Reuse, (5) Repurpose, (6) Rot/compost, ... and very last, (7) Recycle (read here and here and here). As part of the 'refuse' element - and ensuring I am making easy changes - I decided to take action on a little something I have been thinking about for quite a while.

The agonising thing is that the refuse action first required consumption! Why? I have been thinking about carrying my own cutlery, following an Asian trend, but I needed the kit to do so. People in China and Japan are starting to carry a little box with a set of chopsticks with them so they don't add to the chopstick mountain (apparently China alone annually eats its way through between 57-80 billion sets). So I had a scout and found a small plastic box online which contained chopsticks, a spoon and a fork (Amazon, here), and bought it.

Once it arrived, I added a slightly smaller spoon to double as a teaspoon, a sharp knife, and a fairly sturdy plastic knife (the only one I could find at home that was short enough to go in the box. It is surprisingly difficult to find knives shorter than 20cm). The box now lives in my handbag, along with my water bottle. I particularly like the steel chopsticks, as they are more like the Japanese ones, with finer ends than the Chinese variety.

Of course, I am going to have to remember to put this in my checked luggage when I fly (have made a note!). This will also be very handy when travelling overseas - particularly the sharp knife.

What was quite interesting was that getting my own cutlery box up and running coincided with a work colleague donating a recycled set of steel spoon, knife and fork to everyone in our building, complete with names. It was nice to be able to regift mine to the School's tiny kitchen drawer.

While sorting the cutlery thing, I finally decided to get a collapsible coffee cup to keep in my bag. Having met with people twice this year over coffees in takeaway cups, I wanted to take action to prevent future waste. Sigh: more consumption agonising in order to 'refuse'! I already have a reusable china cup at work, but I don't want breakables in my bag. I used to take a reusable plastic cup with me when I travelled - except it got thrown out in a conference meeting room clean up: the second time that has happened to me! So this time I decided that I would get a well-sealed collapsible cup, that I can just pop back in my bag and wash out later. Stojo seem to make a very nice cup (here), and I am hoping that when this arrives, it will live up to its promise.

Making change, a step at a time. Have utensils, will travel :-D


Sam

• Reference: Wilson, B.(11 November 2013). BYO cutlery: why we should all carry our own knives and forks. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/nov/11/byo-cutlery-carry-own-knife-fork-chopsticks

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New Zealand: 100% waste

Earlier this year, an American tourist posted on his blog that we in New Zealand are in no way true to the "100% Pure New Zealand" label. I totally agree with him.

We can't sell our collected materials for recycling: what choice is there but to landfill? We can't even recycle our own plastic because no one is buying all our 'recycling'. As I have posted before (here), Kiwis consume 734kg of plastic each year, per person, with nowhere to send it to. So it mostly goes to landfill (there is a small PET recycling plant in Wellington, Flight Plastics: the only one of its kind in New Zealand). We have no ability to recycle aluminium in NZ so it goes to landfill unless the price justifies the shipping from here to Australia or Japan. There is only one steel resmelter for the North Island, nothing in the South Island, so the SI stuff goes to landfill. I could go on... oh, I am.

In Europe Sweden burns their non-recyclable everything at highly efficient furnace plants which generate electricity. The plants have amazing particulate scrubbers so nothing toxic goes into the atmosphere, and I think even the stuff trapped in their scrubbers can go back into the furnaces. But that requires lots of infrastructure which we don't have in New Zealand.

In addition, the Cook Strait is one of the most expensive pieces of water in the world to cross, so this would need to be a government initiative, underwritten by all of us in taxes. Not a light-weight undertaking.

So what can we do? There appears to be no successive government will to make change, but we can take individual action. We can try to consume less and to tell those around us how they too can make better choices. We need to make things as easy as we can on ourselves, else we won't keep it up. For that, we have to be organised.

OK. 25 ideas for how to get organised:

1. Grow your own veges where possible. Start small. Repeat what grows well. Save your seed.
2. Bottle or freeze excess production for the off-season.
3. Buy veges and fruit in season.
   
