The Greening of America - still a ways to go

I received my Staples order at work in a plastic bag that was 20 times larger than necessary to hold the two mini-BIC Wite-Out® correction tape holders it contained. (People wanting to talk to me about the ecology of correction tape, please take a number and line up to the left there).

The 20-times-too-big plastic bag had a big green sticker (!!GREEN!!) on it that said:

Make a difference.

Recycle your ink and toner today.

Staples claims on the green label that they have recycled more than 50 million cartridges!  Wow! Go Staples.....  Sounds admirable doesn't it?  And 50 million sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  But, hmn… is it really?

If you figure one printer per 10 people in the U.S. - that's at least 30 million home printers, not counting business printers.  So the 50M they boast about is 1½ cartridges per personal printer recycled in----how many years was that?

Hmn….

I opened the 20-times-too-big bag and took out the 2 little packages of mini-Wite-Outs®.  They are the size of thumb-drives, but themselves are blister-packed onto a cardboard backing.  And I had ordered the "ECOsolutions" version of the BIC Wite-Out®.

Any notion that this was "green" was in shreds because the two little containers had been sent out to me in a separate order.

So first, there was the over-packaging and the huge plastic bag (petroleum products in the manufacture and now landfill issues) … then the petroleum used to drive the thing to my work site … then the staff person used to deliver it from our Receiving area to me … and soon there'd be the cleaning person required to deal with the disposal of the 20x-too-big plastic bag and the cardboard (since we don't recycle cardboard or paper at my big worksite).  BIC says "we can be part of the solution."

What a waste of energy, time, resources this one little order was. 

I'm thinking maybe I should go back to the traditional "correction tape"-just crossing stuff out with my pen.  That seems about the greenest I could go on this one.

All those print cartridges, recycled or not - another reason not to print out so much stuff in our "paperless" work environments.

Read more about BIC's "eco solutions" - http://www.bicecolutions.com - I'm dying to see how they are "greening" the ubiquitous BIC disposable shavers and lighters....

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Chainsaws and spelling

I hate people who are picky about spelling (unless it's in a copy-editing situation).  But recently I was trying to search out a blues musician called "Chainsaw Davidson" on Facebook.

If you really want to know how bad the literacy level is in North America, maybe in the world -- search the word "chainsaw" in Facebook and start reading at about result #100.  Not that people don't know how to spell chainsaw.  It's--well, it's ...  well, here are some of the spellings I saw:

• The Texas Chainsaw Masica
• Texas Chainsaw Massacher
• Chainsaw Mascer
• Chainsaw Texas Masacre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakr
• The Chainsaw Masacure
• Texas Chainsaw Masecar
• Texas Chainsaw Massaccare
• The Chainsaw Massicure
• Texas Chainsaw Masaquer
• Texas Chainsaw Massaker
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Massacra

The I-don't-know-how-to-spell-Texas-either list:

• Texaz Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Massicar
• Texes Chainsaw Massacare
• Texes Chainsaw Masacer
• Texsas Chainsaw Massacare 

The NASCAR spellings:

• Texus Chainsaw Masicar
• Texas Chainsaw Massicar
• Texas Chainsaw Masacr 

• Texas Chainsaw Mascara  (my personal favourite)
• Chainsaw Masicka  (the gangsta rap spelling?)
• Texas Chainsaw Masscre
• Chainsaw Masscre the Beginning
• Texas Chainsaw Masequer  (Eh, garçon, it must be French!)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacrecre
• Texas Chainsaw Masakre
• Texas Chainsaw Msacre
• Chainsaw Massa  (This guy wasn't going to take any chances on 'massacre')
• Texas Chainsaw Beggining (This guy must have decided to sidestep 'massacre' altogether and just go with beginning as a keyword.  Oops.)
• Texas Chainsaw Masika  (3rd reich spelling)
• Texas Chainsaw Masakar
• Texas Chainsaw Masicer
• Chainsaw Masicare
• Texas Chainsaw Massequere
• Texas Chainsaw Masachar
• Texas Chainsaw Maccacre Texas Chainsaw Mascure

I mean there is Google for checking the spelling of things and since you're already on the internet creating your page on Fasebook, er, Facebuke, er Phacebook...

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Sad, sad, sad...Tibetan culture struggling to survive

I went to the Tibetan Cultural Festival this afternoon. It was put on to raise money for the earthquake victims (many of them ethnic Tibetans) in Jyekundo, also known as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China where a devastating magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck April 14th, 2010. 


The theme of the festival was "Celebrating Survival."

It was sad, though, to watch minuscule numbers of young Tibetans performing -- part of an increasingly desperate attempt by Tibetans to preserve their culture in the face of what often seems like insurmountable odds - and the very negative energy of the might and not entirely good will of China.

Today I saw a handful of Tibetan performers where you would much prefer there would be hundreds.

As a Canadian, I feel a poignant kinship with Tibetans. We Canadians, too, live adjacent to a huge superpower -- one that at any time could decide it wants our resources, as China did with Tibet, and could just roll over the border and help themselves.

As much as we have trouble defining just what Canadian culture is, I know that we would suffer and mourn it just as much as the Tibetans do if it was taken away from us.  (I'm not quite sure where we could possibly go to in exile to preserve it though - at least the Tibetans had India).

It is awful to watch the remnants of a once-magnificent culture being bullied out of existence.

Namaste.

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