Surviving the Workday

Read about the only area in Metro Atlanta not suffering from a water shortage.

How is that possible? They learned to re-use wastewater by filtering it through wetlands and resevoirs and eventually turning it into drinking water. Smart. And good news for all of us except developers (less developable land because it’s now wetlands).

Via Treehugger

Resource

How much water do you use?

I have to say that I am uncomfortable with paying others to touch me. And it has always been the case since I started paying for hair cuts in college. I had one manicure at GhostGirl’s request prior to her wedding, but I think it was her m-i-l’s idea. And I had one facial with Anne P where it was revealed that I have the dryest skin on the planet (I guess we know how I choose contributors). But for the most part, I’ve shyed away from spa culture, which has made its way into being part of a middle class female in the United States:

It’s hard to pinpoint when this began to change, but it’s been a gradual creep, with one treatment after another redefined from an option to a necessity, the required armor of modern femininity. Treatments once performed at home, like manicures and eyebrow-plucking, are conventionally outsourced. Others, like massage, are regarded as cures, the antidote to an epidemic of female stress. Each day, a set of treatments—from exfoliation to bikini waxing—gets nudged toward the mainstream (in the pages of women’s magazines, in conversations between friends dressing for a party, in mothers’ comments to their daughters), shifting from treats to basics: the pubic “landing strip,” nearly a required part of the dating uniform for younger women; perfect nails and shaped eyebrows a requisite for professionals. Even little girls get spa treatments at birthday parties. Having such procedures done professionally is a signal (to yourself and to others) that you have it together: You are a pointedly urban creation, in control of your own body.

While I totally understand that many of us don’t have sisters and moms to paint our nails and braid our hair, and many of us travel for business and are exhausted and crave soothing touch, while I really think female stress does need to be dealt with, I just can’t shake the power inequity that exists when I hire someone for $20 to get down on her knees and scrub my feet.

This isn’t to say that massage is a bad idea or hair cuts by a professional are a terrible thing. Like everything else, I think it’s possible to seek arrangements in which people are fairly paid and treated well. However, in a booming industry where, just about across the board, minority women workers are paid minimum wage or less to deal with toxic materials, calluses, and pubic hair, one has to wonder what exactly we’re paying for.

You’ll want to read the rest of An inside look at the spa industry, which investigates the economics of touch.

Via Jezebel

Late to the party on this one.

Perhaps if turkeys were slaughtered humanely, I would feel more predisposed to eat them on Thanksgiving: Bill Maher on George Bush: Pardon all the Turkeys.

Oh woe, DC socialites and politicos now have to shop at Costco like the rest of us.

Some of my favoritest quotes include:

Indeed, some hostesses today aren’t above serving Costco salmon, nicely dressed up with a dollop of crème fraîche.

…

The ultimate awkwardness, she said, is when clients want to buy their food from Costco but disguise it: “They’ll say: ‘Why don’t you bring the fancy glassware, and we’ll get the rest from Costco. And could you put it on one of your fancy plates? Oh, and how about some of your fancy ice cream on top?’”

It is at this point that I must quote our Costco Axiom: You can never get out of there for less than $300. Washington’s elite might think they are being pennypinching Joe Blows, but they can still afford to shop there a lot more than I can.

Today is Buy Nothing Day, a 24 hour period of consumer fasting at the (supposed) height of the buying season.

 Buy Nothing Christmas is not really about refusing to spend a dime over the holiday season. It’s about taking a deep breath and deciding to opt out of the hype‚ the overcrowded malls‚ and the stressful to–do lists. It’s about reminding ourselves to really think about what we are buying‚ why we are buying it‚ and whether we really need it at all.

While the massive advertising campaigns suggest that your salvation may be found in the purchase of 3 turtlenecks for $10 at Target, I will suggest that salvation might be found elsewhere.

We could talk about how we live an economic theory that all economic growth is good, regardless of the costs, but that’s for another time.

If you’re buying toys, you might take a quick look at Toys to Avoid This Holiday Season (from World Against Toys Causing Harm, (WATCH), a Boston Toy Safety Group).

There are safety hazards for each toy noted in the slides, but I also made some notes:

#1 Simply too creepy to be true. Zombie baby. Pictured above.

