Chuck Newton

Containter Housing - Ultra Low Cost - Maybe an Office Too?

Here is a video of the prototype container home to provide ultra low housing.  Could they also be used for small home or away from home offices?  I think so.

The Last Known Use For Sticky Notes

I no longer use sticky notes or post it notes.  However, this video shows the only use for which a sticky note should be used -- entertainment.  Otherwise, stickies are not green, they are not even that helpful.  They cost money either in terms of purchase costs or the costs of goods that allow you to get the stickies for free.  And, the way I think about it is that I have a hard time tolerating litter on the road and in my town, so why should I litter my desk, my computer screen, my files, and my office.  Clutter does not make for either a good and enjoyable working environment, and it is a bad excuse for a work flow or management system.  Clutter is chaos, and stickies represent an office in chaos.  All you need is to utilize your calendar system appropriately and you do not need these little things.  Do I need to make temporary notes when I am on the computer?  Yes, but I use a scrap piece of paper for that and put it in the recycling bin often.  Otherwise, I use Basecamp, a calendar and a daily to do list on my home screen.  Besides, the idea is to get rid of paper and not to just make it smaller and more colorful.  Need to notify the others in your office, group, referral sources or clients about things?  Chunk the stickies.  Use email or Basecamp.

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Say Hello To Ike!

The problem is whether those that live on the Gulf are too weary to flee the coast again?  Let us hope not.

LEED-H Platium Home

The Margarido House is a posh, modern home that is the first LEED-H Platinum home in Northern California.  Green.  Comfortable.  It would wonderful if we could all head in this direction.  Also, if we could incorporate LEED Platinum into homes that contain workable home office environments, which would go even further to reduce our carbon footprint buy cutting down on commuting and driving in this World.  Low or no utility costs.  Low or no commuting cost.  No or low office costs.  What could be better.  Enjoy the show.

sallyTV visits the Margarido House from sally kuchar on Vimeo.

Thompson & Knight Just Does Not Get It

In reality it would seem that most Big Law firms do not get it.  They, like too many other companies in our nation, treat Green as nothing more than a marketing or publicity ploy.

This comes from the fact that Thompson & Knight, one of Dallas' oldest law firms, is moving into six floors totaling 180,000 square feet in One Arts Plaza in the DallasArts District. The gimmick is that the new office is "green" and more environmentally conscious.  But, in reality the office is wasteful and unnecessary.  They promote their new office as offering offer impressive and innovative features like a biometrics security system and a number of environmentally conscious design elements that can help the firm secure registration with the U.S. Green Building Council, lead-free glass to better transmission of light inside the offices and a specially designed "Mother's Room" has lactation equipment and other amenities for working mothers. The firm is pursuing LEED-CI Silver Certification, which recognizes interiors that are healthy, productive places to work and that are less costly to operate and have a reduced environmental footprint.

But, is 180,000 square feet really reducing the environmental footprint?  I think not.

The law firm just does not get it because they do not need a dairy at their offices, where their female attorneys and staff can chat while they are having to express themselves so some for-hire sitter can later feed the milk to their babies.  They do not need biometric security systems.  They do not need lead-free glass.  The space might hog less energy, but they do not need six floors hogging any amount of energy.  They do not need a monument in which to force their hundreds of attorneys and staff to commute to and from each day.  How much pollution does that cause Big D, how much oil and gas does that cost each of us every day, and the trauma this must cause the families and children (especially the newborns they seem to care about) of the lawyers and staff that work in this self-serving edifice?  Who are they trying to impress but themselves?  Not to mention all of this finish out and rent and CAM charges does nothing but take money out of the pockets of the partners, lawyers and staff.  Further, we need not forget that it is their clients that must pay for this monstrosity.

Just how difficult would it have been to have finished out a couple thousand square feet for meeting rooms for clients, deposition or trial prep, and then sent all of their attorneys and staff home to work, where mothers could actually nurse their children most of the time?  That would have been better for the attorneys and staff, for the environment, and for all of us.

Forget the finish out costs, at $36 a square foot per year (if that low) the law firm could have saved almost $6.5 million a year, and each employee could have saved thousands of dollars each year in commuting costs as well as wear and tear on their cars, not to mention it would have save Dallas and rest of us all of the pollution they cause on which we are choking physically and monetarily.

As you might be able to tell, I am not impressed. 

Creative Uses For Junk Mail

ProQuo has a post about some of the creative uses for all of the junk mail all of us receive.  Some of the ones demonstrated on ProQuo are:

1.  Make 3D trees out of it as illustrated on A Little Hut.

2.  Make furniture out of it  as illustrated on Chrissie Macdonald's site.

3.  Us it as mulch as illustrated on Get Rich Slowly.

4.  Create sculptures with it as illustrated in this BBC article.

5.  Make venetian blinds with it as illustrated on Space Toast.

6.  Create custom portraits with it as illustrated on Schimmel Art.

Ecycle Your Old Electronics

If you are like me it is ease to allow the carcases of old electronics pile up in your home, office or home-office.  You get something new, somethings quits working, or it just becomes obsolete.  I cannot even begin to imagine what someone like Rick Georges over at Future Lawyer must tolerate in this regard, with all of the new stuff and old stuff that he tests.

