First Belly Laugh

Last night, I went to a talk by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, and Mackey talked about the concept of Conscious Capitalism. According to him, a conscious business does two fundamental things:

• Stays true to the business's deeper purpose—that is, a purpose other than maximizing profits


• Maximizes the value to an interdependent system of stakeholders—employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, community, environment, and so on

When I got home, Erik was holding Abby while I was relaying everything I'd just heard about, and Abby was watching me intently as I gesticulated. I was right in the middle of talking about the second bullet when Abby suddenly started laughing! This was no short little chuckle like we've heard from her up to this point—we're talking full-on belly laugh!

I stopped talking, and we just stared at her while she laughed for a good 30 seconds. I've got to admit that at first I thought my child was possessed. It took a few seconds before I realized what was going on, but once I did, my single most important goal in life suddenly became to make her do that again and again. I tried saying "interdependent system of stakeholders" again, we smiled, we laughed, and we made funny noises—but no dice.

Now that I know we're not dealing with a demonic possession, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Abby's belly laugh is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.

New Duds for Abby

Abby has now grown out of most of the used clothes we've gotten from friends. We know reusing is best, and consignment shops have tons of onesies in her size. But with her big cloth diaper butt, we can rarely snap them at the bottom. So we've been looking for some cute baby t-shirts.

An artist named Will Heron has a booth at the Austin Farmer's Market where he sells t-shirts with his designs—like the one on the right. He has a great collection of baby clothes, but in Abby's size, they're all onesies.

The last time we were at the farmer's market, I noticed that he uses American Apparel shirts. This weekend, I went to their site and saw that they make a t-shirt in Abby's size too. So I emailed Will Heron and asked if he'd be willing to order those shirts from American Apparel and put a few of his designs on them for us.

He wrote back yesterday to say he included the shirts in his weekly order from American Apparel, and we should be getting everything in about 3-4 weeks. So very soon, Abby will be sporting American-made baby t-shirts with a local artist's designs. Woohoo!

Turning over a New Leaf

After almost 12 years of working as a technical writer, I am moving to my company's Community Relations team as a Sustainability Specialist. It's a dream job for me, and I still don't quite believe it's really happening. I keep expecting someone to say "Just kidding!" and take it all back.

What does a Sustainability Specialist do, you ask? I'm leading our company's new Green Team, which is a group of employees who will work to decrease the company's ecological footprint. Projects we're considering are starting a composting program on our campus, starting a farmer's market at a nearby shopping center, installing more motion detectors for lights, installing a green rooftop on our buildings, and so on.

I will also work to establish partnerships with local nonprofit environmental groups so our employees can have a convenient avenue for donating their time and talent to the cause. And I'll probably play a big role in creating the company's new sustainability report.

But really, it's up to me to define most of my new role. So if you've got ideas, I'm listening!

Perspective

So last week at Whole Foods I picked up the most recent copy of Delicious Living. We like this magazine because it has some good articles. In this particular edition there was a picture on the back cover from an artist that does a great job of putting things into perspective. For example, ever want to see what 2 million plastic bottles looks like from a distance then up close?

A couple days later, I was reading the blog of a brewer who is opening up a new brewery here in Austin called 512 Brewing Company and I saw he mentioned the same artist.

It's good stuff. I can only imagine what these images must be like in person when viewing them in their original size.

Power Savers Unite!

In January, I signed us up for the Austin Energy Power Saver Program, and then I promptly forgot all about it. But this week, we got a box of goodies for signing up—two compact fluorescent bulbs, an energy-saving night light, outlet sealers, and weather stripping. (As nice as that all sounds, I would much rather have gotten a snazzy cape to show off my Power Saver status.)

Austin Energy started the program because most people use most of their energy in the early evening—to cook dinner, wash clothes, wash dishes, cool down a hot house. During a sweltering Austin summer, all this heavy use at the same time can cause a peak demand for energy, resulting in Austin having to generate more electricity or buy it during the most expensive hours of the day.

So when you sign up as a Power Saver Volunteer, Austin Energy contacts you up to 10 times during the summer and asks you to take four simple actions to use less electricity between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm:

• Switch off unnecessary lights
  
• Delay washing and drying dishes and clothes
  
• Cook dinner in your microwave, rather than with an electric range
  
• Turn up the thermostat by three to four degrees

But remember how I said I signed us up in January? Nice and chilly outside. It's not even June yet and we're already hitting the 90s just about every day, so that last request is starting to look a little harder to swallow. We keep our AC at 78-80 during the day, so that would mean bumping it up to 81-84. Dang.

Who knows? Maybe we'll discover that with our fans on and after changing into light clothes, 81-84 can be bearable. But even if not, it's only 10 days out of the year, so we'll survive.

If you're an Austin Energy customer, why don't you join us this summer and we can lament our sweaty situations together? If you're not in Austin, don't feel left out—your electric company might have a similar program. But if you get a cape, I'm gonna be jealous.

Review: Influencer

Title: Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
Author: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
Summary: This book articulates the strategies that the world's most influential people use to solve persistent, resistant problems.

Review: The biggest eye-opener for me was the point that verbal persuasion can't solve all the world's problems, especially when you're trying to convince someone to change their behavior. I've always believed in the power of a carefully crafted argument and prided myself on being able to put forth an effective argument for certain things. But this book made me realize that verbal persuasion is just one eensy weensy technique in the grab-bag of influential techniques, and it's an overused and often ineffective technique at that.

