Don't Waste Those Envelopes!

I finally had a stroke of genius, if I do so humbly say so myself. Granted, this may be only genius in my head, but I'm so excited to solve multiple of my first world problems in one shot.

What have I done?

Well, if you have children in school, you know how often you have to send things to and from school. There are the field trip forms with checks, there are the volunteer forms, there are the room parent volunteer forms and checks, there are the hot lunch orders and checks (ok, not for us but for most people), and the list goes on and on. I can't tell you how often I am sending in something to school that really ought to be in an envelope for safety and/or security.

An envelope. I have those somewhere. Somewhere... I think. Ok, so I'm tend to not have them on hand as often as I'd like. And so I send in things paper clipped together or simply folded in the hopes that they make it safely to school - because how often do I even have a spare paper clip?

On the flip side, I get junk mail and bills out the wazoo. I think we all do, even though I've put myself on many of the "do not X" lists. The majority of them come with reply envelopes that I don't use because I pay all my bills online. They simply go into recycling, though I hate all the waste.

Do it with me... one plus one equals TWO!

It finally dawned on me that simply saving those reply envelopes and using them for sending information to and from school. No (ok less) waste, no panicking because I don't have an envelope, no checks or forms lost because they were hanging out loose in the backpack.

I'm proud of my genius moment. What's your best genius moment?

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Green Is A Popular ... Color

So my company is going green. It’s quite proud of the fact that its new building is carbon neutral. In fact, there was an article in the paper about it recently.

Going green is a good thing, and I’m all in favor of it. But some of it seems a bit hypocritical.

For example, apparently our clean desk policy is green. Yep, the fact that we can have no paper on our desk at the end of the day or if we are leaving our workspace for more than 2 hours apparently makes us green.

I finally decided it’s because the paper collects dust if it sits on the desk, which necessitates the use of cleaning products which aren’t green. Forget the people who throw things away only to reprint them the next day.

And I learned tonight when a friend of mine was over that apparently the building gets power from appropriate sources, which means that there is a lack of power. So for the multiple thousand of people who work there, we have six microwaves. They’re all in the cafeteria, and when I was there for the first time today I saw the long long LONG line. But apparently we have enough power to have flat screen tvs throughout the building everywhere brainwashing us about how great the company is.

Surprisingly, the cleaning materials tend to be more harsh chemicals, too. I know this simply from the smell, let alone the containers that I can see them using. The interesting part of this to me is that Illinois recently began requiring that all school use environmentally friendly cleaners, so you know they’re out there.

But there are good things that they’ve done, too. Although the office is further from home for just about everyone I know (meaning more miles driven in traffic), they’re also incorporating working from home for many more people, which somewhat offsets that.

The cleaning staff also cleans during the day vs at night, which is a bit odd to see people polishing and vacuuming (and somewhat distracting when on a call but that’s ok) as you’re working, but no lights are needed for them to see at night to clean.

And in the cafeteria, there are no disposable plates or cutlery. It’s all white china – and sadly, I like it and am tempted to ask where they got it for when my current dish set needs replacing – and regular silverware. Less in the landfill, yay! They actually separate out the china from the paper (napkins, wrappers, etc) from the food waste. The food waste is recycled and utilized for something – sorry, I forget if it’s compost or animal food or what – and the paper products are also recycled.
But I still go back to the clean desk policy being green. It’s an audit requirement, people. There’s spin, and then there’s flat out silly. But hey, if someone can come up with a good way that no paper is green, I want to hear it!