4. Buy direct from the producer where possible.
5. Buy in bulk, taking your own containers (don't forget to tare off the scales at the shop).
6. Don't buy individual small packets in a big bag, even when they are cheaper. Buy a large bag and collect small containers to put single serves into.
7. Carry mesh bags and cloth shopping bags everywhere you go (I have a set in each car - yes we are a two car family - and two in my handbag).
8. Try to buy genuinely recyclable materials: cotton, wool, glass, steel, paper.
9. Get a soda stream if you like fizzy drink.
10. Make your own yoghurt (so, so easy!).
11. Fill your own beer or cider from a craft brewer in recyclable containers.
12. Buy milk direct from a local farmer. Use your own glass bottles.
13. Don't use clingfilm. Get some of the silicone stretch covers instead.
14. Avoid plastic where possible. Leave plastic behind at the shop (so they have the cost of dealing with it ...which may make them change suppliers - or at least feedback to them that the customer opinion tide is turning).
15. Lobby for glass bottle deposits whenever you can.
16. Read the newspaper with an online subscription.
17. Get all your bills emailed.
18. Get a "no junk mail" sign on your letterbox.
19. Buy coffee beans in bulk from a local roaster. Don't use coffee pods.
20. When you are tempted to buy something new, postpone the purchase for one week. Often we have gone off the idea.
21. Get an old sewing machine. Mend or retrim clothes rather than buy new ones.
22. Swap clothes with a friend.
23. Buy second-hand. Op-shop.
24. Repair appliances rather than buy new ones, even if it is more expensive.
25. Repurpose, gift, swap, give away, donate things you no longer use.

Trust me, doing this will not turn us into hairy toed hippies. It should make us aware of just how much crap we each unthinkingly generate each year, though.

If we can each make change, a step - or 25 - at a time, we can make New Zealand pure again.


Sam

References:

• Viktorius, M. (23 April 2018). The Myth of Pure New Zealand. Retrieved from http://www.maruf-hops-maps.com/en/myth-pure-new-zealand/
• Newshub (24 April 2018). 'I feel cheated': US backpacker says NZ's 'clean, green' image is a myth. Retrieved from http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/04/i-feel-cheated-us-backpacker-says-nz-s-clean-green-image-is-a-myth.html

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Savings Claims for Recycled Clothing

A friend of mine reposted a thread from 1 Million Women, stating that "If one million women bought their next item of clothing second-hand instead of new, we would save 6 million kg of carbon pollution from entering the atmosphere". While this was a great thing to pick up on - yes, we buy far too many clothes, and forget what an impact we are making on global resources while we are doing it - the first thing I thought it that the saving would rather depend on how heavy each item was.

So I went briefly looking. There were so many items to choose from, depending on seasonality, country of origin and fabric used in manufacture. I wanted to see if there was a quick way to check the poster's claims.

The first thing I found is that the factorisation for cotton is 54kg of greenhouse gases per kilo (kg). So if everyone got a recycled long cotton shirt with a net weight of 220 grams, it would be 220,000kgs of shirt x 10.75kg CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHG), which is 2,365,000kgs of GHG consumption in manufacture (Systain, 2009). That's a under half of the 6 million kg savings the poster promises.

Hmm... well, some items are a lot heavier - a pair of trousers might be nearly a kg. Hmm. But I didn't factor in the numbers for wool... or polar fleece.

OK, so moving to wool. That would be lower than cotton, as, while it is a natural fibre, it is grown outside with few herbicides, pesticides or fertiliser (here in New Zealand farmers mostly lime their paddocks, and not much else, to minimise costs). I found a study by Barber and Pellow (2006) detailing that the energy consumed for a merino top to land in China from NZ is 63MJ/kg whereas polyester is 125MJ/kg (download here). Right. So I still needed to know the carbon footprint of polar fleece/polyester in order to create a bit of a comparison.

Polar fleece works out as having the following relationship with carbon: 1kg polar fleece x 5.55kg carbon footprint (Wikipedia, n.d.). So half that of cotton ...which amazed me (despite this having been calculated by Tom Berners-Lee for Wikipedia, I'm unsure about this. So if anyone has better info, please comment. Oecotextiles - 2011 - seems to think that polyesters are a lot more GHG intensive than this). A polar fleece jumper weighs about twice that of a cotton shirt, so would work out at about the same value. Interesting.

Now I appreciate that this is guestimation as the measures aren't necessarily similar - it is not even estimation - but this gives us wool at 1/2 the GHG cost of polar fleece, which is again about a half of cotton. Some clothes are much heavier than a long shirt: jeans are about a kg, coats might even be two kgs. However, we wear many more tops, pieces of underwear, scarves, socks and tights than we do trousers. A summer dress is likely to be roughly the same weight as a long shirt.

Seeing as humans wear a lot of polar fleece, wool and light fabrics, the original post numbers above are possibly... probably inaccurate. I suspect a more accurate figure lies between my original fast and dirty calculation of the cotton shirts and the poster, especially when we factor in men's clothing.

However, the 1 Million Women message is STILL a great one, even if their maths are off. Not buying is still one of the easiest things we can do to cut consumption - regardless if we are women or men :-D.

The 7 Rs (read more here) start with "Refuse" to buy, and limiting purchasing is an inaction we can all take...