#3 I love magnetite. But it’s probably not for children as even I have the urge to put these stones in my mouth.

#4 At first I had no idea what the heck this was. And once I realized it was a SPINNING DAGGER, the hazard became rather obvious. Love to hear the product development discussion on that:

“What should we make that will really appeal to kids?”

“How about a spinning dagger?”

“Great idea!”

It really lends credence to the “You’ll poke your eyes out” warning. 

#7 The exact same notes apply here from #4.

#10 Oh, here’s #1 again. Does the fact that I find this exceptionally creepy mean I would be a bad mother? I wonder.

#11 Kids need a toy to do this? Who knew.

Treehugger describes a delicious portable workstation, The Plan Station, which seems the ultimate in flexibility. It hangs from the wall, and is easily transportable for those of us who work on-site as contractors or temporary workers.

I admire the seeming lack of resources used (ingenuity over materials), but if it’s made in China (I don’t see that information or contact information), and sold for $65 here, I doubt it’s green in the sense that people were treated fairly, paid adequately, and the environment was respected.

Just a thought this buying season.

Etsy has entirely handmade gifts from different artists. I’ve found these handmade products, which might be appealing to certain men:

beautiful woodcuts;
hands off office lunch bags;
two green cups;
leather handbound journals;
floppy disk notepads or floppy disk pen and pencil holder; and
a tin guitar.

Today I went with my friend Beth of Pintsize Projects to her friend Rosanne of Jingle Jangle’s crafts fair in LA.  Beth makes kits for parents and kids to make together, including the Make Believe Kit and a Sock Toy Kit (shown below).

Rosanne makes jewelry, including really beautiful bracelets.

Crafts fairs are great places to buy gifts, and you can support an artist and her labor rather than a corporation that uses questionable methods of recruiting, keeping, and paying their employees.

50 Ways to Green Your Business has to be the most confusing thing I’ve read this morning. And I’ve already had close to four hours of confusing reading. I think that it’s a list of the “green decisions” made by multinational corporations, with the implicit assumption that we can use those “green decisions” in our own businesses. Ha. I made it to the end of the list and didn’t see one useful idea. If you see something, post in comments.

And here are some really nice “green” desk chairs that cost more than most people on the planet makes in a week. That raises some interesting issues about resource use. Is that the best use of my $750? Then again, my desk chair came from a productive dumpster diving session with my friend Paul outside the Harvard houses in 1998. Smelled a little funny. But aired out well.

I’m tired of greenwashing this morning.

Via Treehugger

I took the Handmade pledge (let’s hope “handmade” doesn’t actually mean made with my own hands) for Christmas shopping, so I’ve been poking around on these sites:

•  jewelry from Chocolate and Steel
• bracelets from  Jingle Jangle 
• a monster or two from Kokoleo
• a fleece hat with ears from Kitsune
• mixed media art from Kate Treik
• project kits from Pintsize projects
• sock monkeys.

If you have a favorite site of handmade goods, please leave it in comments. I’m particularly in need of handmade gifts for men. Not that all men like the same things, but I need handmade things for men who like music, men who like political science, and men who are terribly preoccupied with the weather. Those men.

Registering for the free service of Catalog Choice allows you to tell companies not to send you their catalogs.

Well, I suppose corporate sins are rewarded every time we buy one of their products. However, Consumers International gives a different type of award to companies that abuse consumers’ rights.

This year’s winners* are:

Coca-Cola – for continuing the international marketing of its bottled water, Dasani, despite admitting it comes from the same sources as local tap water.

Kellogg’s – for the worldwide use of cartoon-type characters and product tie-ins aimed at children, despite high levels of sugar and salt in their food products.

Mattel – for stonewalling US congressional investigations and avoiding overall responsibility for the global recall of 21 million products.With the overall prize going to:

Takeda Pharmaceuticals – for taking advantage of poor US regulation and advertising sleeping pills to children, despite health warnings about pediatric use.

Mmm…sleeping pills for kids. That sounds like a great idea.

*Details on these particular corporate sins here.

In my series of posts on resources use, I found this resource, Water footprint, which has a variety of calculators and information:

an individual water footprint calculator (quick version);

an individual water footprint calculator (extended version);

data on how much water is used to produce food; and

journal articles on water footprints (for those of us who like journals).

