Overflow: A Guide to Greening your Life

The information below is a guide I put together as part of a class project to help each and every one of you GREEN YOUR LIFE. There are specific categories for home, yard, transporation (automobile and public), recycling and advocacy. We provide specific details and links that explain to you what you will save in terms of money, energy, etc. by implementing each of the methods identified. In addition, we provide links to imporatnt web sites which explain where to drop off recyclables, learn more about recycling and to introduce to your children so that they can have fun by playing games that teach them about the environment. There isn't anything in this guidebook that everyone of us cannot employ in our life to some extent. Please join forces with me and help to make a difference.

Overflow: A Guide to Greening Your Life

Home / Residence

A. Bathroom - about 75% of the water we use in our homes is used in the bathroom and 1/3rd of that water is flushed down the toilet

1. Put weights or other objects in toilet tank to use less water
Put a half gallon jug half-full of water or a brick into every toilet tank in your home to make your existing toilet a low flush toilet and you will save up to 75 gallons of water per person per month

2. Don’t shower for longer than 5 minutes and you can save an average of 1/3 on water used in the shower
Only use water in shower to wet down and rise, turn water off when lathering up with soap and shampoo

3. Turn off the water when brushing your teeth
The average bathroom faucet flows at a rate of 2 gallons per minute. Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth in the morning and at bedtime can save up to 8 gallons of water per day, which equals 240 gallons a month

4. Put a low-flow aerator on faucets that don’t have them or replace older aerators to reduce water usage by 20-40%

B. Kitchen

1. Only run dishwasher when full
You will run fewer loads and this will reduce water usage and energy consumption to heat the water

2. Put a low-flow aerator on faucets that don’t have them or replace older aerators to reduce water usage by 20-40%

3. Put a filter on your faucet or refrigerator so that you can fill up reusable water bottle instead of buying more plastic water bottles. You will cut down on your use of plastic and save money.

4. Use your microwave for warming up or defrosting small amounts of food as it uses 50% less energy than a conventional oven


Home / Residence

C. Other

1. Use cold water while doing your laundry and save up to 90% on energy cost

2. Fix leaking faucets immediately as a leaky faucet can waste up to 11 gallons of water a day

3. Open windows at night and keep your shades drawn during the day when the sun is out in the summer to save 20-50% on cooling costs

4. Install a programmable thermostat and use energy efficient settings to save 10-20% on cooling costs

5. Turn off lights and unplug electrical devices when not in use. Don’t forget that cell phone and laptop!
75% of electricity on home appliances is used when they are off and lighting consumes up to 34 percent of electricity in the United States.

6. Use compact eco friendly fluorescent light bulbs
Compact fluorescent light bulbs produce the same amount of light, use one third of the electricity, and last up to ten times as long. If every household replaced its most often-used incandescent light bulbs with CFLs, electricity use for lighting could be cut in half.

7. Shut all doors in your home

8. Line dry clothes and use drying rack instead of dryer and you can save 75$ per year on electricity and gas costs

9. Put a water heater jacket on your water heater and you can save 4-9% on water heating costs

10. Replace air filters in furnace and clean condenser coils on refrigerator and air conditioner regularly to increase efficiency and reduce maintenance costs

11. Insulate your house properly
Improperly sealed / caulked windows can account for 25% of total heat loss from a house


Yard / Garage


1. Capture rainwater in rain barrels using water captured to water the garden and lawn. It is possible to do all outdoor watering from rain barrels.
The typical single-family suburban household uses at least 30 % of their water outdoors for irrigation. In some cases, more than 50% of landscape water use goes to waste due to evaporation or runoff caused by overwatering!

2. Grow your own garden w/out using pesticides
Examples can be found at http://www.extremelygreen.com/fertilizerguide.cfm

3. Grow your own fruits, vegetables and herbs to save money and eliminate transportation costs and pollution. Also, they taste better.
Plant plants native to your area – these grow naturally in your area and require little to no irrigation. They also usually come back every year, reducing maintenance.