Sam

References:

• Barber, A., & Pellow, G. (2006). LCA: New Zealand merino wool total energy use. Paper presented at the 5th Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS) conference, Melbourne, 22-24 November, 22-24.
• Oecotextiles (2011). Estimating the carbon footprint of a fabric. Retrieved from https://oecotextiles.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/estimating-the-carbon-footprint-of-a-fabric/
• Systain (2009). Carbon Footprint Study 2009 Final Summary. Retrieved from https://www.systain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Systain_Studie_Carbon_Footprint_English.pdf
• Wikipedia (n.d.). Polar Fleece. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_fleece

read more "Savings Claims for Recycled Clothing"

The 7 Rs of Recycling

I read with horror recently that we Kiwis dump 734kgs of plastic, per head of population, per annum (Morton, 14 April 2018). And, of course, China is no longer taking the plastic crap we antipodeans race through. This single use plastic equates to the weight of a family sedan, each year, for each family member. Madness.

Yep, I am not perfect, but I am trying to be more thoughtful. I already take mesh bags for veges to the supermarket, and have my own cloth shopping bags for well over ten years. I leave a full set in the car and have a couple of spares folded up in my bag to ensure I rarely take a plastic bag home with me.

Yet it is at the fruit and vege or meat departments that I get stuck with plastic most often. I try to shop at the greengrocer, but even they have packaged tomatoes in plastic punnets. I use mesh, draw-string bags for vege or ingredient shopping and put them through the washing machine between shops. It is also easy to wash vege purchases when I get home instead of stressing about dirt on the supermarket belts.

Germans do returnable glass bottles for fizzy water, which cost about 17 cents per bottle: just as we Kiwis used to do thirty or forty years ago. I very rarely buy bottled anything. I have a soda stream to create sparkling mineral water, and we juice our own surplus apples which we bottle each year in Agee jars (though I have heard that Perfit seals are about to disappear from Supermarket shelves <sigh>). Bonus: our juice is spray- and additive-free.

German manufacturers also have to take back - I think - 60% of their packaging and the good itself once it is past its use-by date. We don't have that infrastructure here, and may never be able to have it due to our low population and remoteness, but we can take action in some other ways.

Following reading the Morton and Barton articles (14 April 2018; 17 April 2018), I have decided to take action in a small way by refusing. What I have done in the past is to refuse to purchase plastic packaged veg. However, now if I am unable to buy product without packaging, I am going to buy it, but simply leave the packaging at the checkout. Yes, I know this is pushing disposal back on the retailer, but we pay for the plastic - and theoretically disposal - in our purchase price. If enough of us did this, I think this might have an effect via the retailers, by them asking wholesalers/growers to reduce plastic packaging (or options without plastic).

As I have mentioned in previous posts (here and here), NZ the only things that are consistently recycled are about half our glass and steel and some of our paper. We have one steel resmelter for the whole country, which is in the North Island (the Cook and Foveaux Straits prevent steel from the South or Stewart Islands being recycled through the cost of shipping). There is no aluminium resmelter in NZ, so, when combined with shipping cost, the price of aluminium has to be very high for recycling to be worthwhile. We used to ship our plastics to China, which is no longer possible as the Chinese don't want the pollutants (Australia is in the same boat). While there is a small plant which recycles PET in Wellington (Flight Plastics) this is small as yet - and no material from the South Island gets recycled. As a consequence we landfill pretty much everything that is collected as recycling. All of that 734kg of plastic/person/year goes to landfill (including the 'soft' plastics collection initiative being run by Countdown).

I troubles me that we are only now starting to talk about banning plastic grocery bags, despite the 734kgs each we accumulate. We are not yet considering the wasteful fruit and vege packaging, meat trays, cheese packets, yoghurt pots, sandwich triangles, styrofoam, melamine, polystyrene, plastic lids, bottles, takeaway containers, cling-film or non-consumable goods packaging. And bottles, bottles, bottles, bottles. Milk, cream, fizzy, water, sauces, juice...

There is a list containing in-built priorities about the order in which we can consider each item that we use. There are seven priorities are: (1) Refuse, (2) Repair, (3) Reduce, (4) Reuse, (5) Repurpose, (6) Rot/compost, ... and very last, (7) Recycle. We continuously talk about recycling like it is the most important point, instead of the last stop on the road to the tip.

If we are going to change our habits, we need to start with refuse (to rhyme with fuse), not refuse (to rhyme with puce). Nice pun... let’s keep it a clean one from now on.