I love how this book teases out the different techniques and gives lots of examples of each. The authors recommend that you read it with a problem in mind that you want to solve. The problem I kept in mind as I was reading was how to get more people at my company to recycle everything that's possible to recycle. Too many times at work, I walk by a trash can that contains a perfectly recyclable piece of paper or aluminum can. And the recycling bin is right. next. to. the. trash. If the person had just moved their hand a measly couple of inches to one side, they could have dropped the item in a recycling bin instead of the trash! But I digress...

For some of the techniques, I immediately got ideas for how to apply them to this problem. For others, I couldn't think of anything. So while I don't think all these techniques will work for every problem, this book certainly made me look at the lack of recycling at my office in a new light, and it gave me a renewed sense of hope for increasing the amount we recycle.

I'm going to put this on my wish list to own because I could see myself referring to it fairly often. The authors also have a web site, influencerbook.com, with a worksheet you can fill out to brainstorm solutions to a problem you're trying to solve.

A Gift Card Collage?

Last week, I used up all the money on an HEB gift card I had. So I asked the cashier if they take the empty cards back to reuse:

Cashier: "No. And you can't put more money on them after they're used up."

Me: Holding up now-useless gift card. "So what am I supposed to do with this?"

Cashier: Shrug. "You could make a collage out of them." Laugh.

Ah yes, a gift card collage. What a clever idea. I'll get right on that.

I happen to know that some gift card technology out there does allow you to recharge an empty card because I've done it at Whole Foods. And if that's possible, how hard would it be to take back empty cards and reuse them?

According to the HEB gift card FAQ, I can contact HEB at 1-800-987-4438, Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., with my questions or issues about the HEB gift card. Oh, my sweet HEB, you are going to rue the day you hired that snarky cashier with an affinity for arts and crafts!

I called, and the nice lady on the gift card hotline said that they don't have the capacity to recharge used gift cards, although they've talked about the possibility for the future. I registered my frustration with having to throw away a perfectly good gift card, but I'm just one little person.

So my fellow HEB customers—will you call too? I promise it'll just take a couple minutes out of your day. Or if you prefer, you can fill out an online contact form. And let me know what you hear back!

Baby's First Farmer's Market

Every New Year's Eve, Erik and I cook a nice early dinner (because we're lame and never have exciting NYE plans), and we sit down to eat with two sheets of paper. On the first sheet, we list all our accomplishments from that year. Everything from "We switched to cloth produce bags" to "Erik brewed 31 beers" to "Mae won the dog division of Run for the Rovers for the second year in a row." Okay, technically that accomplishment belongs to one of our dogs, not us, but it's not like she's going to make her own list of accomplishments—so we get bragging rights.

On the second sheet of paper, we write down our goals for the next year. Not resolutions. These are goals, which we can start any time during the year. As opposed to resolutions, which if you don't do them every day of the year starting with the first day, you are A Big Fat Failure. So one of our goals for 2008 was to start going to a farmer's market at least once a month. Because even besides the fact that local food has to travel less distance to get to you so you're helping to save a bunch of fuel or even the fact that shopping there supports small family farms, The Sticky Toffee Pudding Company has a booth at the main Austin Farmer's Market, and in said booth they sell scones and other amazing deliciousness.

So yesterday, we made our first trip of 2008 to the farmer's market, which also happened to be Abby's first farmer's market trip ever. She did great in her Zolowear sling until she puked all over herself. But then she was happy to be out of the sling and taking it all in. There was another baby there her age—a little boy—but Abby was way cuter. Even his mom said that girls are so much cuter than boys.

The farmer who sold us some eggs even helped us fully immerse Abby in her farmer's market experience:

 

Ban BPA

Finally, a U.S. health agency admitted that bisphenol-A (BPA) might cause cancer and other scary health problems like birth defects, fertility problems, and obesity. BPA is a chemical found in common products like most #7 plastics and the lining of most canned foods and baby formula. In other heartening news, Canada plans to ban baby bottles that contain BPA, and water bottle manufacturer Nalgene is starting a new BPA-free line of water bottles.

But until the U.S. and more product manufacturers do what's right and ban BPA, you can take some easy steps to protect yourself and your family. (I compiled this list of tips from several sources, such as CHEC, EWG, and The Green Guide.)

• Avoid type #7 (PC) plastics when buying food and drink containers, toys, and so on. For water bottles, look for metal bottles that are not lined with a plastic coating. Klean Kanteen and SIGG are popular brands. For baby bottles, Born Free and thinkbaby are BPA-free brands.


• Buy fresh or frozen produce instead of canned items. If you must buy canned items, avoid buying acidic foods like tomatoes—acidic foods can cause the BPA in the lining to leach into the food more.


• Children are very susceptible to this chemical, so avoid canned formula. Breastfeed if you can, or look for other non-canned alternatives.


• Don't microwave plastics, wash them in the dishwasher, or place hot food or liquid in them—doing so causes the plastic to degrade and leach chemicals into their contents. (If you use plastic tupperware, consider replacing them with glass storage containers such as Pyrex.)

And here's an easy way to ask baby bottle manufacturers to get rid of BPA.