Transportation

A. Automobiles

1. Drive more efficiently
Drive the speed limit
► Lower speeds saves gas with average savings of 12% when driving 50 miles on the highway with the cruise control set at 65 MPH as opposed to 75 MPH

Use cruise control on the highway
► As an example: the first time cruise control was set to 70 mph; the second time, with cruise control off, speed was varied between 65 mph and 75 mph. This provided an average savings of 7% with a high of 14% when using cruise control.

Avoid excessive idling
► If you are stopping for more than a minute, turn the car off as avoiding excessive idling can save up to 19%.

2. Drive less
Almost half of all trips are less than two miles and could easily be accomplished by biking, walking or using public transportation.

B. Utilize car sharing programs
1. The American Automobile Association (AAA) estimated the annual average cost of operating a vehicle in 2006 was $5,586, including vehicle depreciation, insurance, finance fees and standard maintenance.

I-GO research from 4 years of data:
► Each I-GO car replaces 17 cars on the road
► 25% increasing their walking
► 14.5% increased their biking
► 17.6% increased their public transit usage.
► 45.9% gave up or postponed purchase of a vehicle or considered selling a vehicle because of joining I-GO.
► Members report driving only 9.6 miles/week, or 500 miles/year, whereas the typical car owner in Chicago drives 10,000 miles/year.
► Of those who did not own a car at the time of orientation, 56% postponed buying a car because of I-GO or gave up a car prior to joining I-GO
► http://www.igocars.org/
► http://www.zipcar.com/


Transportation

C. Use public transportation

1. Using conservative assumptions, the study found that current public transportation usage reduces U.S. gasoline consumption by 1.4 billion gallons each year. In concrete terms, that means 300,000 fewer cars filling up every day and a savings of 3.9 million gallons of gasoline per day.

2. The average household in which at least one member uses public transportation on a given day drives 16 fewer miles per day compared to a household with similar income, residential location and vehicle ownership that do not use public.

3. Households who use public transportation save a significant amount of money. A two adult “public transportation household” saves an average $6,251 every year, compared to an equivalent household with two cars and no access to public transportation service.
“Public transportation household” is defined as as a household located within ¾ mile of public transportation, with two adults and one car.

D. Walk or bike whenever possible

1. Walking and biking produce no emissions, are safe and easy, promote good health and community

Recycling

Please refer to the following links to find information about recycling initiatives in Chicago including recycling drop off centers, blue carts and an A-Z list of how you can recycle everything from appliances to computers to tires to shoes.
http://www.chicagorecycling.org/
http://www.bluecartschicago.com/

On average, it costs $30 per ton to recycle trash, $50 to send it to the landfill, and $65 to $75 to incinerate it.

Source: http://members.aol.com/ramola15/funfacts.html

Recycle everything you can and focus on the easy ones you use everyday which include paper, plastic, glass, aluminum and junk mail.

Review the following list for some easy tips.

Recycling

1. Paper
Each ton (2000 pounds) of recycled paper can save 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, three cubic yards of landfill space, 4000 kilowatts of energy, and 7000 gallons of water. This represents a 64% energy savings, a 58% water savings, and 60 pounds less of air pollution! If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

Here are a few easy things to do:
► Read more documents online and print them less often
► Print documents on both sides of paper
► Decrease the margins so that more of the paper’s surface is used when printing
► Sign up for e-statements of credit card bills, “no catalogues” mailing list and utilize online cards and electronic magazine subscriptions

2. Aluminum
Aluminum can be recycled repeatedly with no limit. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours or a 100 watt light bulb for three hours – or the equivalent of a half a gallon of gasoline!

3. Plastic
According to Earth911, if everyone in NYC gave up water bottles for one week they would save 24 million bottles from being land filled.

Here are a few easy things to do:
► Bring your own fabric bags when shopping (put them in your trunk for grocery store visits). It will be much easier to carry and you won’t end up with a large stock of plastic bags under your sink!
► Buy reusable food containers, water bottles, eating utensils and coffee cups. Carry them with you and bring them to work to reduce the use of disposable products.