Sam

References:

• Barton, L. (17 April 2018). I kept all my plastic for a year – the 4,490 items forced me to rethink. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/17/i-kept-all-my-plastic-year-4490-items-forced-rethink#comment-114846418
• Morton, J. (14 April 2018). Piles of recyclables mount in wake of China's waste ban. Retrieved from http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/national/piles-of-recyclables-mount-in-wake-of-chinas-waste-ban/

read more "The 7 Rs of Recycling"

The Gap Between Promise and Action

A friend of mine recently created lovely neat channels on the door to the family pantry to hold Nespresso pods. While the work was fabulous, I was saddened by the implied waste. Nespresso pods are one of the most costly ways to consume coffee, and - despite my friends protesting that the pods are recycled - I am suspicious about how much recycling actually happens, despite Nestlé's green claims.

Recycling pods provides two choices: we either take the pods to a drop-off centre and the people at the centre clean the coffee out and send the aluminium for recycling; or that we clean the pods out ourselves and put the cleaned pods in with the aluminium cans with our local recycling scheme. Many people don't do either, and just chuck them out with their rubbish.

The aluminium consumed in every pod can't be turned into anything else down in our neck of the world... and people seem to drink four or five pods-worth of coffee a day. That's 1300 or 1600 pods per consumer, per year! Staggering. The website, One Million Women, state that globally 55 million pods are used per day ...and suggest that few are fully recycled (14 April 2007). Nestlé says that pods are recyclable, and their PR video looks all well and good (here), but the video script carefully doesn't say that the pods actually get recycled in New Zealand. This omission is all it takes to allow a difference between the possibility of recycling and the act of actually doing so.

Most of our 'recycling' in New Zealand, once collected, is simply landfilled because our overall quantities are too small to do anything with, and the cost of collecting it into a large enough cluster to then ship it offshore is prohibitive. China used to take a lot of our plastic, but no longer does: they have put restrictions in place as to what can be imported. To the best of my knowledge, the only thing that is consistently recycled is glass (often used for base-course - after being broken up and rumbled - on our roads). Some paper gets reused for things like egg cartons, but a lot is not suitable for reuse with our level of manufacturing and - again - logistics and cost. About half of our aluminium is intended for recycling: but it cannot be done in this country. As far as I am aware, there is no re-smelting plant in New Zealand for any type of aluminium: so aluminium intended for recycling - mostly industrial and commercial product - is shredded and goes to Australia or Japan if the cost:benefit stacks up.

From student projects undertaken into waste management which I have supervised, I know our local collection centres landfill almost everything other than glass and some paper. However, our councils wisely keep us in the habit of recycling so that when there is finally a buyer for the waste we produce, the systems are already in place, so supply will be seamless.

However, with Nespresso pods, I smell 'PR'. I suspect that pods don't get fully recycled in New Zealand. You can buy bags to post your pods back, or you can drop your spent pods off at selected florists. The coffee MAY get emptied out at the florists', but then the pods would have to be fully cleaned and the put in their recycling. Will all pod drop-off florists' put the aluminium in their recycle bin? Will their council have access to aluminium recycling collection points? Not in the South Island: apparently the Cook Strait is the most expensive piece of water in the world to cross. I would imagine that most aluminium goes to storage to wait better economic times, or to straight to landfill if the collection points are strained.

We don't manufacture Nespresso pods in New Zealand, and the cost of return shipping would outweigh any possible benefit: even if the pod aluminium goes to Australia. The logistics and costs of getting all those pods into one place in New Zealand to then ship them to Australia would be much greater than any actual value of recycling, and I cannot imagine that a company with Nestlé's - lack of - reputation for green practices would willingly take on the cost.

As a result, I suspect green-washing and consumer PR on the part of Nestlé. A gap between promise and action.

The best recycling is one that we don't need in the first place. There is even a name for this now: pre-cycling. This is a bit like a Clayton's (here) for any of you who remember watching the TV ads when you were a short person: "the drink you are having when you aren't having a drink" could become the "the consumption you are having when you aren't consuming".

Rather than a pod machine, think instead about buying one where you grind your own beans, and only heat enough hot water for the coffee head itself. That is what our machine does (it's an Ascaso), which has been going now for thirteen years with a few minor repairs. However, if you really want to go green, apparently instant coffee has the lightest footprint - ugh! But that is a step too far for me.


Sam

References:

• Gunther, M. (27 May 2015). The good, the bad and the ugly: sustainability at Nespresso. Retrieved 7 February 2018 from https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/27/nespresso-sustainability-transparency-recycling-coffee-pods-values-aluminum
• Nespresso NZ (n.d.). How to Recycle Coffee Capsules. Retrieved 7 February 2018 from https://www.nespresso.com/nz/en/how-to-recycle-coffee-capsules
• One Million Women (14 April 2017). Recycling Your Coffee Pods: Is The Nespresso Recycling Scheme Working? Retrieved 7 February 2018 from https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/recycling-your-coffee-pods-nespresso-recycling-scheme-working/
• Wikipedia (n.d.) Clayton's. Retrieved 8 February 2018 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytons

read more "The Gap Between Promise and Action"

Reducing waste

Recently I have been reading the book, "The Year of Living Danishly", about a London couple in their 30s who get the opportunity to move to rural Denmark for a year, and how their life together changes as a result (I should add that I borrowed this as an ebook from the local library).