Apparently I am amping up ethical consuming posts this Consuming Season.  

Please read the excellent in-depth post Slavery Conditions for Indian Children making Gap Garments by Sisyphus. As much as everyone likes a good deal on clothes, I would also like to believe that we don’t want a good price on our clothes because they were made by children in slavery.

Resources
Sweatshop Free Clothes (a short list I compiled earlier)

One of the biggest factors that affects personal resource use is home size. According to Size Matters, we have seen average home sizes increase in the United States from 1,100 square feet in 1950 to 2340 square feet in 2002. And the number of household members has dropped from nearly 4 to close to 2.5. 

A note on small structures:

“Building small makes ‘natural sense.’” says Duo Dickinson, a Connecticut architect and author. “First, you build what’s needed and then what’s wanted. The problem is that many people don’t know the difference.”

It would be impossible to get universal agreement on how “small” a small house should be. Prison cells are small, but hardly livable. “For the designer, the key is to make the house fit the clients,” says Dickinson. “A house fits when living in it is effortless.” Like a tailor fitting a garment to the exact dimensions of a human form, a designer should strive to size building elements for the occupants’ values and way of living.

After attending a Little House on a Small Planet workshop at the Crestone Sustainable Energy Fair, I’m not actually a fan of the idea of “building” anything, but I like the general ideas about small spaces. I think most of what we need is already built. Shay Solomon, workshop leader (and author of Little House on a Small Planet) gave great tips that work even if you live in a big house.

Space use is a tough sell because you can’t go out and fix it today (like a leak on a kitchen sink to decrease water use or like unplugging a cell phone charger to decrease electricity use). And small spaces aren’t without some actual costs. It was a pain to get a mortgage for our small space (the amount of the mortgage and the size of the space made it difficult). And it looks as though it’s a bit more difficult to adopt children in a small space. However, I think the size of our homes is something that should be on your mind (and my mind) as we make choices in the future in our resource use.

Resources

Global Ecological Footprint Calculator

Carbon Footprint Tips

Calculate your impact

This is the second in a series of posts on resource use.

It’s my belief that most people just don’t understand the water cycle and this is to blame for just about most of our problems with water policy and practice (that and outright greed) in the United States. And I say this as someone who majored in earth science in college, who has edited a considerable number of hydrology chapters on groundwater and surface water for textbooks, and someone who has been on the local water board. I think about water a lot. I’ve talked to people about their water quite a bit. And I think that many people don’t get where water comes from. They don’t get how scarce it is. And they don’t get that we are going to run out.

Take a good look at this diagram from the USGS. Where is most of the water? It looks like most of it is stored in groundwater or freshwater or the atmosphere. However, most of the water in the water cycle is stored in the oceans as salt water. How much? Like more than 97%.* (The diagram is misleading in hopes of being illustrative.) And then just about 2% (or less as they are melting) is stored as glaciers. That leaves 1% divided between groundwater, surface water, and soil moisture. That’s 1% of the water that’s available for our use.

Why do I care? I basically came of age in a drought, so my habits are naturally thrifty with water. As a teenager in Santa Barbara/Goleta, I took 3 minute showers with our low-flow shower head, turned off the water while soaping and shaving, let the lawn die and planted cacti, and just about never washed the cars. We only did full loads with the dishwasher and laundry and we never let water run down the drain if it could be repurposed.  Unfortunately, to “alleviate” the drought, Santa Barbara voted to import “state water,” which is really water stolen…um…removed from other places.

Our current home is rather unique in California in that we actually use community well water. Several years, all of a sudden, the wells couldn’t provide enough water for the community and we had to truck water in.  Trucking in water for a few months was expensive, we had to raise the water rates, and everyone had to learn to conserve.

Conservation  is a really good idea, but domestic water from wells and public water supply is only about 10-12% of the water used in the United States. What uses the rest? Check out the scary bar graph from the USGS, which indicates that as of 2000 roughly half of all water in the United States was used in thermoelectric plants. See the connection to yesterday’s post on electricity use? Use less electricity and you actually use less water.