4. Glass
Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.

5. Styrofoam
Styrofoam is un-recyclable- you can't make it into new Styrofoam. The industry wants you to assume it is - don't BUY it!

6. Batteries
Where do I take old batteries?
► Twice a year, the City of Chicago Household Hazardous Waste Collections will take batteries. You can call the Department of Streets and Sanitation at (312) 744-4611 for more information.
► They also can be dropped off at any City of Chicago Library or Walgreens drugstore.
Recycling

7. Household hazardous waste (HHW)
This includes materials such as oil-based paints, strippers and thinners, pesticides and herbicides, automotive fluids, mercury thermometers, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, drain cleaners, aerosols, and antifreeze. (Note that latex paint is not considered a hazardous waste.)
► Reference Chicago Recycling Coalitions web site (listed at top of section) for more details on how to recycle HHW.

8. Shoes
Where do I take old shoes?
► Sneakers of any brand name can be brought to Niketown in downtown Chicago and there is a list of shoe stores that accept old shoes on Chicago Recycling Coalitions web site (listed at top of section).
► Nike has created a Reuse-A-Shoe program. Over 2,000,000 shoes have been recycled and transformed into basketball court surfaces in low-income urban areas and/or into fluff used in carpet pads. Reference their web site for more details.

9. Junk Mail
The junk mail Americans receive in one day could produce enough energy to heat 250,000 homes.
The average American still spends 8 full months of his/her life opening junk mail.
What can I do about Junk Mail?
► Simply writing "refused" on the mail envelope is not enough, instead, register with the Direct Marketing Association's Mail Preference Services using the link below. They can also remove you from many mailing, telemarketing, and e-mail lists. You can register free online, or in writing by a mail-in registration form (this will cost you$1).
http://www.dmachoice.org/consumerassistance.php

Advocacy / Education

1. Teach your children about recycling.
It is important to instill these habits in your children at a young age. Here a few easy things to do:
► The environmental protection agency has a list of games and children friendly web sites that help teach children about recycling and the environment. They can be found by following this link: http://www.epa.gov/kids/
► Include your children in your recycling efforts around the house.
► If your child has too many toys and clothes, encourage them to select some of them and bring them to a shelter to donate them.

2. Watch An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

3. Send this toolkit, Overflow: A Guide to Greening Your Life, to everyone you know

4. Buy items like reusable grocery bags and water bottles at:
http://www.reusablebags.com/
http://www.nubiusorganics.com/

5. Do an energy audit on your home
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_audits

6. Buy produce at farmer’s market or through CSA

7. See what the world gains by recycling by looking at the facts
http://www.oberlin.edu/recycle/facts.html
http://members.aol.com/Ramola15/suggestedlinks.html
http://www.pacebutler.com/blog/recycling-facts/

Business Education - Meeting Preparation and Brainstorming Techniques (Idea Quota and Idea Production)

The following techniques are useful to use to help have more effective and productive meetings and brainstorming sessions.

The 1st technique, Idea Quotas, involves setting an Idea Quota and writing down ideas immediately after the brainstorming session. The 2nd technique, Idea Production, involves forcing participants to brainstorm about the problems and issues before coming to a meeting. Specifically, each meeting participant would review the agenda topics and bring 3 ideas for how to solve the issues or problems to be discussed to the meeting.

Idea Quotas

• Intention / Concept - Create a more effective brainstorming environment by:

• Being open
• Withholding judgment
• Setting an idea quota
• Writing ideas down immediately after the brainstorming session
• In this instance, we had a 40 minute brainstorming session during which we were to come up with at least 40 ideas regarding ‘ways to make our wedding unique’

• Lessons Learned

• Open mindedness and writing things down has a positive effect on brainstorming
• Having a target number idea quota number to hit is definitely useful as you are guaranteed to walk out of the session with a specific number of ideas
• It is very difficult to not want to immediately evaluate ideas instead of just writing them down. We needed to remind each other not to judge many times throughout the experiment.