It is a very interesting book, in that it provides a real insight into exactly how living is done differently, and in particular, the Danish approach to waste, design and longevity. I am not trying to say that the Danes are perfect - those who appear in the book seem to drink too much alcohol and consume too many sugary pastries for my taste - but as a nation Denmark seems to focus on modifying behaviours to limit the effects of the consumer society.

On the same day that my reading was drawing to its conclusion, I ran across a post in the regional paper about a New Zealand couple who were doing a road trip of the country explaining in simple steps how to work towards getting rid of your rubbish bin. Called "The Rubbish Trip presents Reducing our Household Rubbish: The Zero Waste Approach", the seminars aim to provide tips that attendees can pick and apply to fit their lives (website here). The idea is that those small changes will add up to larger changes in behaviour, and that over time, we become more thoughtful and make better choices.

But what surprised me the most were some of the readers' comments on the site. One poster asked "Will they tell us the downside too?" I was left wondering about this 'downside'.

In working to get rid of our rubbish bins, I could only see positive aspects, such as in reducing toxicity to both ourselves and our environment, lowering our collective carbon footprint, teaching our children to not buy into the throw-away society, retraining our local - and eventually national and international - providers, reducing our costs at the supermarket, and preventing more landfill... I couldn't see a downside.

When I mention toxicity, I have worked with career clients who have had to transition due to toxic overload syndrome: an illness which seems to often strike people in the health sector. We like to think that our cleaners and disinfectants can only do good for us, but that is not so. There are people amongst us who will have a allergic reaction to perfume, scented soap or even scented deodorant. Because of working with sufferers in the career sector, I no longer wear perfume, make-up, or use scented deodorant. I do use a very lightly scented soap and shampoo, but if I was seeing such a client, would have to shower again before seeing them to rinse even such lightly scented items away. As a nation, we simply don't understand the damage exposure can do, nor do we realise how little it might take to push each of us into overload.

I haven't been able to do away with my bin yet, or to yet consider it. I know I could bulk buy more to reduce the use of some soft plastics, and would be interested to see what else we could do, providing I make the moves one step at a time, and keep it a lifestyle choice, not a route-march. We currently use a soda stream for fizzy water, very rarely buy fizzy drinks, fill our own milk bottles from Oaklands (we are lucky where we live, as a local company, Oaklands, have vending machines for A2 milk, where we can refill our own glass bottles), compost, cook vege scraps for our dogs, use our own cloth and mesh bags to avoid plastic shopping bags. We go to a local fruit and vege shop and try to avoid buying veg in plastic. We get very little paper rubbish as all our bills and news arrive electronically, and we have no letterbox, but a PO Box with a "No Junk Mail" order. Any paper we do get is stockpiled to start the fire in winter. We keep any glass jars to put our own homemade jam into. We bottle our own fruit, and make our own apple juice from our own trees. We have a vege garden.

Despite all this, we still manage to have a full recycle bin every two to three months, and have a drum of other waste probably twice a year because our shopping habits are still fairly normal. We drink wine... and I have not yet found a way to easily bulk buy bubbly!

But I am still cannot see the downside in lowering our waste. I would be interested if any of you can find it for me.


Sam

References:

• Gee, S. (14 January 2018). Kiwi couple share benefits of life without a rubbish bin. Retrieved 15 January 2017 from https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/100490682/kiwi-couple-share-benefits-of-life-without-a-rubbish-bin
• The Rubbish Trip (n.d.). Upcoming Events. Retrieved 15 January 2017 from http://therubbishtrip.co.nz/upcoming-events/

read more "Reducing waste"

"Say it with [plants]"

Extracted from (Brown, n.d.).

I used to send flowers to friends, family and clients for special occasions, but I don't any more.

I suddenly realised that I was creating a problem for the recipient a week down the track, when they had to dispose of the 'remains' of the flowers, the plastic water capsules, and the wrapping.

Something that had looked alive and vibrant when given had died. I found this particularly unpleasant when I sent flowers for funerals. Why do we send people more death?

Additionally, I have also come to think that giving someone the sawn off reproductive organs of plants conveys a less than pleasant message in itself.

What I do now is to give either good handmade local chocolate, native plants in a pot, or wine. If I am giving plants, I select New Zealand natives to be planted out if the recipient has a garden, or as easy care house plants if they are in an apartment. Grasses are usually pretty trouble-free and long-lived, even for recipients who are not that flash with house plant care.

