Hi Everyone!
I’m very happy to let you know that I’ve been very busy – blogging for the Green Business News, at Allbusiness.com. Please swing by and visit me over there for the latest in environmental news that’s relevant to business, and of course make sure to keep visiting the Royston Review. I’ll still be posting here regularly – stay tuned!
Excellent, excellent program. Stop giving your free time to Scrabulous and Facebook; give it to Freerice.com and help feed the hungry.
Free Rice has a fabulous vocabulary game. The game itself is easy to use, the words are interesting, and the difficulty adjusts to your personal level. Your mental dictionary will definitely improve. The best part of course is that as you’re playing it, you’re generating ad revenues which will purchase rice for the United Nations World Food Program.
We’re spending hours every day, fiddling around with all the games and toys on Facebook, but the only people that helps is Facebook. Do a little good today and spend some time on Freerice.com – and tell your friends too.
See – Anything can be Green – even Vodka.
Jumping on the environmental train is McCormick Distillery and their new Vodka 360 . Recycled bottles, environmentally friendly labels and ink, and a charitable donation to boot – there’s no reason not to buy Vodka 360.
Another excellent example of companies using a Green theme to make their products stand out on the shelf. The Vodka 360 brand now has a “feel-good” aura to it, that will have hands reaching for their bottles, instead of the competition’s.
Inhabitat.com has a full review here:
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Greenpeace has released their guide to electronics this week and gave a big thumbs up to the Sony TZ. The TZ has no beryllium in it, one of the most harmful chemicals we know. Congratulations to Sony!
The days of large oil companies running amok through the rainforest, destroying villages and lives, as they frantically search for more oil, are over. The tribes are ready to fight back. Not with guns, not with grenades, but with lawyers – and nothing is scarier then a lawyer.
The BBC news is reporting that the Achuar tribe, of the Peruvian rainforest, have filed a lawsuit against Occidental Oil. The suit is claiming for damages for 30 years of contamination that Occidental left behind.
“We can’t allow this, we’re a new generation, we know how to read and write and we have to help our people because they didn’t have the knowledge to defend themselves against the oil companies. But now we do.”
Full Article here:
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You know how every time you need to make an important phone call, your battery is always dead? Well, by next year, instead of looking for an outlet to plug into, you’ll be plugging into your pocket.
David Smith from the Guardian is reporting that Fujitsu Siemens is almost ready to introduce solar panels for the arms of our jackets. I guess this means that we’ll have to think of new excuses about why we didn’t answer when our mother called.
Big Thanks to CIO’s Meridith Levinson for sending in this link :
“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Telecommuting”
It’s a detailed account of how Dr. John Halamka developed a flexible work arrangement program for CareGroup. It gives great info on the programs, processes and systems he’s utilized to make telecommuting a success for his employees. I urge all employers to at least look at the information he has provided.
What I found really interesting though was the fact that the first thing Dr. Halamka discusses is how “the travel required to bring employees together in an office has become burdensome and expensive.”
With any luck, more companies will follow CareGroup’s lead, and something good will come out of these skyrocketing gas prices.
We talk about economical slow-downs, we talk about the environment, we talk about innovation, but we’re overlooking the most obvious, immediately available solution to all these problems:
Telecommuting
We are supposed to be operating in a global business community but we can’t let go of the cubicle, or the hours every day in highway hell. In Canada only 10% of Canadians telework, in the U.S. it’s 15%. The average Canadian spends 288 hours every year commuting to work, the average American, 100.
We’ll email the person sitting next to us – we’ll hear about company updates on the blog – we’ll have access to all company records through an online database – but we’re still to nervous to trust employees to work from home – even after study after study has shown that telecommuters are actually more productive then their in-house counterparts.
Many managers are still under the false impression that employees will only work if they are being watched. Well, from the amount of chainletters that arrive via Facebook daily, I can pretty much guarantee that they’re not working while they’re being watched. But companies like Intel, who have 50% of their 85,000 workers telecommuting, have shown hat a progressive, productive workforce is the result of happy, motivated people. And who wouldn’t be happy and motivated, not spending entire days of their lives in their cars, not spending a small fortune in gas, and having that extra time to use for both work and fun?
Companies that work with telecommuters are reaping the benefits, they’re saving thousands in office rent and overhead, they’re attracting a highly qualified workforce, they’re finding the right person for the job, not just the closest, and they’re keeping 10’s of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air.
But don’t just take my word for it, here’s an excellent report from 
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The carbon tax introduced in the BC Liberal’s 2008 budget, while commendable in theory, will do little to get people out of their cars. Everyone is concerned about the environment, we all want to do better, but a tax isn’t the way to environmental utopia. Greater Vancouverites already pay, on average, 11 cents more per litre of gas then any other province, including a 12-cent per litre Translink tax. Our highways are still a congested nightmare, and no one in their right mind travels at 5:00 p.m., unless they have to.
It isn’t just as simple as people not wanting to leave their cars at home. The public transit system in the Lower Mainland and surrounding areas is so flawed, that oftentimes transit just isn’t an option, period. Other times it’s actually more expensive to get on the bus then to take your car. In BC, where transit fares are the highest in the country, just 7.5% of the working population takes transit to work, while in Ontario, 12% jump on the buses or subways everyday.
The BC government and our Translink board have forgotten that taking the bus is supposed to be inexpensive. As it stands today, a family of four, traveling from Surrey to the Science Center, during regular fare hours, would spend $34 on round trip transit, while the mini-van and parking would round out to approximately $20. Since 2002, transportation costs have risen 16.2%, shelter costs have risen 10%, food costs have risen 10%, but hourly wages have risen only 9.3%. Another tax is just too much pressure on B.C. families.
Vancouver housing prices have pushed families out to the suburbs, out to the Fraser Valley, where they’re without transit options, and are forced to commute by car. Any more strain on their budgets could just push them out of the province. We have to recognize that while our population continues to rise, the rate at which it’s rising is decreasing. Of the 850,000 people who moved between provinces in 2006, 26% went to Alberta, 21% went to Ontario and only 19.3% moved to BC.
And it’s families that we’re losing. There are 10,000 empty spaces in Vancouver schools while our population is aging. Senior Citizens make up 14% of our citizenship, while 15% are children. Comparatively, Alberta has 10% seniors and 18% children.
But it’s families that we need. Parents spend small fortunes on clothes, shoes, cd’s, entertainment and dental bills, while their offspring keep our teachers employed. It’s the children who grow into the next generation of employers, employees and taxpayers. Without them, British Columbia’s future grows dim and dull.
If the BC Liberals are truly interested in lowering greenhouse gases, and this isn’t another tax grab to help pay for the Olympics, then are much more effective means of doing it. We can offer rebates on energy efficient appliances and cars, and tax incentives for builders who install solar panels. What we can’t do is continue to keep our heads in the sand, believing that there’s no limit to what people will pay to live in British Columbia.
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CNN has “Pressure, Private Cash, Driving Clean Energy“ – a quick review on a report from the CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associate). Daniel Yergin, the Chairman of the CERA, is estimating that $7 trillion will be invested in clean energy by the year 2030.
I personally believe that $7 trillion is probably a light estimate, and they’re pegging wind power as the next big thing, when I think it’s going to be solar, but it’s a great reminder, that even in hard economic times, there are areas that will flourish.