Idea Production

• Intention / Concept - Prior the meeting/brainstorming session regarding sorority recruiting, the meeting organizer sent a message to each participant asking them to:

• Read the agenda / request
• Come up with 3 new ideas for how to improve the recruitment plans that were made last spring
• This is a straightforward technique that forces participants to brainstorm about the problem before coming to a meeting, so that everyone has already thought about the topic and is ready to participate in the brainstorming session.

• Lessons Learned

• It is great to have people come with ideas to meetings so that time isn’t wasted getting everyone’s minds warmed up. People are already engaged before they step into the meeting and are therefore more likely to participate.
• This process allows them to gather their own thoughts before providing them to the group and building off of the group ideas.
• It made for a much more fruitful brainstorming discussion because the “idea production” gave everyone the opportunity to participate by forcing them to put some effort forth and prepare prior to the meeting. As a result, everyone already had “skin in the game.”

Business Education - Keep your Mind Open and Harness your Creativity

During one of my MBA classes, we studied creativity. One of the keys to creativity is to always keep an open mind. This is easier said than done, but the tips below offer some tips that may help you along in this process.

• It is important to go through the whole creative process because the best ideas often show up when you are writing the presentation

• Don’t hang onto the idea you have in your head which you have cultivated and worked on like it’s a diamond.
• You need to be open to new and better opportunities that offer a better solution all the way though the process and beyond. It is important to remember that you needed to go through the whole process to get to where you are.

• Be open at all times for opportunities to be creative

• Don’t ignore the unexpected as it may provide an opportunity to turn chance into a creative opportunity.
• It may be a book someone lent you or a restaurant you went to when your reservation got cancelled. The key is to be open at all times.

• We tend to impose strong, subtle pressures on us to see the world as fixed, fragmented and static. Yet,….

• Everything in life is in a state of flux and change and it always will be. This is the only constant we can count on.

• In conflicts, it is often assumed that there are only 2 sides

• In reality, there are multiple sides to a conflict and all perspectives need to be considered in order to grasp the whole problem.

• Do you season your food before you taste it?

• Thomas Edison always thought in terms of challenging conventional thoughts by reversing them and trying to make the reversal work. Whenever he interviewed a job applicant, he invited them to lunch and ordered the applicant a bowl of soup. If the applicant seasoned his or her soup before tasting it, he would not hire the applicant. He felt the applicant had so many built in assumptions about everyday life that it would take too much time to train them to think creatively.

• The key to establishing dialogue is to exchange ideas without trying to change the other person’s mind.

• People tend to confuse dialogue with discussion. Frequently, people engaged in personal relationships crave dialogue. Instead, however, they almost immediately switch to a discussion, judging other person’s ideas and points of view. Precious time is then wasted on trying to persuade the other side how brilliant their own ideas are and how wrong that other person is about everything in the world. If people could fully understand the fundamental difference between a dialogue and a discussion, many personal and professional issues could be resolved much easier.

• In a conflict, start with the assumption that all sides are correct.

• I have found it useful to never try to decide the right answer.
• When you start with respect instead of presuming that someone is wrong (or off) from the beginning, this is the 1st step to creating together. Otherwise, you immediately begin to build a hostile environment and make people defensive.

Business Education - Listening and Paying Attention

Can anyone dispute how important listening and paying attention are to so many aspects of our lives?

Read through these points below to refresh your memory and find some methods that can help ensure that you are listening and paying attention when you should be.

• Communication is 80% listening and 20% speaking

• Many people never actually listen. Instead, they wait for the other person to
  stop talking so they can talk. Even worse, instead of listening, they are
  usually thinking about what they are going to say when the other person is
  talking.
• There is no way to quantify how important being a good listener is and it impacts every aspect of one’s life.

• In groups, there is a nonverbal level where you can pick up or sense the energy by observing participants behavior, posture, tone and animation of voices and attentiveness.

• It is important to pay attention to this so that you know how attuned and focused the group is.

• Being in a group is about speaking and listening, but especially listening.

