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The documentary The Corporation, with its discussions of ways corporations end up hurting society, aided in my move towards becoming more socially and environmentally aware.  In it was a man I remember fondly and came across in the New York Times recently, Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, a carpet tile company.  He spoke from the heart about discovering how destructive his company was to the environment and how he has steered his company to sustainability with a pledge to be completely sustainable by 2020.  With $1.1 billion in annual sales or 38% of global market share, this is no small feat and is almost an experiment in our time of if the green of the environment and the green of profits can coexist.  There have been a lot of gains by big business moving towards being more socially and environmentally friendly, however being completely sustainable, meaning having no net impact on the environment in every aspect, is far from what they are trying to achieve.  So far Interface has been successful with their green approach, so much so that it spawned a consulting branch to help other companies switch to sustainable practices.To this end, Ray Anderson is onto something much bigger than growing the profits of his own company, he is showing corporate America what is possible with sustainability.  Being green is quickly becoming the popular method to help a company, not just be good but also, do better business.  Over time there has many methods that has changed business, everything from the Henry Ford’s assembly line to Japan’s quality philosophy.  I see sustainable business as the next marker in history for business.  A trend that makes sense economically and just so happens does the world some good.

Bringing this down a level, how can you make your office a little more green?  Although the focus is usually on making your home green, it makes just as much sense to carry that into the workplace.  If you can save your boss some money through making a green choice, then not only did you save the business some cash, but you just made yourself look better too.  So follow Ray’s lead by going green at home and at the office and encourage companies you interact with, either professionally or as a consumer, to follow the (green) leader too.  Even if someone does not care about the environment, they usually do care about the bottom line and so use that to your advantage… in a good way.

Nudge is such a complex word. An oxymoron almost by my definition. Officially though, what is a nudge?

nudge1 /nʌdʒ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[nuhj] -nudged, nudg·ing, noun
–verb (used with object)

1.	to push slightly or gently, esp. with the elbow, to get someone’s attention, prod someone into action, etc.

“Push slightly” but get “attention” and “action.” Nudging a heavy rock on a cliff is all it takes to get it to topple. I nudge a friend in the side and they will jerk, and maybe hit back! In essence, a nudge is a little action that makes a lot happen and that is the point of this great New York Times article(if it asks for login go here). It tells the story of a San Francisco hospital that instituted a rule that all beds must be propped up no matter what, unless under different doctors orders.

For more than a decade, it turns out, medical researchers have known that people on ventilators should generally have their heads elevated. When the patients are lying down, bacteria can easily travel from the stomach, up to the mouth and breathing tube, and ultimately into the lungs, causing pneumonia. When people are propped up, gravity becomes their ally.

But hospitals have had a hard time translating this scientific knowledge into better medical care. Patients frequently need to be put on their backs, to be bathed or to receive treatment, and once they are lying down, doctors and nurses — busy worrying about dozens of other things — don’t always remember to move the bed back up.

“When you have to rely on someone to do it, it’s not going to happen every time,” said Dr. Michael Gropper, the director of critical care medicine at UCSF Medical Center, the hospital I was visiting.

So Dr. Gropper made a new rule. Unless there was a written order from a doctor saying that a patient should be lying down, every patient on a ventilator had to be sitting up.

How much of an impact did this simple rule have?

[T]he incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia has fallen more than 40 percent since 2005. There are people walking around Northern California this morning who otherwise would not be alive.

Many times people know the right thing to do, but continue to do the wrong thing since that is the status quo. Although changing behavior may seem like a lot of work, many times just inputting a small rule, a “nudge”, is enough, making the default action always or mostly right. The article mentions another example, buying smaller portions, as a way to counter act our extra-large culture and applies the “nudge rule” to various other problems.

A small decision can make a huge difference, in the case of the hospital it saved lives. Are there any areas of your life where you can add a nudge and get big results?

Source LifeHacker
Photo Ypsilanti
Definition Dictionary.com

Hopefully by now, people know that CFL bulbs, the twisty ones, are great for the environment. It typically is the first green step that people take if they are trying to save energy and become more friendly to the planet. However, in almost every case where you need to replace or upgrade something, you can be green. For example, right now I have a big and loud desktop computer. It is so loud that I don’t want to use it and instead use my laptop since it is quiet and saves electricity. On the flip side though, I love watching movies using a computer and browsing the internet from a large TV screen is nice every now and then, so I would love to use my desktop as a multimedia unit. However because of the noise factor it is not the best thing to have running when I am watching a movie.

With this in mind I have looked into upgrading the case and power supply to eliminate noisy fans. So what does this have to do with being green?

Read the rest of this entry »

The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman has been the book to define the current American society in which the realities of globalization, terrorism and the slow fall of the US have arisen. Packed with insight, realism and fragile hopefulness, it has given a name, problem and solution to the things the US faces as a nation.

Because of the power behind his words and impeccable instinct, I am excited about his new direction: Green. This New York Times piece of his has been making rounds and hints at things to come from Friedman. It is long and has a lot of information, but all of it is important and he writes in a manner that I believe everyone can enjoy and appreciate. Bookmark this, because we will be reading this in the future, either in happiness or sadness at the accuracy of Friedman’s vision.

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Via EcoGeek