Old TVs, computer casings, laser printers, headsets, and monitors.  You name it, it is hard to think what to do.  We often think of re-purposing something, but except when I rebuilt my old computers back in 2001 or 2002, I have not really done that no matter what good intentions I might have.

Generational changes and obsolescence are the biggest things.  After a while it gets to stressful just to keep it all around the house.  You can throw it out, but that is not good.  That is certainly not green.  You can see if the supplier will take the stuff, or there might be a market for some of it on Ebay.  God knows my son will probably buy it and have you ship it to my house as I exclaim that I just got rid of something like that a few years ago.

One of the best -- and greenest -- and responsible -- things you can do is to simply see that the old tech is recycled.  It is called ecycle.  It not only applies to all of the computer crap, but applies to old TVs, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, telephones, stereors, VCRs and DVDs.  California passed The Electronic Waste Recycling Act in 2003, which requires that consumers pay an extra fee for certain types of electronics, and the collected money is then redistributed to recycling companies that are qualified to properly recycle these products.  And, in 2006 Dell developed the nation’s first completely-free recycling program furthering the responsibilities that manufacturers are taking for e-cycling.

TIA provides you an electronic map which shows recyclers that will take your old product by state.

My Green Electronics allows you to find electronic recyclers by zip code.

Earth 911 also allows you to search by zip code for an electronics recyclers in your area.

HP has recycling program for its products for a small fee and shipping the  product back to company.  The same is true for IBM, Intel, Apple, Dell, Cannon, Gateway, Toshiba, LG Electronics and Sony.  Need more, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains a list of links to manufactures that maintain recycle programs.

For you greedy people who need some incentive, there is an online company called Gazelle that claims to pay you some cash for your old gadgets.

Then, like old cars and trucks before it, some charities are requesting your old stuff.  For example, there is the Support Network for Battered Women who would like your old cell phone, and Recycle for Breast Cancer, which, apart from the fact the name might suggest that you can get breast cancer by recycling, accepts a larger range of old electronics.

If all else fails, you can check with the International Association of Electronics Recyclers as to what companies in your area are Certified Electronics Recyclers.

The bottom line, there is no reason to turn your home, office or home-office into a waste dump of old electronics, and there is no reason why you cannot recycle these product right now.

12 Of The Greenest Colleges In America

Downsizing or downshifting is green.  Working from home or carpet commuting is green.  Cutting your long commutes to and from work is green.  Reducing your carbon footprint anywhere you can is great.  Now, should you have a choice to advise a college student on where to attend or have a student who will soon be off to college, The Students' Blog has listed 12 of the greenest colleges in America.  Here they are:

1) College of the Atlantic - Bar Harbor, Maine 

2) Middlebury College - Middlebury, Vermont 

3) Evergreen State College - Olympia, Washington 

4) Oberlin College - Oberlin, Ohio

5) Harvard University - Cambridge, Massachusetts

6) Warren Wilson College - Swannanoa, North Carolina

7) Duke University - Durham, North Carolina

8) University of California

9) Berea College - Berea, Kentucky

10) Tufts University - Medford, Massachusetts

11) Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

12) Yale University - New Haven, Connecticut

Boone Pickens Discusses How To Help Solve The Energy Crises

I am not always a big fan of Boone Pickens, but he does give a compelling argument was to why we need to act now and what we can move to solve the energy crises in this country.

Don't Commute - Compute!

I absolutely hate this fake gas crises in which we are stuck.  It is not that we do have a future gas and oil problem, it is just that we do not have one now.

That said, this bout with insanity will probably lead us to finally making the decisions that many of us, and many of our employers and courts, find so hard.

For example, the Dallas Business Journal recently reported that Dallas area employers were stepping in to help employees find some relief from the high gas prices.

Some are obvious, like handing out gas cards in various amounts.  However, more of them were helping to promote and find public transportation to employees, allowing employees to "telecommute" (an old term), and condensing the work week for employees.

Wells Fargo Bank for example recently started allowing bank employees to work from locations closer to their homes.  What gets me is that did not do this before.

From my perspective, this is green too.  Regardless of soaring gas prices, this should always be encouraged.  A shorter drive almost always means a happier worker (and now a wealthier worker as well).

Part of the problem, I believe, has not been the employees up to this point.  It has been the inflexibility of the employers.  Gas prices cause harm and protests.  Now, employers have to face losing good workers and staff to their inflexibility.  So, they are changing.

And, it is not just money.  It is time.  Commuting means loss of sleep.  Loss of comfort.  Loss of time.  Especially now, it means loss of money.  Working from home, or closer to home is better in so many ways, not the least of which is financial.  I believe the slogan should be -- DON'T COMMUTE -- COMPUTE!  It beats all alternatives.  It beats cars, car pooling, HOV lanes, and public transportation.