And for funerals, a living plant can be a memorial, particularly if the plant has significance or tradition for the family.

Giving something growing, or a taste experience, feels less wasteful somehow.

PMA (2015) said that the Baby Boomer sector is the most likely to purchase flowers weekly or fortnightly, with younger groups perhaps only indulging two or three times a year. According to the Retail and Personal Services Training Council (2015), florists in Australia and New Zealand have been declining at 1.4% per year since 2010. Perhaps this is a cultural shift, but few people I know want to receive cut flowers.

Floriculture needs to become ornamental permaculture if it wants to survive, I suspect.


Sam

References:

• Brown University (n.d.). Magnolia Detail. Retrieved 22 January 2017 from http://library.brown.edu/dps/curio/wp-content/uploads/magnolia_detail.jpg
• PMA (2015). Floral Consumer Trends. Retrieved 22 January 2017 from http://www.pma.com/content/articles/2015/11/floral-consumer-trends
• Retail and Personal Services Training Council (2015). Environmental Scan 2015 Floristry. Retrieved 22 January 2017 from http://rapstc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Floristry-Environmental-Scan-2015.pdf

read more ""Say it with [plants]""

Newsletter Issue 202, June 2011

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 202, June 2011

Hi guys,

Me-time is good for our mental wellbeing. Check out Alone Again (Naturally) below.

For career practitioners, advising The Greening Workforce in New Zealand is a bit of a problem. 

Windows 7 Defrag Scheduling   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

Alone Again (Naturally)

To quote the words of John Cooper Clarke (1984, p. 102), Geordie poet extraordinare;

    "nothing isn't anything

    it's tasteless and it's flat

    nothing, if it's anything

    is even less than that".

Most of us would reply, when asked what we are doing when alone, "Nothing".

Doing nothing these days is considered a bit of a luxury, or seen as being a bit anti-social. Yet when I was growing up, doing nothing for at least part of the day was normal. Normal to have time to recharge and be comfortable in your own skin.

Catherine Woulfe from the Sunday Star Times Sunday Magazine said in an article recently (29 May 2011) “To me, alone isn’t lonely at all. In fact, loneliness is not a state I’ve ever felt. ‘Alone’ means just being in my own head”. Woulfe pointed out that nearly a third of a million New Zealanders live alone. That's 20% of Kiwi adults. Granted, some by circumstance, but probably a lot of us by choice.

Woulfe (29 May 2011) went on to say that psychologists are apparently advising us to spend more time on our own, because of the benefits to our moods and empathy and increases in creativity and memory, plus the added bonus of a decrease in stress. That whole "time out" thing.

Time to reflect, time to assimilate, time to be yourself without constraint. That's a good thing. Making sense of the world might be difficult, but the idea of meditation - prayer - doesn't necessarily need to be solely the province of an organised religion.

Woulfe (29 May 2011) quoted an Auckland-based clinical psychologist, Dr Susan Hayes. Hayes thinks that alone-ness is a coming thing. Hayes was quoted as saying “There’s a very strong human need for just space, to recharge. I think our culture is very judgmental about aloneness and I’m not sure where that came from. I mean, we are social animals and we do need social interaction… We do need and crave a sense of belonging and connection to others, but we also need and crave space to ourselves, just to think. And I think a lot of us get peopled-out without realising it.”

Interesting phrase, 'peopled-out'; one I have used for years when I crave some 'me-time'. That is solo time; not time with someone else about, where, no matter how relaxed you are with their company, you are on the alert for the other's cues. And not time with the telly either, because, although that's further down the involvement continuum, it's still people-watching.

What we are after here is solitude. Time to be willingly alone with our own thoughts, to reflect on life, to be free to be ourselves and meander around naked in our heads. Solitude deliberately created by turning the phone off and reading, listening to music, walking, spending time with animals, painting, drawing, woodworking, carving, maintaining, sewing, sunbathing, skimming stones, gardening or just enjoying the view.

What was thought-provoking is Hayes (Woulfe, 29 May 2011) on the reduction of creativity when group brainstorming. “It’s almost like the thing where if you close your eyes your hearing improves. It’s like if you shut down everything else then the creative energies come through more strongly. You’ll find most artistic people far prefer to work in isolation". Hayes felt that this was due partly to dealing with the strain of other's demands, and partly that being alone gives us a better self-connection.

I am not so sure about group brainstorming reducing creativity, and no proof of Hayes statement was offered by Woulfe (29 May 2011). I tend to think that both strategies (solo creativity and group brainstorming) are different processes with different aims, objectives and outcomes. Group brainstorming is necessary for consensus, shared goals and socialising; solo creativity is for individual development and personal wholeness.