• There is a big difference between listening and waiting to talk. It usually becomes evident later in the meeting because the people who were waiting to talk usually bring up something that has already been discussed or decided upon.

• The basic rules of dialogue for the Greeks were “don’t argue,” “don’t interrupt,” and “listen carefully.”

• Everyone would be happier if they applied these rules to their lives

• Psychologists talk about how reward and punishment are at the root of learning, but in fact we often learn by observing how others are rewarded and punished for their behavior.

• For example, if you are new to a group, and someone in the group does a behavior that triggers a negative nonverbal reaction in the other members of the group, you learn immediately, and often unconsciously, not to do that behavior.
• It is important to pay attention to catch these things

• Be aware of the energy level of the group

• During a monthly utilization management meeting, we often have a hard time getting committee members to attend the meeting. The problem is the facilitator is not aware of the energy level of the group and does not make sure that all participants are engaged. This has caused many of the committee members to feel like they do not need to attend the meeting because they do not offer value. I am trying to tactfully get the facilitator to recognize this and change the way she runs the meeting.

• Listen to each person you come in contact with as though he or she is the most important person in the world.

• The irony is that the conversation you are having is indeed the most important one at that moment. Listen as though your life depends on it.

• Be a better listener. You owe it to yourself and anyone who spends time communicating with you. It is the one lesson you can take from this guidebook that will benefit you the most in every aspect of your life.

Business Education - Brainstorming

One of my MBA classes was focused on creativity. One of the key methods used to generate creative ideas is brainstorming. Review the points below to help create a more effective brainstorming environment (at work or home) whenever you are looking to find solutions to a problem.

• The brainstorming environment is a relationship of honesty and earned trust. Building that relationship amongst the participants is essential to success. It is important that group participants and organization leaders embrace this concept. In order to get valuable insight from members from all levels in the organization, there needs to be a truly open environment void of criticism and judgment.
• Include someone in your brainstorming session who is not an expert, but an intelligent outsider. This will open up creativity and flexibility. They are not tied to what they “think” is already in place or has already been decided. New team members often provide this team dynamic since they are not familiar with the processes and procedures and have a “fresh” view of things
• Once an idea is judged, all creativity stops. After judgment, few worthy ideas are generated and people have a tendency to migrate towards weak, safe and conservative ideas. Judgment draws an immediate line in the sand and people then refrain from crossing the line and presenting something too “out there.”
• Visual brainstorming is an attempt to use drawings and sketches to conceptualize and capture ideas. Draw a sketch of how the problem might be solved and then review it and modify it until you come up with a final solution from one of the sketches or variations of the original.
• During any brainstorming session, the rule is not to skip judgment but to postpone it. In some of my classes, I noticed that sometimes students became too cooperative during the brainstorming sessions. Such total absence of criticism was just as bad as premature judgment. As a result, at the end of the session the whole group was overwhelmed with many irrelevant ideas which had little potential.
• Sometimes it is useful to keep these brainstorming sessions informal. Do it over a pizza lunch, or without Sr. level managers. This may allow junior employees to open up. Often, junior employees understand the situation the best and offer the best ideas. Finding a way to get them to speak up is critical.
• Have fun! Brainstorming sessions are about being creative. Fun and creativity go together. The environment should be loose and relaxed so that people have fun and open up.
  Having fun means eliminating criticism. Criticism is a big hindrance to creativity.
• Trust is essential to the brainstorming process so that all participants can voice their ideas without fear of being judged. When people are self-conscious of what other group members will think of their ideas, they contribute less to group work.
• Idea finding is the most critical step of brainstorming. Collect and write down all possible ideas by thinking in all aspects. Write down silly ones and brilliant ones. The thinking process should be a diverging one. The process is important. The problem solving process helps make people more effective and creative.
• Often during brainstorming sessions, people tend to skip or completely ignore the objective finding stage. They jump right into problem finding or even solution finding. Without a clearly stated list of goals and objectives any problem solving process becomes lengthy and complex.