So how do you know how much water you use at home (or at work for that matter)? It should be recorded in cubic feet or gallons on your bill. You could also just read your meter, though most meters are the property of the water service provider so you don’t want to tamper with it. You can play around with this calculator from the USGS to get an estimate of how much water you might use. And check out the resources from your local water company. Many offer a free “water audit” in which someone will come to your home and give you suggestions for how to conserve.

Resources
Save Water in 49 Ways
Water Saving Tips by Region
Water Saver Home Tour
Everyday Water Saving Tips from Consumer Reports

*According to F.W. Fetter’s Applied Hydrogeology

I think this is a series of posts on resource use. I have another post on water coming soon. But onward to electricity!

A while ago, we were discussing phantom load, which is the electrical power you use from having something plugged in, but not turned on. I suggested based on my experience with burning out a generator in the wilderness that having a few simple items plugged in (but not on) that all items used power when plugged in.

Anne P. and Scott wondered if phantom load only existed with items with the “wall wart,” like cell phone chargers or fancy lamps, not simple items. So, eventually, I borrowed a Kill-a-Watt from my dad to measure energy consumption of simple items.

Here’s the Kill-a-Watt measurement before I plugged in anything. It shows just around 120 Volts (120.1Volts) right at the outlet, which is appropriate.

Now I plugged in my cell phone charger, which has a “wall wart.” The Kill-a-Watt reads 123.4 Volts, which is what we expected. There’s nothing at the end of the cell phone charger. No phone. Nothing. The Kill-a-Watt shows that the cell phone charger is just using electricity because it’s plugged in.

And then I plugged in a series of other simple objects (all set to off), including a lamp. This cheap lamp apparently does use a little bit of electricity when plugged in, but off (120.9 Volts). Not as much as a cell phone charger, but still some. And this explains how I was able to burn out a generator in a cabin in the wilderness having only simple appliances plugged in and not on (a CD player and coffee pot without any visual displays).

Now this wasn’t particularly scientific. We have an old house with some old wiring. And the Kill-a-Watt seemed to record different amounts when I ran this little experiment again. So with my dad’s permission, I can lend you the Kill-a-Watt through the mail to expand our sample size of items with and without wall-warts. It’s made in China, of course, and is the sort of toy you can use for a couple of weeks before you’ve measured everything in the house three times; it’s ideal for lending. Just leave a comment here if you want this great device.

And why does anyone care about phantom load? Many people are trying to reduce their use of electricity because most electricity power plants in the United States burn coal, which releases greenhouse gases, which in turn warm the planet. So by using less electricity, you are trimming your own electricity bill as well as contributing a bit less to global warming.

How can you apply your knowledge of phantom load to the workplace? I’ll tell you what I do, and you can adapt from there. I simply unplug appliances that I rarely use (like the dreadful fax machine and printer). If you share an office with many people, you’ll need to check before doing much unplugging. Being mindful of your energy use seems part of general mindfulness at work.  

Earlier this year, Jim and I decided to make gifts for each other’s birthdays. I made Jim an elaborate meal for his birthday. I don’t have any idea what he’ll do for mine. But it was satisfying to think that we didn’t need to go to Target in order to make each other happy.

I don’t buy a lot of Christmas gifts, but I’m going to do my best to buy handmade goods this season and I took the Handmade Pledge through Buy Handmade. Most of our friends are artists and artisans and I would much rather buy their stuff (or stuff from artists and artisans that I don’t know) than stuff made through questionable means in questionable conditions.

Buy Handmade is a consortium of crafts makers that you may have heard of, including Etsy, Craftster, Indiepublic, Craft:, Austin Craft Mafia, BurdaStyle, and Interweave.

Via Treehugger

Yes, a clever person has found a use for dead pens. Never a shortage of those around most offices.

And the runner up ideas for used pens are equally clever.

I know many people are actually winding down their Christmas shopping, but for those of us who don’t actually shop until it gets a bit cold outside, there is still plenty of time.

Boy in the Bands has a great new (to me) list from Quakernet of No Sweatshop Clothes. I started making a list before of Sweatshop Free Clothes, which I should probably expand. It seems to me that as important as it is to make a fitting gift choice for someone, it’s also important to make sure that the gift wasn’t made in slave-like conditions.