Aya

So, this summer I had just about thrown in the towel with gas prices. While oil producing countries amassed over 1.3 trillion in surplus bucks and oil companies rolled in it, we suffered from high gas prices. Whatevs!

Anyway, carpooling is great for the environment and your wallet. At least 2-3 days a week I try to carpool with friends and/or neighbours. I limit my driving on the weekend to a necessary trip or two for errands. It sucks to be a prisoner in your own apartment but I live in a city with a near non-existent public transportation system. I vow to move to an earth-friendly, healthy city in the next year but in the meantime, CARPOOLING, woohoo!

And now to papers and pretty printouts. Let’s vow to cut our paper usage by at least 50% in the next year. I work in an office where people print thousands of papers a day but won’t for long. My goal is to be near paperless in all my personal and business dealings. I think the challenge with conserving paper lies in working with others. No matter how often I tell clients and coworkers to ‘please turn on your edit tracker’, I get an 80 page printout of the same document that has a few corrections. Come on!

It takes some getting used to but I believe that nothing I do over a 365 day period is worth the death of a single tree. My self-worth is still intact, though, thank you very much

Are paperless dealings and carpooling in your future? What do you do to save on fuel expenses?

So we talked a little about shopping bags and the environment last Sunday. Let’s talk utilities and electronics.

For pure economic reasons, I developed a habit of turning off lights when I was in college. Broke like hell and often sharing space with people, I wanted to make sure that the bill from wasteful usage wasn’t biting into my food budget. It wasn’t easy (nearly impossible at times) but the habit was infectious and a few of my roommates would turn off all lights if we were huddled in the living room, sitting outside or stepping out.

Nowadays, I make sure to unplug chargers, the TV, and so on if I’m not using them. I’ve also learnt that most of my clothes dry just fine if I hang them up (after washing in cold water!). No need to turn the dryer at all unless washing something very heavy or have annoying relatives who put a pair of gloves in the dryer for 30 minutes. It’s probably not easy for everyone who shares space with others or who live in semi-crammed space but it really is doable and of benefit to the environment and your wallet.

I try to conserve energy but feel especially guilty about 3 or 4 business trips per month, at times in a car but mostly flying. I don’t anticipate travelling less when I’m done with this phase in my professional career in a few weeks but I really can’t think of another way to move about without flying. So in the meantime, I will continue to unplug my phone charger, TV, blender and hang my clothes to dry.

Any tips for conserving energy and reducing waste?

Sing and dance, wherever you are. The angels are luckier than us now that you have passed.

Miriam Makeba died yesterday at age 76 shortly after a concert in Italy. She died as she lived, bringing music and delight to her fans. I danced to Pata Pata for hours. No matter what funk I was in or what was going on around me, Pata Pata fixed it.

Dudes, I’m dedicating every Sunday till the end of the month to share my environment woes and urge you to join me in reducing the size of our foot prints on the planet.

This week, let’s vow to begin using reusable grocery bags whenever we hit the market. Almost every market sells one now. If yours doesn’t, you can find them in megastores. Forget plastic bags, they’re vulgar and clutter the world.

If you’re not already using a reusable bag for your grocery and other regular shopping, be warned that it takes some time for it to become a habit. I have about 30 in the house and another 15 in the car. I would forget that I had several in the house and would buy a new one every time. It really does become second nature, though. Keeping a few in the car helps a great deal.

I recycle plastic and glass containers and have gone virtually paperless in my personal dealings. I intend to be mostly paperless in my work very soon.

Remember we are the khalifas on this earth. Now what kind of khalifa litters the ground and the oceans with poorly degradable material, poisoning living things?

Any earth friendly tips and practices ye want to share?

(Image courtesy of Thomas Northcut @ Getty Images)

Imagine this:

You wake up around 6ish (or 9ish if you’re a nightowl) and make yourself a strong cup of coffee/tea.  You put on your favourite news channel or radio station and catch up with the latest in politics or business.  Then, you put on your sneakers and go for a walk outside or in a gym.  If inclined, you could set up a home gym in your living room or basement.

A couple of hours have passed since you’ve greeted the day and now you are ready to tackle the responsibilities of your job.  Still in your tracks or maybe you’ve changed into a comfortable pair of jeans, your first task of the day is a conference call with a client at 10.  You dial out from your living room and you’re alerted that you’re the second caller.  After the virtual meeting, you reply to e-mail, proofread the draft sent by your assistant the day before, and set up a follow-up call with a client in India.

All of this happens before lunch.  One minute after noon, you enter your kitchen and make yourself a tuna sandwich with sprouts, fresh tomatoes, jalapenos and a dab of olive oil.

Notice anything odd?

This is my vision for the future of a great number of jobs/professions in the near future.  People working out of their homes.  Prioritizing their work days to spend less time in traffic, hallway conversations, and coworker interruptions.  For those people with young children, sick relatives, and/or elderly folks to care for, they can avoid the cost and worry of having someone fill in while they rush madly from one spot to another.

For the environment, it means fewer cars on the road, fewer accidents, and less pollution.  Since multitasking is a powerful stressor, imagine the health benefits for a large segment of working people.  For people who like to engage in artistic, business, and volunteering endeavours, there would be more time in the workday to enrich their lives without the office being the focus and highlight of their existence.

Some would reject this outright, claiming that people need middle management and supervision to do their jobs.  Perhaps so but nothing stops people from surfing the net and gabbing on the phone all day at their cubicles from what I’ve seen so frequently throughout my professional life.

It takes some creativity, vision, and restructuring of how we view the workplace and workday. I just think that today’s world is markedly different than the world that give birth to the structure of the on-site, 40 hour week of the mid 20th century. What is the point of phones, e-mail, teleconferencing, and virtual office spaces available for the past decade and a half if not to revolutionize the way we think of work?

What do you think?