Like many of you out there, I’m trying my best to have a sustainability consciousness around the office. I put all my junk mail, opened envelopes, printed cover sheets and read magazines in the paper recycling bin. I try not to print out documents just to review them, although I must confess that I lose that battle frequently. I brought my biking water bottle from home so I can reduce the number of times I throw away a plastic cup each day. Food trash goes in the food trash can. Since my office has floor to ceiling windows, I can turn off the lights in my office for a good part of the day (of course my fellow co-workers think I must be sick!). But last week, I received a package in the U.S. mail that showed me I am not being very creative in finding new ways to be sustainable.
In my legal practice, it is not uncommon to receive large packages of original documents following a closing. Of course, the overnight couriers like FedEx and UPS are the standard fare, but typically the physical documents are not required immediately after the closing, so regular or certified mail will work just fine. Besides that, it’s cheaper than the overnight courier price. So, imagine my surprise when I received this envelope:
On the outside, the envelope was just a standard, heavy duty package containing a couple hundred pages of documents. But take a look at the inside, and you’ll see why I was “sustainably surprised” –
That’s right – this sender re-used a spent FedEx mailer by turning the envelope inside out. Of course, the fabric of this envelope is sturdy enough to be re-used many times, but two uses are more sustainable than one. I’ll have to recalibrate my sustainability thinking to catch up with this sender! What about you – what simple and novel sustainability ideas can you come up with?
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The 2011 holiday season is almost over, and I have to say that I received many less paper cards this year than ever before. My informal survey of displayed paper cards in offices at my law firm, and in offices that I visited in December, confirmed to me that more and more businesses have stopped sending paper holiday cards. Maybe (probably) it is a cost-cutting measure. Indeed, trimming expenses has been a major focus of many businesses in 2011. But it is also a sustainability measure.
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Despite the wealth of news across the United States touting electric vehicles, renewable energy projects, new LEED-certified and zero-energy buildings, and sustainable business practices, the hard truth is that a transformation to a sustainable United States will take a long, long time and a “sustained” effort through multiple generations of leadership. That is the lesson offered by Germany, as described in a well-written article recently appearing on the Energy Bulletin written by Ralph Buehler, Arne Jungjohann, Melissa Keeley and Michael Mehling. As they describe Germany’s success, they note that it has been a 40 year journey where “all levels of government … have retooled policies to promote growth that is more environmentally sustainable.”
There are fundamental differences between Germany and the United
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As a long-time Central Florida resident and lawyer who has worked in downtown Orlando for my entire career, I was personally very excited about the approval of SunRail. I have always enjoyed using public transportation when visiting New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, and have often wondered whether public transportation would work in my hometown. I’ve even experimented with the concept by riding the Lynx bus system for a week, and wrote about it in this blog. But I am a realist when it comes to Orlando and mass transportation. I believe that, although SunRail has the potential for great success over the long term, there are several factors that may keep it from gathering the ridership it needs to be successful in the short term.
First, the factors that have the potential to quickly increase public acceptance and ridership:
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It is widely accepted that a significant part of the waste generated by a typical office – paper, packaging, cardboard, etc. – can be recycled if it is properly segregated from other waste which is not easily recycled, such as food waste. In the large commercial office building or development with multiple tenants, this means that literally tons of waste from a single project can be diverted each year from landfills and repurposed for use as recycled copy paper and envelopes, cardboard packaging, etc. Why, then, is there no widespread activity in the commercial lease context to recycle everything that can be recycled? There are multiple explanations for this lack of effort, including these:
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