Hayes (Woulfe, 29 May 2011) also talked about the benefits of creativity on our individual happiness, about it being "incredibly healthy" to lose track of time through absorption in solo tasks.

Hey, talk to any model railway builder and they will tell you all about being healthy :-)

 

References:

• Cooper-Clarke, John (1984). Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt. UK: Arena.
• O'Sullivan, Raymond Edward aka Gilbert (1972). Alone Again (Naturally). UK: Management Agency & Music Ltd (MAM)
• Woulfe, Catherine (29 May 2011). "Me, myself and I". NZ: Sunday Star Times Sunday Magazine. Retrieved online 8 June 2011 from http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/features/5070149/Me-myself-and-I

The Greening Workforce

Why has there been such a rise in eco-consciousness over the past couple of decades?

Perhaps mirroring those late-Victorian sensibilities before the British Empire came crashing down, it is because of affluence, and from being in a relatively stable environment, that we too have the luxury to start thinking about the world around us.

To quote David Suzuki (G Magazine, 2011), a scientist turned eco-evangelist, "we need clean air, clean water, clean soil that gives us our food, clean energy from the sun, and a diversity of other living species in order to stay healthy and alive". When we in the West (a) have the luxury of time to think, and (b) feel that resources are declining, we finally started pondering whether we should maintain diversity and keep clean air, water, soil, food and energy.

There is some argument about whether the green movement is company-led or consumer-led. Personally, I suspect this is largely consumer-led, and is only now, fifty years on from hippie-hood, reaching mainstream critical mass. Individual company leaders, such as Interface's CEO Ray Anderson, have had personal epiphanies causing strategic change in existing organisations (Posner, 2009; 11th Hour Action Network, 2010); whereas relatively new start-ups such as Google have always been green (Vise, 2005).

Considering consumer trends, highlighted by Dutch marketing gurus Trendwatching (2011), the trend toward ecologically superior products is growing. Trendwatching have been monitoring the greening of consumer products for some years. Global Trends (February 2011) also notes a growth in social goods - something that "benefits the largest number of people in the largest possible way". Additionally,

Now started on the green track, the next question was "How?" For we career practitioners, the answer is an increase in 'green' jobs.

So what is a 'green' job? There is quite a bit of debate about what constitutes green-collar work. A large number of the positions are with green energy companies (hydro, solar, biofuel, biogas, wave and wind) or in agribusinesses or organics. However, there is growth in green consultancy, waste management, manufacturing, nutraceuticals, landscaping, building, biotechnology, health, law and research sectors. Together, these result in a corresponding rise in the need for green-collar professions; scientists, engineers, researchers, doctors, architects and consultants (GoingGreenJobs, 2009).

A 'green' job is more about what a green-collar worker does. Considering the management process, a green-collar worker reduces resource inputs, reduce the transformation cost, reduce waste and maximise outputs; all the while considering the environment, society and use of renewables. A green-collar worker takes a stewardship role and aims to live a good life and ensure there is plenty for those to yet to come.

Who is driving the need for 'green' professionals? Companies who have become green evangelists are tending to lead the way. US Carpet maker Interface has a "Mission Zero" policy aiming to be carbon neutral by 2020 (Posner, 2009; 11th Hour Action Network, 2010). Two leading multi-nationals, 3M and Google, both have Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies in place whereby each person who works for their companies is expected to spend 15 and 20% respectively on projects they are personally passionate about, a number of which are 'cradle to cradle' (Collins & Porras, 1994; Vise, 2005; McDonough & Braungart, 2002).

Globally, the Worldwide Workers on Organic Farms, or 'woofer', movement is increasing. Volunteers get full board and lodgings in exchange for organic agricultural or horticultural work. Currently there is no cash changing hands, but if you are young and fit, it is a great way to see the world while living a good life (see http://www.wwoof.co.nz/ and http://www.wwoof.org/).

But not everyone has the luxury of volunteering. Most green workers will need to live a good life AND accumulate some assets.

A green-collar worker will want to find work with a company which has a authentically green credentials. Not for green-collars is the PR-papered-over Nike sweat-shops, Phillip Morris' tobacco, Starbucks' jute coffee-sack chair covers or BP's oil-spills. They will only want to work for genuinely green companies. This means that we career practitioners need to understand which companies are really green, to be able to better advise our clients.

Determining whether a company is truly green or just 'green-washed' is difficult, generating far more debate than what constitutes a green job. Overall, it is my opinion that few New Zealand companies are truly green. The New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development is probably the closest that we have to a national body bestowing the green stamp of approval. However, while members include Hubbard Foods, Ecostore and Interface (NZ), the remainder of members look like pretty ordinary - or even your stock-standard capitalist rape & pillage - businesses to me (NZBDSD, n.d.).

This makes providing sound advice about green employers to a green-collar career client very difficult. In addition, however, there is another problem. There is no New Zealand-based 'green-exchange' for work. Seek and TradeMe advertise roles, but there is no oversight; green-collar workers have no surety about the green credentials of the advertiser.

So while the green-collar trend is growing globally, there is not enough infrastructure to support this sector yet in New Zealand.

For now, the best the practitioner can do is to can direct clients to global green-collar jobs at:

• http://www.greenjobsnewzealand.com/ (mostly volunteers though)
• http://jobs.greenbiz.com/
• http://www.goinggreenjobs.com/
• http://www.naturenet.net/people/volunteers.html
• http://jobs.care2.com/a/all-jobs/list/q-%22eco-friendly%22
• http://www.globalvolunteernetwork.org/
• http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/12/greening-job-search-5-tips-finding-environmentally-friendly-employment/

References:

• 11th Hour Action Network (2010) Ray Anderson, founder Interface Inc Biography. Retrieved 12 May 2011 from http://www.11thhouraction.com/ideasandexperts/rayanderson
• Collins, Jim & Porras, Jerry (1994). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. USA: Collins Business Essentials.
• G Magazine (22 February 2011). G-Online - Ecowarrior: David Suzuki (as told to Caitlin Howlett). Retrieved 7 June 2011 from http://www.gmagazine.com.au/features/2432/ecowarrior-david-suzuki
• Global Trends (February 2011). GT Briefing February 2011: What's Good? Social Good! Retrieved 7 June 2011 from http://www.globaltrends.com/features/innovation-and-growth/115-gt-briefing-february-2011-whats-good-social-good
• GoingGreenJobs (2009). 25 Jobs That Let You Go Green. Retrieved 7 June 2011 from http://www.goinggreenjobs.com/25-jobs-that-let-you-go-green/
• McDonough, William & Braungart, Michael (2002). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things. USA: North Point Press
• NZBDSD (n.d.). NZBCSD Member Directory. Retrieved 7 June 2011 from http://www.nzbcsd.org.nz/directory.asp
• Posner, Bruce G. (2009). One CEO's Trip From Dismissive to Convinced. MIT Sloan Management Review, 51(1), pp. 47-51.
• Trendwatching (2011). 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2011 from  http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/11trends2011/
• Trendwatching (June 2011). Monthly Briefing & 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011. Retrieved 7 June 2011 from http://trendwatching.com/briefing/ & http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/11trends2011/
• Vise, David A. (2005). The Google Story. USA: Random House.

Windows 7 Defrag Scheduling

If you are running Windows 7, you no longer need to schedule a defrag.

This is because Windows will now run it for you, one day each week at 1.00am.

However, the rider is that you have to have your PC on. If you, like me, turn your PC off at the wall, you might need to set a different time, where you can leave your PC on and get the maintenance done. To do that:

• click Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Task Scheduler
• On the left, navigate to Task Scheduler Library | Microsoft | Windows | Defrag
• Look for the Scheduled Defrag activity and make your change to suit.

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• LUN, Logical unit number. A unique identifier for assigning hard disk devices for SCSI, iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) or similar address protocols. Like the E:drive on your PC :-)

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, we look at all you can do with Alt, Shift, Ctrl and W:

• Access "Close the active database window" Ctrl & W
• Excel "Close the active workbook window" Ctrl & W
• IE "Close the current window " Ctrl & W
• PowerPoint "Close a presentation" Ctrl & W
• Publisher "Turn Snap To Guides feature on and off" Ctrl & W
• Windows Media Player "Close or stop playing a file on the File menu" Ctrl & W
• Word "Doc Close" Ctrl & W
• Word "Word Underline" Ctrl & Shift & W

Hot Linx

Need an email-tutorial? Check out TechRepublic's top nine hints for writing shiny emails at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/msoffice/nine-guidelines-for-writing-effective-email-messages/5154?tag=nl.e056

According to NZIM, there's turbulence ahead in the recruitment market. Read their newsletter editorial at http://www.management.co.nz/executiveupdate.asp?eID=184&utm_campaign=MGTF&utm_medium=email&utm_source=22

If you are managing workers of all ages, check out the diagram on Global Trend's website. It gives you a rough rule of thumb for what members of each sector need at http://www.globaltrends.com/features/shapers-and-influencers/127-gt-briefing-may-2011-the-next-generation-at-work

TechRepublic have a tip on "Avoid a Word Find and Replace gotcha that could prove catastrophic" at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/msoffice/avoid-a-word-find-and-replace-gotcha-that-could-prove-catastrophic/5226?tag=nl.e056

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

read more "Newsletter Issue 202, June 2011"